Earl Moore at Meandering Passage posts a description and flow chart of how he gets things done using Mail.app, iCal, kGTD and DEVONthink Pro .

The schema highlights the role of Mail.app as the collection bucket for 75-85% of the things he needs to do.

From Mail.app the sorting starts:

This is where my electronic communications are initially collected. If I receive something and I can do immediately, I do it from within Mail and then export the completed email task into my DEVONthink Pro archive (@File).

If it’s a project or has a future due-date I send the item to Kinkless GTD (kGTD) where a task is created with all the email body as part of the task description. From that point I handle it in kGTD. If something is only a Reference Item or a Maybe Someday Item I send it to DEVONthink Pro to file.

Mail Act-on and Quicksilver are used to speed up the sorting / filing / sifting.

I always enjoy reading about the structures other people use to get things done. It keeps me open and flexible in my own system and helps me to grasp more clearly what’s right for me in GTD and what’s not.

Test your own system .

[Thanks, Scott]GTD, getting things done, productivity, mail.app, apple mail, ical, quicksilver, kGTD, very pretty flowcharts

iCalFix is an iCal plugin that adds an alarm by default to any iCal event you create.

A new version released a while ago adds some neat new features:

• The last alarm settings you have entered are re-used for bulk settings.
• You can specify message-only alarms by setting the alarm sound in the plist file to an empty string.
• It has fixed a compatibility problem with kGTD (Kinkless GTD).
• Alarm sounds can contain strings so that you can customise them even more.

The plugin requires SIMBL (Smart InputManager Bundle Loader), the same Cocoa application hack that powers the Safari plug-in PithHelmet and iAlert , a Mail.app (and more) notification system. Instructions are included in iCalFix’s readme file.

iCalFix 0.4 — not far away — will be a universal binary and will feature a preference pane of its own.

The developer Robert Blum has also written a piece on The Making of iCalFix which is like James Eagan’s Guide to writing a Mail.app plugin (except that it is about iCal and not really a guide). Good reading.

ICalFix is freeware and is available from Robert’s web site .ical, plugins, events, alarms, SIMBL, kGTD, productivity

” Kinkless GTD” is a set of templates, applescripts and a Quicksilver action for OmniOutliner Pro.

It allows users to organise their life and work after the fashion of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” time-management philosophy. Most importantly, perhaps, kGTD syncs its tasks with iCal as to dos which creates an even more powerful and useful tool.

It is Ethan Schoonover‘s lovechild and an absolutely excellent thing.

The new version (0.83.0) has a list of improvements and new features as long as your arm.

Automatically-aging tasks, “singleton” tasks unrelated to any project, a smarter Quicksilver action and next actions that “bubble” to the top of project lists are just some of the things that I am looking forward to.

Merlin Mann, who did hard-core beta-testing on this version has written a nice detailed review of the new release.

KGTD requires the latest OmniOutliner 3.6 beta . It is freeware and you can download it from Ethan’s web site .kgtd, gtd, getting things done, ical, productivity, quicksilver

Ethan Schoonover is the developer of Kinkless GTD (kGTD), a collection of AppleScripts and a template for OmniOutliner Pro and iCal that implements David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” philosophy for Mac users.

HW: How would you describe yourself?

ES: A recent interviewer described me as an “international gadabout” which is my preferred title as it sounds both worldly and completely irresponsible. Otherwise I would suggest ‘photogrammer’. Work (and right brain stimulation) is photography (ejas.net ) but I program when I’m not shining bright lights at people.

HW: What kind of Mac do you use?

ES: My primary Mac is a Dual 2.7 G5, 4GB Ram, with two terabytes of disk space (half internal, half external). On the road I use a 15″ Powerbook. iPod Mini 2nd gen (I’m holding out for the iPhone). Main monitor: 23″ cinema, Second monitor, a Philips 18″, vertical orientation.

HW: How long have you been using Mail.app? What other clients have you used (and why did you stop)?

ES: I’ve switched (back) to the mac (after a ten year hiatus) almost exactly a year ago. Until then I was an Outlook addict. When I started my “OSX adjustment period” and began to select my core apps, I took a look at Entourage. Entourage is ugly. Really, really ugly. On the mac, for the most part, ‘ugly’ correlates strongly to ‘crappy’. Not in all cases, but it’s a common symptom. So I decided against Entourage and went straight for Mail.app.

I was in shock at first since it had no clear calendar or task integration. I’ve since learned to love the simplicity and single mindedness of this approach. To abuse some OO terminology, the i-apps in OSX tend to have strong cohesion and are loosely coupled which I now realize is a very good thing for my PIM functions.

HW: What plugins and extensions do you use to make your email experience better?

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A poster in the kGTD discussion forum has written an AppleScript that will transfer the body of email into kGTD’s Inbox using a Mail Act-on rule.

kGTD is the excellent template developed by Ethan Schoonover for OmniOutliner Pro that implements the “Getting Things Done” (GTD) method of handling tasks and information.

I think kGTD is excellent. I have blogged about using it and Mail.app to get organised and get things done here and here.

A ‘Tickler file’ is part of the Getting Things Done system in which you can store things that you need to do in the future and be reminded about them in a timely way.

It is a collection of 43 folders (Hey, how about that?) and is managed by a secretary or PA if you are lucky enough to have one, who sorts through the right folder each day and gives you the things you need to do in time to do them.

I don’t have a secretary. In my earlier postings on trying to run GTD in Apple Mail, I simply created a mailbox that I called a ‘Tickler file’. Mail Act-on dumped all my “deferred” things into it and I had to remember to sort them through manually at the start of every week. But no more!

Zak Greant has written an AppleScript that will create and manage a complete set of Tickler folders for you.

The first time you run the script, it creates a full set of folders for you as you can see from the screenshot.

Then you file away the emails containing tasks that you need to do later away into the appropriate week, day and month folder. I’ve thought about creating rules under Mail Act-on to do this, but I think it is doing to be easier in the end to drag ‘n’ drop them from my ‘deferred holding pen’ mailbox into the right folders.

Run the script every day, and it sorts through your folders and delivers the stored emails (flagged and marked as unread) into the @INBOX each day as you need to deal with them. Excellent.

To make this even more bullet-proof, I have created an event in iCal which will run the script for me every morning at 9 am.

Armed with this script, kGTD and Scott’s Morrison’s Mail Act-on and MailTags plug-ins, I have all the tools I need to implement a really good GTD system on my Mac.

Of course, I still need the will to use them and the intelligence to use them well, but that’s another story. Software can’t help there.

Zak has also written some other nifty applescripts like email2ical, which ?ɬ† la the mail2iCal scripts and the fuhgeddaboutit script, creates events in iCal from Mail.app messages.

A second installment. Learning to give up my Inbox and live in smart mailboxes instead was Part One.

Part Two is about the book and about how I’ve since modified my Mail Act-on and MailTags set-up to help me get some things done better than on my first attempt. (All of which you will find after the jump… )

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