Apps that Get Things Done

We're used to the term "getting things done" or GTD being thrown around when discussing to-do list and project management apps. It even comes up when discussing note apps and strategies, especially when they involve bucket apps like Evernote that have tags and folders like popular GTD to-do list apps.

What people forget is that GTD is actually a method for productivity, not something that can be encompassed in a particular app. People use GTD as short-hand for productivity apps that fit their bill of what they need to do. They forget that, at its core, David Allen's original Getting Things Done idea was that you capture anything that has your attention, find what you need to do with it, organize information, and make the best choices about what to do at a given moment. All good, practical ways to keep your brain clear and focused on your work instead of being constantly distracted, but not something that precisely one app can encompass.

Instead, how about tools that let you get what you need to do, done, without having to remember to come back and finish stuff up? That can be very, very valuable to keeping you productive and sane, without leaving dozens of tasks half-completed every day.

And that's what the best new apps do these days. Take the iPhone email app Triage, for example. It lets you check your mail — one message at a time — and quickly either archive/delete the email or save it as unread in your inbox to read/reply to later from your computer. It's an actionable app, one designed with a specific workflow to make you productive and get what you're doing, done.

The best example of this, though, is the new Mac app Minbox. It's designed to make sending large files faster, with a specific workflow. You drag the file(s) you want to send to your menubar, enter the recipient's email address and a brief message, and hit send. Done. No more waiting for Dropbox to sync files, or for a file to upload to your FTP server, and then remembering to email your colleague about the file. Nope. Now, you just think of the file you need to send, and send it.

I mentioned to the developers that the app was GTD in a way since it let you get the task of sending a file out of your mind by letting you fully complete a task that used to take hours in seconds. And maybe I'm stretching the term here, but I think it's apt.

It's another reason why I've fallen in love with Evernote again: the menubar app and the web clipper make it take almost zero thought to archive stuff I find to Evernote and build up my own info database. It's the same with Sparrow: I can't replace it because every other Mac email app I try takes more steps to accomplish the same tasks, and that's frustrating. It's why Google Now has already won fans, because it takes steps out of, say, finding directions to get home.

Preview is my favorite image editor for quick crops and resizes because it doesn't do tons more than that, and is dead simple for it (especially with customized keyboard shortcuts). And iA Writer's lack of settings — and perfect default settings, for my tastes at least — combined with a single shortcut to copy HTML from my Markdown writing for my AppStorm articles make it a writing app that fits like a glove. None of these may be GTD apps, per se, but they sure help me get things done by making decisions for me and taking steps out of my work.

I want to see more apps that let me accomplish what I'm setting out to do without having extra steps, especially those that will have to be done at a later time. Reduce steps, especially theses that require us to remember to complete them when we're likely to forget. Make apps like that, ones that actually save people time and give them less they have to remember to complete a task, and you're just about guaranteed to have a market for your products.

They'll be choosy apps, apps that decide for the user what's best, but I think that's the best. And the market for simpler apps sure seems to be validation of that.

Thoughts? @reply me on Twitter.