If you are like me and try to keep track of your task lists at work and at home and on the quest for keeping things organized.. look no further! I think I have found the holy grail!!
Everyone has heard about Wikipedia and there wiki’s popping up everywhere. From this was born TiddlyWiki. From Wikipedia,
TiddlyWiki is a single self-contained HTML file that includes CSS and JavaScript code. When the user downloads it to their PC, TiddlyWiki can save the entered information by overwriting itself on the user’s disk, at the user’s request.
It is a non-linear way of storing information. The great thing about it is it’s portability. Because it’s all in a single html file, you can email it to yourself or store it in a USB flash drive or put it up in a web server and you can access it anywhere!!
Now you know what TiddlyWiki is. let’s move on to a another method for an organized nirvana called Getting Things Done by David Allen. Again from the Wikipedia,
GTD rests on the principle that a person needs to move tasks out of their mind and get them recorded somewhere. That way, the mind is freed from the job of remembering everything that needs to be done, and can concentrate fully on actually performing those tasks.
I came across an application which was a marriage between TiddlyWiki and GTD naturally named GTD TiddlyWiki on Lifehacker. That article has some nice instructions on how to get started with this. This was really nice but after reading the comments in that article I came across another variant called the Monkey GTD.
GTD TW was nice but lacked a way to organize tasks into Contexts/Projects and checking them off as I got done with them. Monkey GTD has a snazzy Dashboard with checkboxes for tasks which you can check off as you finish them. It was not very intuitive to start with.. but after playing with it for a couple of days, I am addcited to it now!!
I started using the MonkeyGTD and shuttling them between work and home through mailing it to my Gmail account. But, soon it seemed like a lot of work. Now, I had to remember to email myself at the end of the day and again email myself from home before I leave to work! There’s got be an elegant solution. How about hosting it on a web server and accessing it anywhere? Voila.. a great innovative idea right? I felt like Archimedes.. Not!
TiddlySpot has already done it and they offer various flavors of TiddlyWiki including MonkeyGTD. And for FREE.. yep free as in beer! And the registration can’t eb any easier.. it takes 10 secs to get your own site. You can make it public or private!
If anyone is interested in learning how to get started with MonkeyGTD, please leave a comment and I will follow up with a post on how to use it! I am not claiming to be an expert but I can share my experiences..
Get organized now!!
Thanks for the post – as for how to keep it handy between work and home, why not just install it on your USB Flash (thumb) drive and use it there?
anyway, thanks, Megan
Meg,
Thanks for visiting and leaving a feedback.
I have since come out of the hole and bought a USB drive and have found to be my best friend!
On the same note, I have moved on to d-cubed for serious stuff and use Remember the Milk (RTM) for everyday tasks.
I have written about it here http://shankrila.com/2007/04/16/shankri-la-feature-remember-the-milk/
I am going to try using the article I mentioned there to try and apply GTD principle in RTM.
How can I setup MonkeyGTD on my own web server?
dongthao, I just rescued you from Akismet and sorry for the late response.
MonkeyGTD or any other TiddlyWiki apps is just a single html file. You could just drop it in your public_html folder of your webserver and access it over the web. There is a setting in MonkeyGTD (if I remember right) which can allow or disallow edits over http.
Hope that helps. 🙂