Actiontastic vs. iGTD
When I first read David Allen’s book Getting Things Done, the only good OS X GTD application available was kGTD. Unfortunately, its near perfect interpretation of GTD’s methodology came with a quirky interface because kGTD is a set of (brilliant) Applescripts that work with OmniOutliner Pro, not a self contained application. But lately cocoa GTD apps have been coming out left and right, and I thought it was about time I’d give some of them a try. After researching online for a while, I narrowed it down to 2 free popular options: iGTD and Actiontastic.
Both iGTD and Actiontastic are easy to use, stable, free, and they both share a very similar feature set. But after spending some time this morning testing both applications, I can confidently recommend Actiontastic as a better choice. Why? In a nutshell: Actiontastic’s developer has a better understanding of GTD methodology.
At last, kGTD’s successor has arrived…
GTD revolves around a precise methodology to process you stuff: you define projects, divide them into actions which are then assigned to specific contexts. But before you can do that, you need to collect your stuff. Collection is the first step, a very important step. Actiontastic reflects the Actions/Projects/Contexts paradigm in its UI very well. It even simplifies it one step further by merging what could have been a superfluous “actions” section with the “Inbox” section. A very smart move in my opinion. On the other hand, iGTD does not allocate a main section of its UI to the Inbox but instead represents it as a context in its “Context” panel. I can see the logic behind it from a programmatic perspective, but from a GTD point of view, the only way you could include the Inbox itself into the process would be with a convoluted and paradoxical setup like “empty Inbox” as an action with a “@home” or similar context. The Inbox is a container, it shouldn’t be contained by anything, and it shouldn’t be included as a context.
Then we have those 2 arbitrary pending/Completed main sections in iGTD which are not part of GTD system…
Other great UI features in Actiontastic are the “Next Action” filter in the “Context” view so that you can see all the next actions for each project you have going on, and the “Current” filter so that you can hide anything that has a “start date” in the future. On the other hand iGTD has a “live search” feature similar to Mail.app or the Finder… This again shows that iGTD developer does not really understand GTD. Nobody actually needs to search for a specific action in GTD. You just select the correct context and start completing actions one after the other either by priority, energy level, or time available (3 criteria I would love to see added to Actiontastic…).
I should point out that I don’t have anything against iGTD. I think it’s a promising application and wish all the best to the developer. But I think Actiontastic is the best GTD app out there right now (and will remain a great free alternative to OmniFocus when it comes out) and I hope to help people who are just getting started with GTD to make an educated choice on what software to use.
They’re numerous other great things about Actiontastic, such as the ability to add new tasks to your inbox via email, a very useful “Process Inbox” window that lets you create new projects and contexts on the fly (this feature is hard to notice without reading the documentation though, a visual cue would be a welcome addition), great Quicksilver support, integration with MailTags, an upcoming web app that will sync with Actiontastic…
kGTD has served me well, but I’m switching to Actiontastic today.
And in conclusion, here’s my wish list for the 1.0 version:
- Added “effort,” “time,” and “priority” filters to actions, similar to the current “Next Action” but with the ability to select any of the filters simultaneously.
- Drag + drop of files in the URL part of the “Details” drawer (It almost works already: if you drag a file in the text window, you get the file’s path, and if you add
file:///manually to that path in the “URL” input field, you can already link to.txtfiles, not all file types work though). - Added visual cues to actions when a link, or a note, is attached.
- Have “Due Date” and “Start Date” in the list view, be able to customize what columns to show like in Finder/iTunes, etc… (by control+clicking on the headers), and have the columns sortable.
- Better Synchronization of actions’ status with handheld devices (this feature is clearly planned since you can already see grayed out place holders in the preferences).
update: I got feedback from the developer who told me all those requests are in line with his vision of Actiontastic’s future…
Comments on this article
actiontastic without the PRIORITY COLUMN is quite useless..
baldo, on 2007.04.03
Thanks for the concise information. I just downloaded both, and, from an aesthetic perspective, iGTD was more eye-pleasing. But functionality and understanding of the GTD methodology are more important. This was just what I was looking for.
Joshua Albrechtsen, on 2007.04.06
I have to disagree with your discussion. One of the biggest problems with Actiontastic is that you see either the whole list of actions, or just one (at least in the version I tried – perhaps that got fixed). In my line of work, there’s never just ONE next action. You have creativity. Without creativity, you’re hosed, and iGTD lets me do that.
As to using search, I have to disagree. I use some odd markups in my tasks (remnants of UNIX days past, decades ago), and searching across those markups lets me add more dimensions to my project management. It’s pretty damn useful, actually. Actiontastic was horribly limited, in comparison, and was not a trusted system at all. And that, beyond any personal choice, is what matters in the GTD world. Find your own trusted system and max it out.
michael, on 2007.04.08
@michael: I’m not sure I understand what you mean… By definition, there can only be one “next action” per project. Actiontastic allows you to view either all your actions or all your “next actions” per context. Which other option would you like available?
Regarding the search feature, your “odd markup” sounds intriguing and I’d be curious to hear more about it, but the need for a search feature in this type of application means you’re using it for both processing your stuff and archiving some of your reference material. Nothing wrong with that if it works for you, but I personally prefer to centralize all my reference material in specialized applications such as Yojimbo and DEVONthink.
Yann, on 2007.04.09
Yann, I’m not sure that there is just one NA. By definition, a next action is just something that can be done now (no dependencies). Projects aren’t all linear. What if I have three people to call, or two to call and two to e-mail, and I can do them in any order?
I would tend to agree, that would be make Actiontastic a no-go for me. Of course, I like ThinkingRock too … although the Mac loveliness of iGTD is quite nice.
