ThinkingRock Forum

I do not have what I would call a system for my checklists.

I've heard some people use Excel, other people use project templates.

What do you use?
How do you use it?
Hard Copy or Electronic?
Are there any special tweaks that you use (for all I know excel & word have checklist functionality built in)


I find that the thinking rock community tends to contain a large handful of very useful ideas in the realm of implementing GTD into very busy, multi-faceted lives, so thanks in advance,

Malcolm, hi --

What kind of checklists are you referring to, specifically? Thinking Rock itself should be the only checklist-making app that you might need, to accomplish tasks within a GTD framework, and provides any number of reviewing/reporting facilities to support the "checklist" concept.

If you are perhaps looking for a dedicated outliner that will let you directly script tasks and task groups (like work breakdown structure in a project tool, but without all of the surrounding complexity), there are any number of apps available. Three that I have used in the past are Bonsai, ActionOutline, and myBase.

I would just caution, though: Be careful about introducing more tools than you need into your GTD trusted system. Once you start keeping your tasks in more than one tool, you risk failure. You won't remember which tool has the most recent data, or data will fall through the cracks, or you'll spend more time on app overhead, than on getting things done. Thinking Rock is an outstanding, complete GTD implementation and should be all you need.

One of my favorite quotes: "A man with a watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never quite sure."

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How many different kinds of checklists are there? I've always thought that there was only one kind of checklist.

I'm confused as to how my question was confusing.

Let me re-state my question. What do you use, and how do you integrate it into your thinking rock usage? If you use thinking rock as your checklist tool, how do you use it.

Ideally I would love to have a program that will take a list, and make a print out for me to use. For me, there is something about putting pen to paper.

I'm interested in discovering how you solve your checklist needs.

And then I'm going to experiment with the answers, and steal the one that works best for me.

Your question wasn't confusing, but perhaps my answer will be!

When I think of prepared "checklists," that I might want to print, I prepare outlines. Checklists/outlines can be:
** Unordered (e.g., a shopping list) or ordered (process steps in a 'how-to' manual)
** Simple (1-2 outline levels) or complex (3+ indented outline levels, as in a project-style work breakdown structure)
** Task-oriented (list of things needing doing) or reference-oriented (e.g., who-what-when-where-why-how in a research topic)
** An active checklist (of stuff you're doing right now) or a reusable template (process steps for something you've done in the past, and may need to do again in the future)
** Text-only, or with attachments (one or more list items may include, say, a photo, a note, or a file attachment)
** Portable (perhaps sync-able with some app on your smartphone), or not

I tend to use two tools:
** #1 tool, by far, is ThinkingRock, because it's where I put my stuff that needs to get done, and it does all of the above. Printing any of my lists (in checklist format) to paper is easy through TR's built-in reporting module.
** #2 outlining tool would be myBase, which really serves as a reference repository for all the stuff I collect (emails, files, web URLs and snippets, etc.) during research projects. Like TR, it is a capable outliner, but with a different (and probably more complicated) set of features.

Outlining is a big deal; check Google for outliner apps and you'll find a ton of them. Many more choices than with word processing.

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No, your answer was very clear.

Thanks for taking the time, and I'm really looking forward to playing with MyBase.