Four-Eight-Four [dot org]

About a week and a half ago, when I first started implementing the Getting Things Done methodology, I embarked on a whirlwind tour of applications that might help me organize my task lists and such.

I settled on Midnight Beep’s Inbox, which was by far the most elegant looking package that I looked at, and it was far more intuitive than any other.

Unfortunately, the concept is good, but the implementation is not there yet. This morning, I converted my lists over to OmniOutliner Pro documents, and disabled Inbox for the time being. The application is just too buggy for me to rely on for something as important as my workflow.

I like quite a bit about Inbox. For instance, it regularly checks iCal, Mail, and specified folders for new files, and alerts you that you need to process them. It automates the processing process, and helps you create actionable items. It allows you to sort items by context, and file things away for later review. Even better … if you create an actionable item based on an email message or a calendar to-do item … it attaches a "link" to the message or to-do item that you can click on to be taken to the application in question. Best of all … there is a nice heirarchical task list!

I genuinely believe that if it actually worked as intended, it would be the best GTD app for the Mac … even though it still has some otherwise rough edges and missing features.

Now for the bad side …

It crashes. Way. To. Often. It’s sloooooooow on my Powerbook G4 with 1 gig of RAM. It hangs for no apparent reason sometimes. The interface behaves in seemingly inconsistent ways … sometimes when you drag a to-do item to another spot, it drops there; other times it drops in a completely random spot. It constantly loses those handy links to email messages and to-do items I mentioned earlier … leaving me to have to go back and find the email message in question.

I decided yesterday that I was spending as much time working around its shortcomings as I was working with it. Hence my switch to OmniOutliner.

When I get my work life a little more under control … I need to test the package a little more fully and send the author some bug reports. I want the package to work … I like it … but I just can’t rely on it for now.