The Tools for Thought blog has a thoughtful post tackling the problems many would-be followers of Getting Things Done have with the Someday/Maybe list, where you (supposedly) place realistic things you just can't get to right now. Many lists are ignored, for example, because they're just too darn long.

A good trick in reviewing the list is to scan it with the question in mind, "What can I get rid of?" Even if you don't get rid of anything some weeks, you'll find that you pay more attention to the process. You might want to create a next action to edit the list as thoroughly as possible. Consider putting some items that you'll still think about occasionally but not every week in a less frequent queue, either on your calendar or your tickler file.

How often do you get back to your Someday/Maybe list, and what practices help you keep it in check? Tell us about it in the comments.

BusinessWeek profiles Getting Things Done author David Allen and offers a crash course in the GTD personal productivity system. Has GTD changed your life or jumped the shark? Let us know what you think in the comments. [via]

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Linux only: Free multimedia note organizer BasKet takes a page from Microsoft's OneNote, along with a good portion of Getting Things Done-style organisation, to offer an all-in-one spot to drop your thoughts and next actions. You can quickly paste in text and images, sure, but you can also set up launchers to open files with particular programs, grab a section of your screen to paste up, and grab text from files. BasKet also runs as a desktop widget, and offers a pre-built GTD package for help in getting yourself oriented. BasKet is a free download for Linux systems, and requires a number of KDE libraries to run. Thanks, Mark!

Blogger Dennis Best, who previously schooled us about the value of built-in Getting Things Done apps, expands on his all-inside-the-Mac thinking by noting a simple way to organise every email message, document, iCal event, or other file. Add the ° character (Shift-Option-8 on Mac keyboards) directly in front of any word you want to track with, and both Spotlight (and, of course, Quicksilver) can quickly catch and sort your keywords for you. Guest poster Nick Santilli suggested a similar metada system using the "&" character, but Dennis' idea tags files by adding only a single, non-intrusive step you can do right inside the text.

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Sticking to to-do lists with specific next actions can help you get things done, but we can all get lost along the way, whether in the wide-open playground of a browser or some other time sink. Productivity blogger Andre Kibbe suggests fighting a procrastination jones with a little self-awareness and a "Crutch Activities" checklist kept close at hand.

Instead of cursing yourself each time you find that you've spent 90 minutes in your inbox when you meant to check email for 10 minutes, add "Checking email" to your Crutch Activities checklist. Review and update the checklist regularly, and develop protocols, like batching, for controlling these impulses.

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Productivity guru and Getting Things Done author David Allen discusses what he calls the curse of the eternally urgent, the cycle in which we feel like we're constantly putting out fires.

Ignoring secondarily important actions and projects because you are too busy and concerned with urgent things fosters continual crisis management. It never self-corrects; it self-perpetuates. Where do fires and crises come from? Usually from not-so-urgent things that people ignore because they are distracted by the crises of the moment. Then, ignored, they cause the next fires and crises.

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On Tuesday we put out our call for the best applications that help you practice the Getting Things Done productivity system, and from a mighty list of viable contenders, we've taken your votes and determined the five most popular of the bunch. Your choices span a wide range—you'll be surprised by some of the tools many of your peers are using to boost their productivity and get things done. Let's take a closer look at the five most popular GTD tools, then you can cast your ballot for the single best GTD app to rule them all.

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If you find that New Year's Resolutions aren't working for you, Day Zero is a website where you can undertake a more structured to-do list challenge, over a much longer time frame.
Describing itself as an internet meme, the 101 Things to do in 1,001 days project gets you to create a list of 101 things you want to achieve, with the criteria that:

"Tasks must be specific (ie. no ambiguity in the wording) with a result that is either measurable or clearly defined. Tasks must also be realistic and stretching (ie. represent some amount of work on your part)."

There's a degree of public accountability too - to sign up you'll need a website or blog, and your registration at Day Zero won't be accepted until your list appears on your website. Once it's up, you'll be able to add your list to the master list on Day Zero.
It's a nice idea to share everyone's lists publicly, particularly if you're searching for more interesting goals to add to your list than "clean out the garage".
Of course, if you don't really want to trumpet your goals to the world ("stop eating twinkies", "finally toilet train the cat" not really the image you want to project?) then this won't be the GTD project for you.
You can get some ideas and suggestions on how to get started here. And if you'd like to see how other people are travelling on their 1,001 day journey, you can check out the group blog here.

Day Zero - The Home of the 101 Things to do in 1,001 Days Project 

In the past few years, David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology has boosted the productivity of many a convert. The more popular GTD got—especially with the tech crowd—the more desktop and web applications sprung up with the express purpose of managing the GTD process. We've highlighted most of these GTD apps at one time or another, but for this week's Hive Five, we want to know what your favourite is. Hit the jump for details on how to nominate your pick of the GTD litter.

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Mac user Dennis Best says that using David Allen's Getting Things Done productivity system on your Mac doesn't mean you need to find the ultimate GTD application—that the tools you already have in Mail.app, iCal and Finder get the job done fine. After trying out shiny GTD-specific applications (like Things, which dazzled us too), he's settled on using those built-in tools instead. I'm with Dennis on this—instead of using a special GTD app, I stick to a calendar, email inbox, and a few text files to stay organized. Not to be all finger-waggy, but ultimately it's up to you, not your software, to work the system.

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