a million monkeys typing

GTD: SiteBar/Wiki Frankenstein Monster?

Posted October 4th, 2004 at 07:01pm

Having a mad scientist moment here.

Part of the Getting Things Done methodology (see 43 Folders for an excellent smattering of various GTD techniques) is the organisation of projects, tasks, actions and contacts into relevant folders for quick accessibility. Web-based applications being what they are, we often sacrifice the “quick” bit in return for the “accessibility” bit. While I was writing yesterday’s posting on my Essential Web-based Applications, an idea struck me.

So follow along:

1. You set up a wiki for your GTD files, using trees and documents for the appropriate folders and files.
2. You install the SiteBar Firefox extension and sign up with a SiteBar server (or roll your own, if you’re so inclined).
3. Now the important part: you create bookmarks, within a GTD-style hierarchy, to point to each of the wiki documents, but instead of linking to the wiki file, you link to the wiki file’s edit form. Voilà! Instant web-based GTD system!

That means that in the left side of your browser, you can have a full outline-like sidebar. with direct accessibility to your GTD materials on the right side. All you have to do is click on, say, a Next Actions link, and you’re right there in your “web notepad,” seeing your next actions. Make your changes, click the save button, and you’re done. Plus, you can access this system from anywhere that you have access to the web, and can also use the wiki for managing your reference materials and resources, to boot. If you’re using a wiki with a WYSIWYG editing capability (usually through JavaScript), you can get even fancier.

And for those days when you’re at an Internet café, or on another person’s browser, you can create a simple wiki page with a table of contents, indexing and providing direct quick-links to your most important GTD files. I’d put a .htaccess in front of it, or set up the wiki so only you can access your sensitive information, but that way you can do a review anywhere you have a connection. Print off a list of your next actions or agendas if you’re into carrying paper, or use Plucker to suck down the relevant pages to your Palm.

I hear the storm clouds gathering. Fire up the tesla coils, Igor!