I’ve got into a bit of a bind finding the “ideal” software for managing my “Getting Things Done” action lists. I really like Next Action, but some of its issues have turned into major show stoppers. It has two problems that have ruled it out from being my software of choice:

1. It doesn’t have a built in Save function, or an autosave function. This makes it a right pain whenever you change anything.


2. If the browser goes to another page, for example if you click on a link in an email, then you lose the changes since you last saved. ARGHHHH.

I couldn’t stand having to press CTRL-S, enter, enter, enter every time I changed something in case I accidently navigated away from the application.

So, the hunt recommenced. I found My life organized. Quite nice commercial software, but over featured with extra key presses to do the simple things I needed. It felt a little clunky which put me off putting simple things into it, and the looming end of the trial period with the associated $60 bill further discouraged me from getting too into it.

So, back to the free/cheaper options. Eventually, I stumbled across Tracks, which is a web based solution. Cons – you need a web server and you need to be prepared to jump through hoops installing a shed load of bit of Ruby, Ruby on Rails, MySQL integration stuff, etc. It certainly is not a typical end-user installation process. The program isn’t as neat as Next Action, and can be a little clunky – nowhere near as bad as MLO – but the basic need, a trusted system, it fulfills, unlike Next Action.

Despite having a version number of 1.03, implying a degree of maturity, it is still very much in development and it shows in places.

As a computer geek, though, these negatives don’t phase me and the normal workflow is a good fit for my needs (at the moment).

I am going to stick with this as I can’t really afford to keep hunting around – if Next Action sort out the basic problems then I may go back to it, but Tracks is a reasonably rounded (and free) alternative which has the massive advantage of security of data.