Making Tracks

I’ve started using Tracks, an open-source Ruby on Rails app aimed at the Getting Things Done cult.

Getting Things Done is a great book, one I have no problem recommending. Everyone will probably get a little something different out of it, but if you like doing something, anything, there will be a tip or two for you in there.

I tried the Hipster PDA as a result, and that didn’t work out. I kept leaving my PDA in random places. I don’t even know where the last one ended up! I think that Tracks has a chance to succeed where that project failed.

Using the application is very easy. If you’ve read the book, you’ll be familiar with the terminology used, but even if you haven’t read the book, you can probably figure it out.

I have my Tracks installation now running on my desktop machine at home. Setting up the application is straight forward, if you’ve ever set up a Rails app before. And thanks to DynDNS and a little Apache configuration, I can get at my data from the outside world.

I also have a cron job set up to print out the text version of the to-do list every day. (That’s one great feature, by the way) That gives me a place to write down new tasks when I’m “off-line”.

If I lose the day’s paper, there’s no great loss. If I lose my deck of cards, however…

And now I’m going to cross off two items from today’s to-dos:

[X] Post to blog [X] Mention Megan in blog post