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Jello.Dashboard - a GTD dashboard for Outlook
I'm not sure how this one has flown under the radar for so long! There's a Getting Things Done solution that I wasn't aware of until just recently, and having taken the time to implement it I have only one thing to say: I'm in love! Outlook has had the ability to use alternative "dashboards" (basically just web pages encoded to work with Outlook data) since Outlook 97 - that's a full ten years ago. And in that time, although I've tried many, none of them ended up being simple yet useful enough to continue using. In fact, for years I've considered the dashboard functionality in Outlook to hold huge unused potential. I think that potential is finally being used.
Jello.Dashboard is a relatively simple interface that allows you to quickly and easily view and manage your tasks (and in fact all Outlook elements, but I prefer to use it for tasks) in a very GTD-centric manner, assigning Context and Project categories to each item. It also has a special category called Next Actions which allows you to maintain what is effectively a sub-list of your tasks, so you can focus on what is truly important right now in your day.
Once you have set up your context and project categories, you can continue to use Outlook as normal and check back in with the dashboard interface as little or as often as you find necessary. Since it's based on built-in fields in Outlook, you can take your task lists with you on any portable device that synchronizes with Outlook. When you come back and resynchronize your device after making changes all of your contexts and projects in Jello.Dashboard will reflect any changes you made on the portable device.
It took me less than an hour to massage my task lists sufficiently to make them work with Jello.Dashboard, and already I feel like I have a better handle on things. It's free, and it works with any version of Outlook since Outlook XP (I'm using it in Outlook 2007).
