First screenshot of my GTD project
For anyone who doesn’t already know, I am currently working on a Web application to organize my tasks, goals and quite simply make my life easier by reducing the amount of needless thinking and procrastinating I do. This is the first app I have made from scratch using Ruby on Rails (RoR), and I am really looking forward to seeing how it all works out.
So far working in Ruby has been an absolute dream. For any developers, or even designers out there, who are thinking about learning Ruby on Rails, I can’t recommend it enough. I have only been working with it for about 2 months now, but I have found it an absolute dream to work with. I am completely self taught and started off by reading Build your own Ruby on Rails web applications by Patrick Lenz, and Agile Web Development with Rails by the Pragmatic Programmers. I highly recommend both of these books, and will write up a review for each once I get a better grasp of RoR and get this project under control.
Anyway I will write more about RoR later, for now let’s get back to my web app. Currently I haven’t come up with a nice name for it, so if anyone has any ideas, please post them below. The applications goal is to help me manage day-to-day tasks; weekly, monthly and lifetime goals; and to make thinking one step easier for me. I am also going to trial out integrating a ‘meal planner’ so that I need to do even less planning everyday. I will detail each of these concepts in more detail later, but for now let’s just say that I am hoping that this will make me more productive, less stressed, and just an overall happier person.
So far all it really does is allows me to add new tasks, which I can view in a quick list, or click on an individual task to expand and see additional details such as project, date due, status, notes etc. The application will be loosely based around the Getting Things Done principle by David Allen, however I will also be trying out other organising techniques such as time blocking, to find what method works best, and most likely, create a hybrid of many organising techniques.
As you can see I am trying to keep a very simplistic design. Currently I think this is a good thing, but we will see how it goes once the app gets a bit more functionality and I start using it daily. I will try and post weekly or maybe bi-weekly posts about this project so that I stay on track. If anyone has any ideas as to how to improve this, or would like to signup for the beta, please post below or send me an email. I will add more details on this project in the projects section when I get a chance, but until then, just keep reading this blog to stay up to date.
Thanks for the support everyone!!!
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