[Design] David Allen's Getting Things Done

[Daniel Vareika]

Dear Chao and List Members,

I have been an active reader of the Design List and have found the emails to
be excellent triggers of thoughts, even those I did not agree upon.
Besides I have found not only people with rich knowledge, but willing to
question past models and propose new ones no matter how far reach or not
they are.

I have found the research being done at IBM regarding the state of e mail
most provocative, but found little response to that e mail (not even by
myself) but most notably by the Chandler team.
Probably due to two factors:
1) Probably many of the ideas portrayed by IBM might be already patented (by
IBM).
2) Because they are not standards (yet) and Chandler is trying to adhere to
standards.

Regarding David Allen´s system I can say little.
I just bought both books (through Amazon which I won´t have probably till
February - I live in Uruguay) and an Audio download through Audible.

What strike to my mind listening to the audio is the real concept that I
believe is behind everyone of us:

1) how to manage digital data so it becomes information that can become
later on: Knowledge (the one we want).
2) how to deal with data that we do not request but we have to act upon
(from spam to real valuable information).
3) How to deal with huge amount of information that we all personally and
collectively have been gathering through time, most notably digital.

>From this simple three premises comes another fact and I believe the most
important one, how do we organize our lives effectively from work to private
life.
This is probably the problem we are facing (all of us) and this is probably
why we are all so exited about Chandler in first place.

But Chandler might be merle a tool, flexible enough so we can impose our own
rules and habits or a tight system (like David Allen´s) that can help us
organize our world (or both ways).

What strike me was that if the people behind Chandler are to be successful
in the PIM arena, something that I believe has not happened, at least in
it´s full potential, they ought to be inherently successful at organizing
and fulfilling their lives, so therefore they can come up with a tool strong
enough to help others in the quest. If not, how can we expect that these
people be capable of modeling a tool adequately enough to help others not
only manage data, but transform that data into information and ultimately
into knowledge.

I wish Chao the best, and hope I have not went too far.


Daniel




Chih-Chao Lam wrote:

> In deciding key features for Canoga, the design team has decided to use
> David Allen's wonderful book "Getting Things Done" as one of the basis
> for selecting the key usage patterns that we want to facilitate in
> Canoga.
> 
> As part of this decision, OSAF is sending me to attend one of David
> Allen's seminar in Dallas this week. For the folks that have read his
> book, I was wondering if you have questions or issues about David
> Allen's approach. Please send them directly to me
> (chao at osafoundation.org) or to the list if you think they are of
> interest to the entire list, so that I can get them answered by David
> Allen himself.
> 
> More info on how we are making use of David Allen's approach can be
> found at:
> <http://wiki.osafoundation.org/twiki/bin/view/Jungle/
> DaveAllenUsagePatterns>
> 
> More info on David Allen can be found at:
> <http://www.davidco.com/>
> 
> Thanks,
> chao
> 
> 
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