I found that being organized, to any degree, is a boon to productivity. Well, Duh you say. My little operation has enough moving parts now that things were starting to fall between the cracks. The repository configuration dialog is a big example of what I am talking about.

I've been hearing a lot about Getting Things Done (GTD). The biggest meme out of the whole GTD movement, is basically to know what needs to be done and quantify it. Once it becomes an entity on a medium, be it paper, or electrons, then it gets pulled from the metaverse into meatspace. This now makes it possible to wrestle with it. It is tangible. It has substance. It can be dealt with.

There are quite a few software systems that do GTD, some specificly geared with GTD in mind, other more like glorified todo lists. It's not really important what you choose, as the effectiveness of the system for YOU. I've tried several programs but none seem to do what I need. Part of the problem is that I'm very short in funds, and couldn't try some of the commercial ones. I ended up using different programs for different contexts. At my day job I use one of my whiteboards, and when the relationships between items get too complex and too many details to keep track I use ToDoList from AbastractSpoon Software. I use Axosoft OnTime for anything related to SystemWidgets. It is great that they have a free one person license. The only thing that really annoys me with OnTime is that it lacks integration with DotNetNuke. But, I can live with that. I will just have to make DNN modules myself.

I had lost access to my previous installation of OnTime when my workstation kick the bucket. I didn't realize how much of a difference it made on my planning and day to day code work. Not only that, but I saw that I still need to do several things related to ecommerce that I had forgotten about. These systems, no matter what you pick, is like having your own personal secretary.