Review: GTD Agenda – Versatile Productivity Software

Review: GTD Agenda – Versatile Productivity Software


It seems like every day there’s a new task management app for a new productivity system. GTD Agenda breaks out of that mold by making a task management app that can be used for multiple productivity methods.

In fact, my absolute favorite thing about GTD Agenda is that in addition to the standard tour and features page, they have pages dedicated to how you can use GTDAgenda for different productivity systems (GTD, The 7 Habits and Highly Effective People, and Zen to Done) and different activities (the gym, school, and software development).

GTDAgenda allows you to easily break up your work across Goals, Projects, and Tasks. In addition, you add Contexts to your Tasks and label tasks as Next Options. There’s also checklists, schedules, and a calendar.

Dashboard

The Dashboard isn’t the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen, but it’s comprehensive. First and foremost, when you login, you see your Next Actions and have the option of grouping them by Priority, Project or Context. On the right-hand side, you have your Calendar. Then underneath your Calendar, you have a box of your Contexts. Underneath that, your Projects.

This setup makes it super-easy for you to have an idea of what’s due when, what to do next, and enables you to quickly pick a task to work on.

Goals, Projects and Tasks

GTDAgenda uses three different categories to help to break your tasks down: Goals, Projects, and Tasks.

Essentially, you create a goal and then break down that goal into manageable projects. Let’s say as a freelancer, my goal is to find more clients. My projects might include “write eBook,” “re-do website,” and “be more active on social media.”

From there, you can break down your projects into more manageable tasks.

Next Actions, Contexts, and Priorities

To help you decide what task to do when, GTDAgenda offers Next Actions, Contexts, and Priorities.

Next Actions are, well, the actions that need to be taken next. You can highlight these by adding a “star” next to the task.

Priorities are (once again) pretty self-explanatory, and you can group Priorities based on a scale of 1 through 5.

Contexts are tags that describe where or how a task is completed, such as “home,” “work,” or “errands.”

Calendar and Schedules

GTDAgenda has a calendar-with an iCal feed available that’s perfect for scheduling in specific appointments and events.

Schedules can help you organize your day, by assigning tasks with exact times. Kind of like how Day Planners have both a monthly calendar view, along with a weekly calendar view that breaks your day down into hours.

Checklists

Checklists are mainly designed for recurring tasks — anything from something you do daily, to something you do twice a year (like change the batteries in your smoke alarm). You can even tie your Checklists to a specific goal to help you more forward and develop a habit.

Integration

Email

Frequently get assignments through email? GTDAgenda has got you covered. You can easily connect your email inbox(es) through the settings, choose whether to convert emails to a new project or task, attach a goal, context, and/or priority, then GTDAgenda automatically pulls in the emails.

Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be a way to set up any filters so that not all of your email would be pulled into GTDAgenda. Also, it wouldn’t let me add my main email inbox, giving me the following message when I tried:

“This e-mail is registered as a Gtdagenda user e-mail. You cannot add a user e-mail (where Gtdagenda sends notifications).”

This struck me as incredibly inconvenient.

Twitter

GTDAgenda can import both public tweets and direct messages that mention your @username, along with being able to import direct messages sent to @gtdagenda from you.

Just like with email, there didn’t seem to be a filtering system for importing tweets. This would be useful in future builds of the application.

Evernote

GTDAgenda offers awesome integration with Evernote. It allows you to attach Evernote notes right to your projects or contexts. I found this to be a great feature — plus it was easy to use.

Mobile Versions

Often the first question everyone asks after reading about a new web app — especially a task management one is, “What about mobile apps?”

GTDAgenda has a mobile web version, along with both an iPhone app and an Android app. All three of these sync with the web app.

Overall, if you’re looking for a task management app that includes the ability to sync with Evernote and also includes a straightforward means to create and manage lists, projects and tasks, then GTDAgenda is worth a look.


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Leslie A. Joy is a marketing assistant, process manager, analytics geek, and blogger, along with being a social media strategist for DSGNR Unlimited. You can find out more at her site, Social Media Mercenary.

Discussion

  1. Dan on the 28th February

    Hi Leslie,

    Thanks for your article.

    I’ll explain to the readers why you are not allowed to add your e-mail address registered with Gtdagenda, to fetch messages from it. There’s a new notification that we are working on, which will send you an email everytime a new project is assigned to you. So there would be an endless loop: a new email in inbox -> Gtdagenda fetches it into a new project -> sends notification email about the new project -> Gtdagenda fetches this new message and converts into a project, and so on ad infinitum. We are brainstorming a solution.

    Thanks again.
    Dan Baluta – Gtdagenda

    • Mike Vardy on the 28th February

      Dan,

      Thanks for chiming in. It’s always great when those behind the software step up to comment and offer further insight into what they’re working on. Much appreciated.

  2. Dan on the 28th February

    This feature is best suited for email accounts with only actionable mesages coming in, like support email addresses, sales email addresses, etc.

  3. Olaf Ohman on the 28th February

    I’m not willing to put my personal info on the web. That’s why I use B-Folders which syncs between multiple computers and phones without your data leaving your devices. While not strictly a GTD tool, I do GTD by moving items between folders and reordering lists. You can read about B-Folders here:
    http://jointlogic.com/b-folders/2/

    • Jay on the 26th May

      I have used B-Folders to replace my Palm functionality but am frustrated by a lack of thorough documentation, users group etc. Any suggestions?

  4. Heidi, Stationery Scoop on the 3rd March

    Thanks for this review. As a long-time GTDer, I’m always interested in learning about a new tech solution. But when I actually consider switching from my old standby, OmniFocus, I realize that the time and effort is more than I’m willing to put out. Still, it’s good to know what’s out there, right?

  5. Bojan on the 8th March

    Having Evernote integration, this makes this software tool really interesting… Is it worthwhile taking a chance with it?

    I am currently using Google tasks, does it offer gtasks integration?

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