GTD Getting things done.... Collecting thoughts

Each thought has the following attributes

1. Task title and details
   
2. Project: The project to which this thought belongs.
3. Context: Where should I be/ What should I be doing in order to do this task.
4. Owner: Who should be doing this task
5. Deadline: By when should this be done.
6. Captured On: When was this item captured.

Currently I am capturing my thoughts using launchy. Any global hotkey based text capturing tool should do. for e.g. with launchy I hit ALT+Space and capture the highlighted text in the popup window.
This line captures most of the items listed above

1. Task title: Setup lunch with publisher
   
2. Project: default. I could have also written this as book:me to indicate the project name (book)
   
3. Context: @phone
4. Owner: me
5. Deadline: wednesday
6. Captured On: done by the backend script when I press enter.

This is good for informal captures. For a formal capture a spreadsheet or a plain text file may be better. as long as we maintain the format of
:person,task details @context time
we can capture any thought in this system.
Inthe next post we will discuss the next step of classification

getting things done... My experiments with David Allens GTD system

I have experimented with various systems to keep track of my Action Items/Schedules and TODO Lists below are the things I have experimented till date.

Things I have been using

1. freemind: Mind mapping tool
   
2. monkey gtd +prism:
   
3. taskjuggler
4. ganttproject
5. taglog

My understanding of the GTD system.

1. Collect: Collect thoughts This could be either
   
   1. Planned: Where I spend a pre allocated time to jot down my thoughts. For example spending an hour today to make a list of what I should do before going on a holiday. For Planned collection of thoughts freemind is the best tool.
   
   
   2. Unplanned: You are working on something and suddenly remember that you need to get a new pair of socks for that trip. for unplanned thought collection it is a mix of what is handy when the thought occurs... I have tried paper and monkey GTD and am finally moving to a mix of launchy and perl scripts
   
   


2. Classify: Here the captured thought's are moved into either Action Items or filed for reference. This has to be a planned event so a job for either freemind or monkey GTD
   
   Action Items can be classified into multiple categories
   
   1. based on duration: Short term (Less than a day), mid term ( a day or two), Long term (weeks/months/Years)
   2. Based on priority: urgent important, urgent not important, important not urgent, not urgent not important
   3. Based on who should do it: me, delegate
      
   
   
3. Track: Traking requires regular review of the action items and can take the form of todo list or capturing the activities done per day.
   

The problem I am facing is that there is no unified GTD system I can use while working. Let use see what a few perl scripts can do about it