Getting Things in Order

Making another attempt to get my everything organized this weekend:

• Starting to use Remember The Milk for my to-do list again. I was using this lovely service for a while before getting into OmniFocus back at Dundas... They've got a BB10 app (presumably just a repackage of their Android app) which is nice, but I'm not willing to pay $25 a year (yikes!) for "Pro". Maybe I'll find another to-do/task/GTD app for mobile that lets me sync with desktop or web...


• Checking out You Need A Budget... it comes highly recommended, and I'd really like to automate our budget. Lynette handles it (I can't be trusted to remember to pay bills on time, d'oh), but spends way too much time/effort. I've never found a computery method that she liked though... None of the free budgeting tools let you enter a recurring paycheque every two weeks, which seems like a serious oversight.


• Also trying out Zoundry's Raven for the first time. Seems to do a nice job of letting me write this blog post and get it posted.

Finally starting to get used to typing on the wacky Canadian Bi-Lingual keyboard on my new laptop; I'd still rather replace it with a standard US English keyboard, but Lenovo and IBM can't seem to figure out how to sell me one. Sure I could eBay a German one, but that would probably be even more of a challenge...

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Mind mapping

I started messing with MindNode last night, doing some Marooned! brainstorming and planning; it was pretty useful, I think, and definitely works well when you're throwing down ideas as fast as possible without necessarily aiming them all in the same direction.

Here's the start of my Marooned! map in MindNode:

MindNode lets you export/import FreeMind files as well, so I grabbed it to compare. It's a Java app (ugh), but it's got a lot of additional features, and will auto-fit your items, automatically adjusting the map so nothing is overlapping. If MindNode does that, it's limited to the Pro version.

Here's the same map in FreeMind:

As much as I hate Java apps (non-native UI! klunky widgets! the horror!), I'm going to give FreeNode a fair shake. If actually using it feels fairly fluid and straight-forward, I'll go that direction. It's certainly got more features (attach icons to nodes, for example) beyond even what MindNode Pro offers.

Choosing a Java app over a similar native app is a big step for me. Maybe one day I'll overcome my Java prejudices in the name of productivity. Eclipse is the only other Java app I don't mind using…