Let me start by saying I am likely the most head-in-the-clouds, perpetually late, go-to-the-store-to-get-milk-and-come-home-with-swedish-fish "guy" you've ever met. I know a few people in this regard that are worse than me, but largely they are the type of people who just don't care. Myself on the other hand, I care way too much. When I come to a meeting 15 minutes late it's often because I forgot the printout on something I was working on, or I needed to get my laptop to be more effective during the meeting, and so on. So, when I heard about a book that claimed it could solve all of my problems, I was skeptical, to say the very least. I am largely anti-self-help, but what I found with GTD is that is more of a non-fiction kind of self-help. Now this, I fell for. Head over heels.
I found myself hiding the cover of the Getting Things Done book when I was reading it, because I know far too many people who are perpetually on the self-help train, always searching for their next read that will "change their life", and I didn't want to be that person. It didn't feel like me. So when I started getting really excited about implementing GTD during my reading, I kept jumping back and forth between my own excitement, and the skeptical side of me that told me it was all going to fade away once I read the book, and none of it would end up being useful.
Over the past year or so, I've tried so many webapps, so many applications, for so many platforms. I've spent a bunch of money on notebooks, pens, paper, supplies, a labeler, a modest filing cabinet, a PDA, and so on. Throughout the whole process I told myself on various occasions: "Come on man; Don't be a sucker. You can't "Beat" life." After feeling like so many applications didn't fit, and after forgetting my UCD (Ubiquitous Capture Device) on numerous occasions, I was pretty much ready to give up. That is, until OmniGroup announced they were developing a GTD-esque organizational application, and beta was coming up soon.
I jumped at the chance and fired off several emails to try and convince them to let me get first dibs. Throughout the beta, those thoughts of failure were still there, but now I had something that was special, something that only I had access to, and there was something very magical about that. This seems to be a recurring problem for a lot of would-be GTDers; It's hard to download an application someone else wrote and still feel like yourself. After all, this application is going to house your life.
I think that analogy is rather fitting, coincidentally: The House. If you're going to be living in something for a long time, you'd better damn well feel comfortable in it. You better like the color it's painted. Or should you?
You see, something I often forget is that humans make the best of a situation with what they have. Research being done over at Harvard suggests this to be true. In fact, they believe that our minds synthesize happiness to make us happy about realities that we cannot change. You are likely to be just as happy, and in many cases /happier/, for instance, letting someone else pick the color of your house, than you are if you had the choice. Indecision breeds unhappiness. "Just make a f****ing decision, and get on with your life!" Is this not a GTD-esque mantra?
So, after a couple of bumpy roads on the proverbial beta-highway, I found myself really starting to love OmniFocus. I found myself trusting it. And today, I feel like it's a part of me. I have never, in all of my years programming and testing software, ever been so gung-ho about feature requests as I have with the development of OmniFocus, and I suspect it is because I believe that there is something about OmniFocus that is mine. It is /my/ house, in a way. Indeed, the information inside of OmniFocus makes the entire application. Without it, what in God's name would I sort? What perspective would I look at?
All of these tiny little personal revelations have added up, and today I have a system in OmniFocus. I could go on and on about my personal system (which is really nothing special, so don't start thinking I'm keeping a secret), but all I can relate to you is this: a number of my terrible habits have gotten some loving TLC by treating OmniFocus /as if/ I loved it. Anyone can critique an application into submission, but when it comes to implementing GTD, you'd better put your ego aside and remember why you're downloading it in the first place.
So, my advice to up-and-coming GTD'ers, black-belts who have lost their way, and anyone looking to get more organized in general is this: Remember that the grass will always be greener, and there will always be some new application with some new feature, but I can tell you from experience that if you give OmniFocus the chance it deserves, you will reap tremendous rewards. I live in an OmniFocus house, so I'm rather biased, but I'll be damned if this isn't the best color paint I've ever seen.
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The Misguided Pursuit of Happiness @ Google Video