Tim de Jardine | Blog

Finally, after literally months of seeking I have found the best GTD (getting things done) application on the Iphone & Ipod Touch: Todo by Appigo.

Why does this app beat all other Iphone GTD applications? One word:

Integration.

Todo integrates flawlessly with Remember the Milk (RTM) and Toodeldo (what I am currently using). These are two of the most popular GTD web-based applications.

A single system is extremely powerful. You have one place for data, backed-up and synced over the air with a local copy on your IPhone.

RTM and toodledo also offer many other ways to use this system with dashboard widgets for the mac and pc along with firefox extensions and igoogle plugins.

Other GTD applications have not achieved integration with already popular products and instead chosen to try to make themselves the central hub for web-based GTD rather than leverage off proven products like RTM and toodledo.

Download your copy here.

Ideas are the new Gold.  As products, processes and resources  become more plentiful, ubiquitous and easy to create; ideas will become the new currency.  Companies will be made or broken on great ideas that can be executed into great plans.

There is a gold-rush happening.  That gold rush is the commercialization of innovation.

As more skills, specializations are either off shored or become commodities the creative economy will rise.  And I intend to be right in the middle of it.

Where will you be?

At school we were taught that there is only one way to solve a problem.  With test and essays, we had to provide an answer exactly in accordance to the teachers answer book.

If I were to ask you what is 7 and 7 equal, the only answer is 14? right?

Wrong.  I have not said what 7 is, whether its a number 7 or 7 eggs or written like “Seven” or any other definition.

The point from this silly example is that there is always more than one way to do anything.  This is a key insight to the innovation process.

What do we do when we are thinking of ideas?  We often stop thinking of new ideas once we come to one we think is right.  This is exactly the mentality as the 7 + 7 example.  

Keep going, create more ideas.  You will find miracles.

Sometimes its nice to take a break and work from somewhere different. Yesterday for a few hours I temporarily moved my office to the hills above wellington. Here I could think clearer and it gave me fresh inspiration and ideas. I highly recommend it.

Walking around Wellington, I often look at pedestrians faces to see if they are actually aware of the present moment. Are they aware of what is going on around them? Are they looking at their surroundings? observing what is happening right now? Most are not.

The majority of people I observe have blank faces. They are running images in their mind of the future, or the past. Scenarios like “what if this happens”, or “what didnt I do that”.

Living in the now provides a path to absolute clarity. Obsessing over the future (or the past) is insanity. Why? Because it is not real, its in your mind. All that is real is right now.

Seth Godin writes a timeless article on following ideas:

Walter Hunt patented the safety pin almost exactly 160 years ago.

It looks an awful lot like a fibula, which, of course, is used to hold your toga shut.

My friend Kevin has one (not a toga, a fibula). An old one. He’s very proud of it.

So, the question that Walter Hunt didn’t ask is this, “Why should I bother patenting the safety pin? It’s already been done. I mean, even John Belushi has a fibula.”

Just about everything has a strike against it. It’s either already been done or it’s never been done. Ignore both conditions. Pushing an idea through the dip of acceptance is far more valuable than inventing something that’s never existed… and then walking away from it.

There has never been a greater truth as is this:

Thoughts in your mind; ideas, thoughts, concepts, situations, scenarios, future events. They do not exist.

No-one has ever got rich off a future idea or been killed by a past thought.

These exist in your mind and they are not real. They are not real

People get rich of acting in the NOW. right now, this is the only reality.

Success is an accumulation of nows.

The constant repetitive ACTION of the moment, the reality.

What are you doing now?

Great Ideas alone don’t guarantee success. Original ideas don’t either. Success is accomplished using a combination of execution and more importantly timing. Why do I say timing? There were dozens of video sharing sites before YouTube. Dozens of web mail applications before Gmail and many social networks before MySpace and Facebook. What these successful iterations did was combine an already embraced concept and take successful elements of the old and slightly adjust and tweak the features to what users really wanted. The timing had to be right for these companies to succeed. Timing as in: features, the date, current events, market overview, morale.

Often I talk to other entrepreneurs about ideas and they are reluctant to tell me as I might “steal their ideas”. The truth is that I have too much to work on myself and am not interested in the slightest in stealing their ideas. Most likely the idea is not my passion, so therefore not worthy of me. Its an interesting psychology. Lets compare:

Form Idea: Keep it under-wraps. Start to create product: tell people. Finish product: Tell everyone

It works better like this

Form Idea: Tell Everyone. Start to create product:Keep it under-wraps Finish product: Tell everyone

The reason being is I could talk about a product but you don’t really know the details of it. There is only a slight but small danger in sharing ideas and that is being beaten to market 1/2 way through a design, when you have time and resources invested. The risk is minimal. On the bright-side, you will have someone to compare against.

Most companies have contractors. These companies ask these contractors to cover travel costs. Some of these companies are slow to pay back these costs to the contractors. There should be a way for the contractor to charge interest to get their money back on time.

Think a contractor bank/fund protection for contractors. Valuable insurance.

Do you know of any companies who refuse to deal directly with.. You? Companies that use “Middlemen” for all the wrong functions? Like Hiring Staff or Developing products? We live in a world where the acceptance of a middleman is fading. Fading fast.

Companies that cannot adopt to a new model that involves facing the consumer directly will face scandal. Being the owner of a company is a big and important responsibility. Adding insulation layers to your organisation is an important mistake that all too many companies make.

One of the most powerful concepts the web has brought us is that everyone has a voice. You have a voice, I have a voice. The kid down the street has a voice. My voice is worth as much as your voice. If companies insulate themselves from your voice, you can exercise your voice in the form of a blog, facebook group or online petition. Our voices for the first time in history matter.

So therefore; why would you use a middleman to insulate my voice from your voice?

Does your middleman change my voice?