GTD & iPhone – an Impressive Combination?
During the last few weeks I have been running my GTD inspired time management system on an iPhone. In this short article I will give you my thoughts and first impressions about it. I will also lead you to a suitable GTD/iPhone application, or applet, as they are called.
The iPhone – my choice was a black one.
It is worth to remember that my own time management solution is still Outlook and PC based. The mobile phone is mainly an extension.
The iPhone as a Phone
Before we go into the GTD aspects let me comment a few words about the iPhone as a phone. The user interface is great and the graphics smooth… really, really smooth. I have not read the manual and it looks like I do not have to. I was somewhat concerned about the typing. Luckily it turns out it is not a problem – even for me. However, I have noticed that it can be hard to send text messages after a few beers (funny, but true).
For some reason I hear a small echo of my own voice when I talk. At first this was irritating, but it does not disturb me anymore. I guess it's a feature, not a bug.
The iPhone handles emails very well and synchs happily with your Exchange server. At the same time it also handles Gmail and other popular email accounts. Apple has done a great job here.
The default calendar is also ok. I have no comments to that.
Perhaps a little surprisingly, taken out-of-the-box the iPhone does not have a task manager. Therefore the first task was to find one. Adding new apps is easy. There really exists a wide plethora of them and they are relatively cheap, priced at a few bucks each.
Finding an Optimal Task Management Application
There are a lot of task management applications to choose from in Appstore (available via iTunes or directly from the phone itself). Different task management applets include e.g.:
- TaskTask
- iMExchange
- Toodledo
- Remember the Milk (RTM)
- Omnifocus
- Things
My selection criterion were quite clear:
- The task manager has to be able to handle categories
- It should be able to sync with Outlook (preferrably directly with the Exchange server)
Those of you who have read my previous article about running GTD on a Nokia phone perhaps remember that we omitted completely category synchronization at that time. This was however due to the restriction we have in Symbian phones. As iPhone does not have this restriction, I naturally included the handling of task categories as a must-have-feature. A short study revealed the following:
| Application | Categories | Outlook sync |
| iMExchange | yes | yes, exchange |
| Toodledo | yes | yes, via desktop app |
| RTM | yes | no |
| Omnifocus | yes | no |
| Things | yes | no |
| TaskTask | no | yes, exchange |
RTM, Omnifocus and Things all do handle synching, but to a separate desktop or web companion, not to Outlook. TaskTask in turn does have direct Exchange server synching, but is not able to list tasks as per categories.
So we were left with Toodledo and iMExchange. Which one is better?
Option 1: Toodledo
Toodledo is actually primary a web service for task management, much like Remember the Milk. Toodledo then also has an iPhone applet that synchronizes with the web application. It looks like this:
Toodledo handles categories with an ease. In Toodledo they are actually by default called "folders". There is also a possibility to use a dimension called "contexts", but I don't recommend it, as it requires some tweaking to the default setup.
But what about the linking to Outlook?
For Outlook synchronization there is then a third party application called Toodledo Outlook Sync. It is a desktop application that you install into your Windows machine that then handles the synching in the background.
All this synching here and there may sound a little too complicated, but when you are up and running it really isn't. The only thing I noticed was that I had to run the sync software 4 times in a row in the beginning, as it only synchronized 25 tasks per time (probably a bug in the sync software). Otherwise it has worked fine.
The result is having your tasks in three different places – the iPhone, in the web and in Outlook – all at the same time, synching with each other, so that changes in one place are reflected to the two others.
Option 2: iMExchange
IMExhchange is a pure iPhone applet. It will ask for your Exchange server address when you take it into use. But after that you are done.
As you can see from the picture above iMExchange also handles your Outlook notes and your Out of Office settings. I don't actively use the Outlook notes part, but the remote handling of the Out of Office assistant is a very pleasant addition.
IMExchange also handles listing tasks per category. The only downside with the applet is that it sometimes freezes for a few seconds at startup. I guess it has to do with connecting to the Exchange server. Otherwise it works nice and smoothly. Just remember to press "Save" when you edit or add tasks, and you will be just fine.
Summary and Final Verdict
I still have both Toodledo and iMExchange running side-by-side. However, due to simplicity reasons and thanks to the direct integration to Exchange, my recommendation is iMExchange. If you don't have Outlook with an Exchange server, go for Toodledo.
Both solutions will give you a mobile GTD experience on your iPhone that really has "all you need".
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