Getting Things Done with Tracks

I've been using an OmniOutliner document to track tasks and hopefully prevent things from slipping through the cracks. It works quite well, especially when combined with kGTD to help prioritize and filter tasks as they start to pile up, but it's limited to a file on one computer. So, I can't easily add stuff from my Powerbook at home. And I can't access it when I'm not sitting in front of my G5. Sure, I can sync the file, and export it to the web, and print it, and sync it to my iPod, and to iCal, etc… but that's a pain, and not bulletproof.

I was doing some Googling for other "getting things done" packages, and found a reference to Tracks. It's a Ruby on Rails app that provides the streamlined context/project interface on top of a plain to-do list. So, I threw a copy of it on my Dreamhost server (it's got all of these bells and whistles just sitting idle, which would be a shame). It Just Worked�. I had to refer to the Dreamhost wiki to see how to best set up a Rails app to be served by Apache, but that was pretty darned easy.

The hardest part of the whole install was figuring htf to create an account – open the "signup" url, and you're good to go.

Performance is a bit lacking, but the entire network is feeling slowish today. It's not fatally slow, anyway. I've added in most of my current projects, and it's already helped me to see at a glance what's the most important set of tasks to be working on.

And it's the first non-Drupal tool I've installed in a while, which is a welcome change