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:
- You set up a wiki for your GTD files, using trees and documents for the appropriate folders and files.
- You install the SiteBar Firefox extension and sign up with a SiteBar server (or roll your own, if you’re so inclined).
- 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!
7 Comments Add your own
1. Jonathan Peterson | October 7th, 2004 at 3:43 pm
ooohhhh. shiny!
I really, really like this idea. I’m using ShadowPlan on windows and have all my files on my work desktop. I’m planning on USB keyfobing the files to my home laptop, but haven’t really gotten around it doing it on a regular basis.
where are so many wiki’s, but I’m willing to bet I can find one small enough and quick enough to run happily in java/cygwin/perl, etc. and still be reasonably snappy. Be really nice to find a wiki that can operate on xml files using a URI so I could run the UI on either laptop, and keep the files on my website.
2. AdamBell | October 8th, 2004 at 4:31 pm
the problem with wikis as lists is that you will have to enter things more than once if you want them in more than one list. Like a work project i keep in a work list and a list for that project, but who wants to enter things twice. Right now i use outlook GTD addin and a wiki for just keeping notes
SiteBar is great though
3. dougj | October 8th, 2004 at 4:52 pm
Adam, that’s true. But I think what I’d like to accomplish with this setup is to make a web-based notebook suitable for GTD. I have any number of programs that I can use on either Linux, OS X, Windows or my Palm that can achieve most of the basics. But I do need somthing that can span all of these OSes, that can be used wherever I am (which almost always has a network connection), and that can use a centralised “repository” of organisational information that is kept portable and in sync. I haven’t played with the GTD Outlook add-in, but as I don’t use Outlook anymore, that’s not really an option anyway. I’d certainly be interesting in learning more about it, though.
4. Kyle | October 9th, 2004 at 12:49 am
I’m setting up something similar at the moment, but I have the same hangup as what AdamBell mentions: do I set things up by contexts, projects, or both? And if the latter, is there a good way to link back and forth? Any given project might have actions that occur in different contexts; straightening out a billing dispute might require some information gathering at home and some phone calls to be made during the day. Keeping these things linked is where I see the GTD+wiki method breaking down. Hopefully there’s a simple, relatively intuitive way to work that out…
5. dougj | October 13th, 2004 at 8:04 am
Kyle, I think that SiteBar and wikis have strengths you can use. There’s no reason, for example, why you can’t have two entries in SiteBar referring to the same place. And wikis were meant for easily creating cross-linking content.
6. a million monkeys typing &hellip | January 5th, 2005 at 4:58 pm
[…] ox extension gives you a neat sidebar so you can easily manage and use those bookmarks. I suggested using SiteBar with a wiki a few months ago for GT […]
7. getting things done, prod&hellip | January 6th, 2005 at 12:09 pm
GTD via Sitebar/Wiki Frankenstein Monster
Now, this is interesting: set up a Firefox extension, to create a sidebar. Add a wiki. Then create bookmarks. Essentially, a Bonsai or ShadowPlan style outline doohickey on the desktop, but on steroids, so to speak.
http://tinyurl.com/448mw
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