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Jonathan Ballinger - About Me

Hi,

I missed this board or I would've posted here first! I first read David Allen's book in late 2005 when I was getting snowed under with things at work.

I tried the good old paper route first and thought it was a dismal failure (the use of paper for me, not the principles. Those resonated almost immediately) as I kept losing the relevant bits I needed to remind me of my options at that time and in that place.

For a long time I tried half-hearted implementations of various tools which all exhibited one of the following issues:

  • Not omnipresent enough - they weren't with me all the time
  • Not quick enough - this was rare but it is infuriating to have to wait for something to load slowly
  • Too much - GTD's benefit comes from its simplicity
  • Too little (rare, but occurred)

I'd be using software tools that required me to enter every last nuance of what I was working on which invariably ended with my giving up on the program. I'd buy moleskine notebooks that were used for other purposes because they didn't meet my GTD wants.

For a long time I was only using GTD on a sporadic basis which was annoying because I knew there was a better way out there but just wasn't doing enough to use it.

In the end I settled on the PocketPC as my always there tool, as it was. My Axim is always in my pocket and so it made sense. I handle email in its own area, Mail.app in my case at home, and Outlook at work but my day-to-day tasks and projects reside in my PPC.

Regarding this site, I've been a long time reader and it's influenced a lot of my ideas and implementations but never actually registered for the board. Ironically because I couldn't find the time to spend reading boards as I wasn't able to GTD! Funny how something that invariably takes a fair amount of time to set up works out as a massive time saver.

In the interests of full disclosure, I am also the developer of nActionr for the PocketPC.

Carla's picture

Belated welcome--I'm glad you're here!...

Belated welcome--I'm glad you're here! :)

 
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