More on Tracks – Task Management the GTD Way

What follows are a few thoughts on Tracks, a tool I’m currently experimenting with for task management. I first wrote about it last week and have been using it since then pretty much full time. So far, I really like it and thought I’d take a few moments to jot some thoughts down.

First off, if you haven’t been brainwashed converted to the “Getting Things Done” way of doing things, this probably isn’t all that exciting of an application. However, it still may be worth a look — just set a default context and run with it.

Secondly, it’s bug-ugly in IE. Seriously. Ugh. Looks good in Firefox and Opera (in spite of some interesting validation issues) but IE7 just gets goofy. A bit of a pity, but not a complete show-stopper, just a pain as I bounce around between browsers a lot lately.

Thirdly, the forums are great. Not a ton of activity there, but my little call for help got a response within a matter of 15 minutes! Woah. And from that little call for help, I learned that Notes in Tracks can be formatted either with Markdown or Textile. Sweet, and very helpful to know. If I was a responsible user, I’d head over to the wiki and add that info. Does it count that I have good intentions? Wait! If I was truly smart, I’d be adding a “Next Action” to tracks about that right now.

I regret to admit that I didn’t keep useful notes as I installed it at my web host. I ran into some wrinkles, but it really didn’t take more than 15 minutes to get it up and going. Most of that 15 minutes was figuring out how to get the fast CGI stuff working. As this is the very first Ruby on Rails app I’ve ever installed, I figure I did ok… And now I can get to it from anywhere. Without fCGI it was painfully slow. If you install it yourself, you definitely want to be in fast mode.

Usability rocks. The interface makes it dead simple to figure out how to accomplish stuff. There’s really no training or reading necessary to quickly get up to speed. I love being able to easily flip between viewing my tasks by context and by project.

Long term, I’d love to see some interactive multi-user features. For instance, the ability to “assign” or send tasks to another user would be really useful with my small team. There are some interesting discussions in the forums along those lines, so it will be interesting to see if anything shakes out long term.

Conclusion? So far I’m loving it. I plan to continue using it full time for a while longer.

Possibly Related posts:

1. Tracks – Another GTD Tool
2. Task and Note Management – and a glance at Zoho Planner
3. Another run at Task Management – Wallnote
4. More Task Management
5. Task Management – Part III