I was introduced a number of months ago to a concept known as "Getting Things Done," named after the book by David Allen. The more I read about the concept on sites like 43folders.com, lifehack.com, and others, the more I came to appreciate and value the ideas. I even finally broke down and bought the book itself, just to read more details and understand it more clearly.

But I've had the worst time trying to figure out how to implement the ideas. From what I've read elsewhere, I'm not alone in this. Flexibility gives people more control, more options. But the more options we have, sometimes the easier it is to freeze in indecision.

GTD is a flexible enough set of principles that it can be implemented in a wide variety of ways. But here's the basic gist, in a nutshell. Allen believes that the mind was not meant to efficiently handle more than one or possibly two ideas at a time. People today (probably more than in the past) try to keep track of dozens, even hundreds, of things at the same time. And the more we try to juggle, the worse things can get.

Allen's solution is to do a "brain dump" into a "trusted system," thus freeing the mind to only deal with what the system says needs to be dealt with in that moment and context. The brain dump has to be complete, and the trusted system has to really work, for the GTD practitioner to be set free from the tension and forgetfulness that they experienced before GTD.

The brain dump doesn't strike me as being all that difficult, at least initially. But I have found it far more difficult to find a trusted system that I can feel confident I will continually (or at least daily) "dump my brain" into.

So over the months I have, in fits and starts, experimented with system after system, always finding flaws, always finding weaknesses and limitations that kept me from fully embracing each one. Some are enamored of the low-tech options, sticking with 3x5 cards or moleskine notebooks. Others find ways to use the standard, built-in software of a Palm or Pocket PC to implement GTD. Others prefer software that runs on their home or work PC or Mac, even creating software that can put GTD onto their personal website.

But none of these systems has seemed completely compelling. There seems to be enough shuffling of data that using any low-tech option seems like more effort than it's worth. I found a system called Kinkless GTD that was (and still is) promising, using OmniOutliner Professional (a great Mac-only outliner program) with some custom-made Applescripts. I even shelled out the money for the program; this makes me feel compelled to actually use that system even more.

But if I stick with kGTD (as it's called), I have to either take my MacBook to my Microsoft-focused office with me, leaving it up and running off to the side just to do GTD, or else I will have to do a daily brain dump when I get home, writing down or emailing ideas and notes to myself for that purpose. While neither option is awful, neither is particularly compelling.

So it seems like a web-based solution might work. I have my own website, after all. So I found gtd-php, just as it had begun being developed. Now it's up to version 0.6, and I have installed it (in a hidden corner of this site). But it was designed for a different version of MySQL than my hosting provider supplies; I've run into quirks already that I don't know enough SQL to troubleshoot well. I'm a bit nervous to dump my entire brain and life into a "trusted system" that has already exhibited quirks to me, leading me to not trust it so much.

So that's where I'm at. No system seems great to me yet. Maybe I'm procrastinating, or being too picky. I'm not sure.

So tonight, I prayed about it. Tomorrow, I'll tell you what came of that.