Review by Matthew Bennett

Windows GTD Software - My Life Organized User Review

Date: 8-Apr 2006
Autor: Matthew Bennett
Application: MyLife Organized - Version 1.5.06
Platforms: Windows & PocketPC
Website: www.mylifeorganized.net

This is my review of a piece of software called My Life Organized for anybody looking for a Windows based tool to help them Get Things Done. Read on to find out what worked and what didn't, what I liked and what could be improved.

My Life Organized - Windows GTD Software that works

A couple of months ago (My Life Organized - Windows GTD Software), I mentioned that I had found and started to use a piece of software called My Life Organized as my computer based task manager for organizing my tasks, projects and calendar as part of David Allen's famous Getting Things Done system. I decided to buy the software and this is my review of it, which I hope is constructive enough to help the developers get some new ideas and potential users an idea of what My Life Organized is like.

Quick 4 question summary

After 45 days, am I more productive and organised thanks to this software? Yes.
Have I bought the product registration code? Yes, the 'professional' one. It's well worth $60, if only in saved time and headaches.
Does it work for GTD? Yes, at least the to-do list part (more below)
Can it be improved? Yes, of course.

My Life Organized for Getting Things Done in 15 seconds

My Life Organized is an excellent software programme if you want a Windows based tool to help you keep track of all of your tasks, projects and contexts. Most importantly, it works well enough to deal with the major task management aspects of GTD. Several things could be improved, a couple are only borderline functional and others could be added to pad out the GTD experience. If developed properly, I believe My Life Organized has the potential to fulfill and exceed your Windows GTD software or Personal Information Manager needs.

Now for the more in-depth thoughts, starting with positive things, with some constructive criticism and new ideas below.

Things I really liked about My Life Organized

It's quick, easy to work with, easy to install and figure out and, the very most important thing, it does the task/project/context management bit of GTD very well, which is what I was looking for when I went shopping. By this I mean that I am absolutely more productive thanks to using this software and, as per the GTD way, have no known gaps or forgotten to-dos. I have a couple of hundred tasks written down but they're all there and most of them are already catalogued and tucked away in contexts.

The date function is good enough that I have stopped using Outlook's calendar and haven't missed any meetings or forgotten any birthdays for over 2 months. I have also used the recurring task function to help set-up reminders for new mini-systems in both my personal and professional lives.

The tree-like project view is an excellent way of getting a grip on all of my projects and, because it's a tool made for an excellent system (Getting Things Done) I would prefer it to Basecamp any day, although they don't take exactly the same approach.

The context views work although they could be improved, I think, and the notes option allows me to jot down any scraps of information relevant to a particular task.

Things I really dislike about My Life Organized

I was going to say that there is nothing that I actively dislike about this software but on reflection there are proabably 2 things:

the date picker doesn't always work properly, which is annoying. It sometimes requires two three clicks or even that I start again.
I would like much better printing options: at the minute I'm not particularly enthusiastic about either the memo or the outline styles. It doesn't need to be anything flashy, just a neat table with tasks on one side and notes on the other, or the task in a decent headline followed immediately below by the notes paragraphs. The context or project title should be big and bold at the top of the page and if there are no notes, I should just see a long list of ordered tasks with no spaces. Neither do I want the already done tasks appearing on the printout, at least not in their current format; maybe it would be nice to have a print-out or report view that can seperate the done and not done tasks into 2 seperate blocks that are easy to visually tell apart.

How I think My Life Organized could be improved
In no particular order, I would like to see the following things improved in soon-to-be released future versions of My Life Organized, especially an improved calendar funtion and the introduction of a decent knowledge reference system:

Add a reference/knowledge management system (I'm currently trying out Evernote but if the developers could whip up DevonThink for Windows then that would be great ); this needs to include note-formatting. In this way, I can keep all my reference information in one place and none of it appears as a to-do in the lists and views;
Add a reviews section - weekly reviews are a key part of GTD and I would like another tab which takes me to the review and reports section where I can keep track of all of my weekly review thoughts (see an example post to see what I mean) along with the day's/week's/month's/year's task statistics;
Task statistics: this is a motivational idea but which could also be important for people using My Life Organized in a business environment when bosses and project leaders want to see how things are going. I want to be able to see answers to questions like: How many tasks have I completed this week/month? How many tasks have I added? How many projects have I completed? Which tasks have been moved between projects and therefore represent a change in perception? How many tasks that I thought I would do have not actually been done? How much time did I spend on tasks and how long do certain types of task take to complete?
Calendar function: I would like daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly views of to-dos. I think this is a spatial-visual awareness need or something; The ability to be able to take in and assess the number of tasks for a period of time and not just on a particular day is very important. I also want to be able to change one instance of a recurring task, like in Outlook, and leave all of the rest of them as they were. it's quite common for someone to change one meeting in a month, but not all 5.
User interface 1: automatically put done tasks below the not-done tasks in a given view: this is close to getting on the 'things I actively dislike' list. I would really like, once I check off a task as 'done', for that completed task to drop below all of the tasks still to be done. At the minute I have to do this by hand and I'm sure it must be possible to programme the software to do this.
User interface 2: option to see done/not-done in a given context; at the minute, whenever I check off a task in a context view, it instantly dissappears. It would be nice if it just moved to the 'done' section below the all of the rest of the tasks. Then if I accidentally make a mistake or wish to see how many things I've succeded in actually doing in a given context, I can see that.
User interface 3: tree-like sub-contexts: so that I can quickly see which contexts belong to which and how the tasks are spread around the subcontexts. 'Shops', for example, is a great context which would contain some general stuff that I need to buy the next time I go shopping but then their might be 'Supermarket', 'Clothes Shop', 'Homestore' etc which are contexts in their own right because I know I go there a lot and can buy what I need there. At the minute, all the tasks in a sub-contexts appear in the same list with no way for me to seperate them further.
Identify and maximise use of multiple relationships: be able to assign a task to multiple projects and have MyLIfe Organized identify which tasks are relevant to more than one project. These would then be shifted up the list because by doing them, I advance quicker than I would otherwise have done;
Networking: this would be a good one for users in groups or businesses. Have the option to make share projects and to-dos and doi other networking things like have a project manager add tasks to a shared project, add a meeting, or change the time of a scheduled event.

Things I thought would be nice but on reflection are better left where they are

Contact details: Outlook is the best tool for this, it works with a whole host of useful plugins like Skype and Attensa and does the receiving of external information job very nicely with rules, folders and the like.
RSS feed reader: I've started using a great plugin for outlook called Attensa, so go over and have a look at that if you're suffering from feed stress. It too really works for me, I've stopped using bloglines altogether and now happily flick through hundreds of articles every day with very little stress at all.
No need to break things that already work very well or reinvent the wheel .

Conclusions

All in all, a software product that already works for what I wanted it to do and is therfore worthy of purchase but which could definitely be improved upon even more to really make it very easy to organize GTD on Windows.

If anybody has seen something that can already be done but that I've mentioned in the things I would like to do but haven't yet spotted, please chirp up in the comments and say so.

You can read more information by visiting the My Life Organized webpage and get an idea direct from users and developers on the My Life Organized Google Group.

Matthew Bennett, 8-Apr 2006