At the end of November 2019, David Allen, author and creator of Getting Things Done, held his latest (and presumably final) GTD Summit and at that time, he released his written drawings for what he called the ultimate GTD app. In this cast, we discuss the description provided and whether any existing software has gotten close.

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In this Cast

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes | The Ultimate GTD App According to David Allen

Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.

Ultimate GTD app (PDF)

eProductivity | Get It All Done in IBM Lotus Notes

Omni-Automation

Episode #51: The Ultimate GTD App - Part One - Getting Things Done®

Episode #52: The Ultimate GTD App - Part Two - Getting Things Done®

David Allen gives away the ultimate GTD app | Intentionally Productive

David Allen's GTD App Review - ERW Blog - Effective Remote Work Community

David Allen's GTD killer app can be created using OmniFocus and Shortcuts - OmniFocus / OmniFocus Automation - The Omni Group Forums

David Allen on the Best Software for GTD - Getting Things Done®

David Allen’s killer GTD app system brought into practice – Bert Kruisdijk

David Allen on the Best Software for GTD - Getting Things Done®

Amazing Marvin

Nirvana

Finot (Google Play)

Microsoft Outlook (purchase Microsoft 365)

Microsoft Access (purchase Microsoft 365)

OmniFocus

Remember the Milk

Zapier

IFTTT

GTDNext

Raw Text Transcript | The Ultimate GTD App According to David Allen

Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).

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Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17A quick note, before we get started with our episode today, for those of you listening, who are interested in engaging with others, listening to ProductivityCast, please find our digital community at www.personalproductivity.club, sign up, and we'll approve you into the community. Then finally ProductivityCast channel and join that you can comment on episodes, ask questions and engage with the ProductivityCast team and community. It's easy to sign up and it's free. Again. That's www dot personal productivity dot club. Thanks so much. And now on with the show. Welcome back everybody to ProductivityCast the weekly show about all things personal productivity. I'm Ray Sidney-Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:53 I am Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade 0:54I'm Francis Wade.

Art Gelwicks 0:55 And I'm Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:57Welcome to our listeners to this episode, where we're going to be continuing a discussion we've had around GTD with David Allen. And what we wanted to do was actually talk about the ultimate GTD app. According to David Allen back in 2019, David Allen held what I'm presuming is going to be the final GTD summit in Amsterdam. And he brought together all of his Rockstar advocates of GTD over the years, they all talked about different aspects of GTD, one of the things that David did at that time was open sourced basically released out into the wild, his own schema for what he thinks is or would be the requirements, but the ultimate GTD application, the ultimate getting things done application. And he had a detailed what he thought would work. Now take into account that David Allen comes from the Lotus Notes, platform. And I can 2001 he had Eric Mac, the programmer develop what is now known as he productivity. And it's the one that David still uses to this day, which sits on top of the Lotus Notes platform. But in essence, David has used and continues to use he productivity as his task manager on his desktop environment. And he's on a Mac. So I'm presuming that it works on the Mac as well. And so that's what David's been using for all these years. But David has a vision for what is the ultimate GTD software implementation. And he shows that in this document that he releases, it is 19 pages of fairly detailed notes and drawings showing what the visual should look like for this application and what it should be doing under the hood. So I will put a link to the PDF that they released, they released this on getting things done calm, and I'll put a link to this in the show notes. In essence, David has a series of features that he's looking for in the system. And so I'm just going to run down these pretty quickly so that we can have all a general idea. In essence, he put default debriefing process for the weekly review, he wants some way for the system to facilitate the weekly review for the individual to customize, list sorting, so that you can sort by due date, priority project, age, size, personal, personal versus professional, etc. Third, he has here cross reference projects to Related Actions waiting for his reference people, dates, meetings, etc. decision making and organizing expert system assistance to be built in a retrospective calendar, archive slash log global search a gateway to all other software. So while you are clarifying and organizing, you can have a gateway to all your other software that's connected to it allows free flowing thinking while tracking toward closure. It should be rules based customization so you should be able to it says For example, every a flight I'm guessing American Airlines Flight scheduled schedule 24 hour upgrade, meaning that it would automatically let you know to schedule your 72 hour upgrade based on the flight upcoming prints any views and a handy hardcopy format so that you can take it on the go generates complete hardcopy systems with up to the second lists and data. You can tag any file location activities into your in basket to ensure later closure and then an alarm. I'm presuming he means some kind of time based trigger. So those were the big components he listed as features that he's looking for in at all. Do you feel like David got the vision right upon reviewing the schema.

Art Gelwicks 4:55Okay, I'm gonna nitpick right out of the chute. He could at least type type this up that way God loves David Allen. But man's handwriting needs some help. But aside from that, I'm not. This is where I'm struggling. There are a couple of pieces in here as, as a software developer that I struggle with here. gateway to all other software immediately makes the hackles on the back of my neck stand up. Because that's, I mean that that's the Holy Grail. And it's so dependent on so many other things that it almost becomes the unraveling of so many solutions. Allows free flowing thinking while tracking towards closure. Okay, what the heck does that mean? Is it? Is it a brainstorming tool? Is it a structured brainstorming tool? Is it not a brainstorming tool at all? these are, these are really nice, high level things. But this is the same list, I look at it that the four of us would probably come up with sitting around the table with a bunch of beers for about two hours, and a napkin and a pen. I'm not seeing anything that is definitive, or even specifically derivative of GTD in this capability. I mean, this is what everybody wants a productivity app to do.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 6:21And I think that's kind of the point. Right? So this is this is from 1994, by the way, so you know, we're not talking about something that was developed in 2015, or even 2010.

Art Gelwicks 6:34Okay, so now I'm going to struggle with it a little bit more, because you're right, I did just see the date on that. So why release the spec for something that's more than 20 years old, has been done in so many iterations? Just I'm not understanding the value of how does he feel that this contributes to the overall advancement of personal and professional productivity?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 7:01I don't think that he thinks that anyone has built what he wants yet. I really think that's what it is. I mean, in the GTD summit, he said as much when he talked about it, that no application has gotten close, yet other than the productivity, which, of course, he led the charge with with regard to Eric Mac. But there are just some fundamental pieces that he talks about in and I'll put a link to this in the show, note all all the various areas and places, he's talked about the application development. And he talks about the fact that say, for example, with E productivity, you're able to list items that you want to do today. And then if you don't complete them, they kind of retract back into the system. So you have this temporary holding place for Oh, I want to do these things, you throw them into this. In essence, it's a it's a tag, and it then filters to that view, and then it goes away. If you don't do it today. It's like things like that. I think he's just he's looking for these finer pieces that are just not working.

Art Gelwicks 8:02Those are individual features. And I mean, if you go through and you build software, I'm looking at this spec. And honestly,...