I’m not really using the Hipster PDA officially. I’ve got 15 or so 3×5 cards in a binder clip. I use the lined side for thoughts that pop up, and I use the white side to draw visual concepts and thinking, a la Dave Gray style. Is this working for me?
No.
What’s useful is that I always have paper handy for notes and ideas. But as an organization tool, it’s not working for me. Maybe if I invested the time in the Hipster PDA methodology and really learned it out, it might be useful, but I’m finding that 3×5 card planning isn’t really working for me.
My new holy grail? I want a to-do planner system online and free, that does tabbed planning in the way that Firefox does tabbed browsing. I want keyboard-level useful planning that lets me do the following:
- Each tab is a project or context or whatever.
- Within each tab are simple tasks, and the option to add deadlines, recurrence, or notes. By “option,” I can choose to never touch them.
- It’s okay to let me mouse-click the completed, but I also want to be able to do group actions. (I often dump projects whole hog).
Lifehacker pointed me towards Hiveminder. I like this app a lot. It’s got plenty of neato features, and the ones I don’t want to use are still fine, because most of them can be ignored. They give me a few ways to view tasks. It’s a web-based app so I can get to it whenever I have web access (and most of my important contexts are currently online). So, I’ve sent them email asking them if they’d consider adding projects/contexts to what they do. Jake’s Toodledo has contexts, and that’s really useful.
Do you use paper-based planning, like the fine products from D*I*YPlanner? What’s your take? What’s your current favorite web-based tool?
