The Hit List, or How I Raised Myself From Failure To Success In List Management
When I was a kid, I wanted to use a DayRunner just like my dad, mom, and the other adults I knew. I blocked off whole days like this in scribbly 10-year-old pencil:
[lunch]
[SCHOOL]
[dinner]
[um .. COMPUTER]
Sometimes I would go so far as to try to vaguely plan tomorrow. “Mom, are we going to the grocery store tomorrow?” Yes. “What time?” Um .. I don’t know yet.
It proved difficult to prepare on paper for a predictably bland future, and no-one was much help in coming up with things to for me to do. Except, you know, like chores and junk. Bo-ring.
When I was a teenager and got my first job, I followed my dad in graduating to a checkbook-sized DayTimer, with my initials etched in a little brass plate on the leather front. I mostly used it to keep a log of the hours I worked, which did not exactly justify the $50/year or whatever it was for calendar inserts. (And, honestly, I was always rather frustrated at actually having to write things down on every page. Where was the copy-and-paste?) So I gave up and kept my hours in VoodooPad (which was new at the time), and my erstwhile to-do list in a text file.
Meanwhile, I became an adult, and here-and-there acquired some responsibilities.
Fast-forward a few years. I’d been a fan of Merlin Mann (who has since thrown off his mantle of Productivity Prophet) for a bit, and he was now talking about something called GTD. What was that? He kept talking about these index cards, and this David Allen fellow, and it sounded to this kid like the organizational Magic Bullet.
But I could never wrap my head around it. I bought the book, but (quite ironically) never got around to actually reading it. I watched as people fawned over Things, OmniFocus, KinklessGTD, TaskPaper, etc., and wondered how somebody could actually use one of these things without a secondary Personal Productivity System, just to teach them how to use the first one.
That-was-then. This-is-now.
I may have mentioned I’ve recently become an adult. Turns out those predictable days of schoolwork and leisure only last so long; before I noticed them waving and walking away, my job(s), family, responsibilities, and some other things that I Shouldn’t Have To Deal With In A Civilized Society were jumping up and down in front of me and saying HEY WHAT ABOUT MEEE DON’T FORGET! and, frankly, whipping me into a constant state of mild panic.
Occasionally I would think, “Boy, I wish I could write all this stuff down somewhere so I don’t forget any of it.”
Well, I’m glad you asked.
Today I discovered — what I think — is the One True GTD App. At least it is for me: The Hit List, currently in “Public Preview”, soon to be published by Potion Factory (wonderful name!).
It’s like a glorified legal tablet. But it’s also like iTunes. And it has Tabbed Browsing. And /tagging, and @contexts, and a system-wide, QuickSilver-like task creator (with hot-key), so that when something hits your brain, you can type it in quickly and get back to real work.
I love the user interface. It’s colorful and easy-to-use, and makes julienne fries. It just makes sense .. but what’s more, it gets out of my way and lets me work with my to-do list just the way I’d expect it to.
According to the developer, it will be $69.95 upon final release ($49.95 pre-order). I’ll be taking some time to see if The Hit List fits into my workflow, but so far it looks like I’ll be buying a copy very shortly.