So Chris Metcalf released his changes to PhpWiki as GtdWiki. I was interested to see this not only from the standpoint of my own gtd system, but also for the purposes of a gtd system for Drupal.

Some of the more interesting parts of Chris’s system:

• His context lists are just wiki pages that are embedded in the homepage through a “Embed Page” PhpWiki plugin. I’ve modified that a bit, creating a ContextLists page that has the context pages embedded in it, then embedding that page in the homepage. But there isn’t any real magic that the program does. All the contexts are listed (no “where am i now” kind of thing, and no embedding of one context in another, except what can be done with the embed page plugin.
• the nice CalendarPlugin is also on the homepage, showing this month and next month, as well as the upcoming events. There is no scheduling or recurrence that is done programmatically, however.
• There are some other excellent ideas that he’s put on the homepage, like lists and reference materials.

Overall, it’s an optimal digital representation of an analog gtd system.

However, I’m not sure it’s for me.

What I need from a gtd system is a little digital (read: programmatic) help. As i’ve outlined before, I need help doing weekly reviews and quickly entering new tasks without metadata, and I want a list of what I can/should do next be presented to me. A digital representation of an analog system is very intriguing and I will definitely take parts of it with me into my implementation.

An interesting proposition on the 43folders list this week was the possibility of someone modifying project.module with gtd in mind. It’s nice to see Drupal make an appearance in the 43folders realm, but, right now, I am unsure that a fork or a patch to project.module is such a good idea. Why? Clicks. I hate clicks. And Drupal, particularly project.module, is click-happy.

But, having said that, it’s very intriguing to use Drupal as a basis for gtd. With my freelinking module, creating nodes and linking to existing nodes is easy. Blocks for context lists might be interesting. Tasks as nodes could make metadata interesting, combined with the CCK. But I keep coming back to the major itch-scratching: using text files for speed of input. Drupal can’t match this. It will be interesting to see, and I’ll be glad to help where I can.