00/10/02 - Progect vs Shadow(Printing? Click here.) I've spent a lot to time looking at PalmOS outliners. When I first got my PalmPilot Professional, I did a lot of writing in Memo Pad (this was before QED, the first widely available Doc editor). Even then I found myself looking for a better way to organize long works into managable chunks. I tried everything I could find, ending up, at one time or another, registering BrainForest, Arranger, Hi-Note, ListMaker... I switched from one to another over and over, looking for Outlining Nirvana. This is odd, as in school I hated outlining. In January 2000, I wrote a column called "Planning for Success". You may have read it; it's far and away my most popular column. I meant it as a way for fellow writers to use the Palm and Stephen Covey's methods to better focus their time. I never meant to become a planning guru, but that's what I became. Now a good outliner was even more important, not just for outlining the complexities of a book, but for outlining and organizing the greater complexities of a life. I settled on Arranger, as it was the PalmOS outliner with the greatest degree of integration with the other PalmOS time management tools. Now a new crop of outliners has hit the Palm scene, two up and coming programs that offer new perspectives on an old task. But how do they stack up against the old guard, or each other? ProgectThis is probably the nicest outliner I've yet seen for project planning, and you can't beat the price (free, released under GPL). Progect combines some of the best features of Arranger, Brainforest and LifeBalance into a singe, intuitive package. One of my favorite features, and the reason I tend to think of Progect as "Brainforest Light," is that you can designate an entry as an action item or not. If it's an action item, it gets a simple checkbox. If it's not, it gets a Brainforest-style progress indicator bar, which slowly fills in as more and more of the item is completed. Moreover, if the item is a parent task, its progress indicator is the average of those of its child tasks. Very slick, and a great way of keeping tabs on the Big Picture. Another great feature is ToDo Linking. In the properties dialog for each item is a checkbox that allows you link that item to a todo. Like it isn't a direct link a la Arranger, the Progect task and the PalmOS ToDo mirror each other, and if you check off the ToDo in DateBk4 the corresponding task is checked off in Progect the next time you open Progect. Again, very slick. Lastly, Progect includes a LifeBalancesque Flat View that shows just active tasks that have no children. From this screen (which is highly configurable via filtering), you can quickly and easily decide which tasks should be linked to ToDos and toggle that link with a single tap. Okay, so how does it work? Great. If I ever decide to move back to the Palm from the PocketPC, Progect will be my outliner of choice. It's not very good for writing outlines, but it's not designed for that. For project (or life) management, Progect works great in conjunction with the built-in Palm apps (or replacements like DateBk4, Action Names, etc.) to organize and manage what needs to be done. I'd suggest creating top level items for your values, then roles under that, then goals under roles. Under each goal, break it down into component steps, then go into Flat Mode to link individual steps to PalmOS ToDos that will show up in DateBk4. It's clean, efficient and like I said, you can't beat the price. Progect is a rising star in PalmOS outliners, and it's simple enough to use that Palm would do well to think about buying it and integrating it into the suite of built in apps. ShadowI wish I could gush over Shadow like I did over Progect, but I can't. Shadow shows a lot of promise, but it's a program obviously still in development. It has a nice autonumbering feature, and averaging progress bars a la Progect and Brainforest. However, I found the interface confusing (there is a "File Link" pull-down in the item properties, but it's not at all clear that this links to other Shadow outlines) and while it supports multiple list types (checklist, tasklist and note), there seems to be little or no evidence that these are actually different, or that there's any particular advantage to choosing one over the others. In all fairness, Shadow is a work in progress, and the developer has shown remarkable openness on Usenet to suggestions. I have no doubt Shadow will get better, but for now, I'd have to to give the nod to Progect for planning and Hi-Note for writing-related outlining. |