Jaclyn, on 2007.04.09
@Jaclyn: if you have have 3 phone calls to make, then your “next action” is one of those phone calls, unless you can make 3 phone calls simultaneously… Wether or not you can make those calls in any order doesn’t change the fact that you have to make them one after the other.
And to answer your question: Actiontastic’s “next action” filter is there if you want it, you don’t have to use it. So if you have time for phone calls, just select your @call context and the “ToDo” filter instead of the “Next Action” filter and you’ll get a list of the calls you need to make, which I believe is the functionality you’re looking for.
Yann, on 2007.04.09
Interesting discussion, and an Actiontastic vs. iGTD faceoff was just what I was looking for.
I’m inclined to agree that there are “actions” and then there are “NEXT actions,” and there’s only one of the latter for a given project. I don’t actually recall what David Allen has to say about this, but embedding the decision of what has to happen next right into the action is an important part of the system’s functionality for me.
I don’t want or need a particularly elaborate trusted system, and so Actiontastic appealed to me more than any of the other systems I’d seen: visually simple, almost no learning/set-up time, and few extraneous features were all just what I wanted.
And yet, out of curiosity, I downloaded iGTD to try it out, and found myself getting set up in it faster and more enthusiastically than I had in Actiontastic… and I’m not sure why. It may simply be that the color and complexity that the iGTD UI has over Actiontastic is pleasantly stimulating. I think that’s okay; increased pleasure of use = increased likelihood of use = more seamless system. But in theory, anyway, I really like the aesthetic severity of Actiontastic’s UI. So I dunno. The only actual feature that I like in iGTD that Actiontastic lacks is the calendar right in the panel and the ease of integration with iCal.
I guess for now I’ll keep playing with both, and which ever one I don’t get tired of is a better match for me.
piminnowcheez, on 2007.04.11
I think it’s very much horses for courses. IMO you’ve definitely picked the two best GTD apps out there. They both have their pluses and minuses and it’s up to each individual to decide which way works best for them.
Personally, after trying out Actiontastic, kGTD and iGTD I settled on iGTD. It was the one that just worked, and although it doesn’t implement a ‘perfect’ GTD approach, it seems to work for me.
I should mention that I’m rarely in front on my Mac, and so I rely on syncing everything with my Windows Mobile phone. That means I need an app that does a good job of helping me sort things into contexts and is a pleasure to use at review times. iGTD does that.
You have rekindled my interest in Actiontastic though, and it has been a while since I last looked at it so i may need to give it another spin :-)
Barry, on 2007.04.18
I totally agree that Actiontastic is better than iGTD for the same reasons as the author. iGTD is borderline unusable to me because it can’t show you ONLY the next actions on your projects – you have to see all of your next actions, which flies in the face of GTD. Unless the authors have fixed that.
One thing I hate but understand about Actiontastic is the Inbox. I understand its purpose for novice users and it will make an excellent training tool, but as a GTD user I find it useless and dislike the fact that the program defaults to it when it opens. When I go to type something into Actiontastic, I don’t need/want the program holding my hand – I want to go straight to the project or context list and just type the item in. I don’t see the point in the extra step of putting it in the inbox and then having to decide where it goes… I already know where it goes.
Richard MacLemale, on 2007.05.20
Actually, if you look in the GTD book, you will see that David Allen says you need to progress a project’s tendrils as far as necessary so that you have a next action defined for each tendril it has. His example was you could be arranging speakers for an event while also attempting to finalise the location of said event.
Jon Ballinger, on 2007.05.23
@Richard:
I agree that Actiontastic is the program most true to GTD. I think you should give the Inbox another look though; haven’t there been times when you get a lot of input that you don’t have time to think through but you need to get it off your mind or the paper it’s written on or the voicemail/email it’s in? That’s what the Actiontastic Inbox is for. As Yann mentioned, you can even email actions into the AT inbox (I haven’t tried that yet, but it sounds great.) It would be nice though to be able to set a preference for AT to open to exactly what you want to see first.
Which brings me to my difficulty with AT: lack of updates! It’s hard to complain about a free program but I’d feel a lot better (and be willing to pay) if I knew there was a future for Actiontastic.
Maurice Williams, on 2007.05.27
Thanks for your comparison. I’ve just finished reading GTD, and came here thru your comment on 43 Folders.
I like the simplicity of Actiontastic’s GUI. The coloring in iGTD is distracting to me. Not that color is bad per se. Just the palette is a bit off for me.
I agree that it’s crucial to be able to just see Next Actions at a moment. I was slightly confused about Actiontastic’s handling of showing only Next Actions, though. I had expected it to show me “all project actions, for each context, that are closest to the top of the project action list”, but it’s actually “all project actions, for each context, at the VERY TOP of the project action list”. The 2 methods return diff results. While what Actiontastic does might be closer to the original GTD specs, I think what I was expecting could be helpful too. (It depends on whether your Next Action might be changed based on context.)
Re: lack of being able to just see Next Actions in iGTD, a workaround is to use the flags. In iGTD, actions cannot be reordered in a list, and your Next Action is the item in the current list that you entered at the earliest time. (A huge weakness.) For now, you could flag one of the actions that you consider to be Next Action – not a big deal. Then, in the “To complete” view, you can choose Flagged Only, and see only the Next Actions. (You might have to refresh the view by toggling Flagged Only – the refresh is not automatic – another weakness.)
James, on 2007.05.31
Just a quick thanks for the review; I’m evaluating both of them side by side and am slowly coming to the same conclusion (that Actiontastic’s a little better for how I think of GTD).
Lyle Johnson, on 2007.06.22