You may be familiar with the concept of Getting Things Done, a method of organizing tasks and information to increase personal productivity. While there are many tools available for implementing this technique, one of the better ones I’ve seen is GTD-Free. One of the great things about GTD-Free is that you don’t need to be an expert in the GTD methodology to use it. Simple and efficient, it gets out of your way and lets you focus on the task at hand instead of the tool.

GTD-Free offers the following features:

– cross-platform installation (requires Java 1.6)

– able to run from a USB stick

– data is stored locally

– easy to use interface

– user editable lists with categories for next actions, maybe/someday actions and reference material

– actions organized also by projects, reminder dates and priority

– printing, export of data to PDF, HTML, XML documents

After an initial look at GTD-Free, I decided to give it a try. I’m finding it very useful in keeping myself organized and on track with both personal and professional projects. It’s not difficult to update the status of a task, or enter in comments or new tasks. You can categorize your projects as needed, and you can easily prioritize and assign due dates. I also liked having the “maybe/someday” actions for those things I will work on when I have some free time (maybe by 2015 or so). Being able to focus on the immediate tasks in front of me, instead of feeling overwhelmed with a long to-do list is quite helpful. I suspect I’ll be using GTD-Free for a while.

GTD-Free has been featured on numerous sites, including LifeHacker, NetworkWorld, PCAdvisor, and was also noted as one of the 10 Young Open Source Projects to Watch.

This fully functional, free and open source project is of great help to any business or individual looking to increase their productivity. This project is currently being maintained and developed by Ike San, and I had the pleasure of speaking with him about the project.

Ike tells me that he was “not satisfied with available GTD based tools” so he started to write his own, as is the case with many open source projects started just to scratch our own itch. Ike goes on to say, “Plus I had knowledge, time to do it. And the most important, a clear vision how my tool should look and feel.” Ike had already had some experience with SourceForge hosting, so he chose to host with us again.

The biggest struggle for him has been the lack of free time to dedicate to GTD-Free development. “Having family with kids does not allow you much time,” Ike says. “There is no quick fix for this. You just manage carefully your free time.” I think this is a challenge faced by any of us who work in open source. Free time is definitely a hot commodity.

Ike offers these words of advice to open source projects just starting out: “Plan big, but do it in small steps. This means release early and often.” He goes on to say, “You should offer something useful to your audience in early stages and get some feedback. Early positive feedback was important to me, it kept me motivated.”

There are lots of requests for new features from users, and Ike plans to continue development by tackling these one at a time. Eventually, he would love a sponsor which would allow him to spend his time exclusively working on GTD-Free, but for now that is only a wish.

If you would like to help contribute to GTD-Free, Ike can use your help testing and reporting bugs, adding feature requests, translating documentation, or you can offer a monetary donation. The details can be found on GTD-Free’s Getting Involved Page.