Getting Things Done with Ecco

Oct 4, 2004 · 4 minute read

Inspired by Merlin Mann’s amazing 43 folders, I’ve recently become more and more obsessed with Getting Things Done. This is at least partly due to the fact that circumstances have changed, leaving me with an increased workload and the increased possibility of spreading myself too thin. Using the basic principles of Getting Things Done (or at least, the ones I can pick up from around the place, because it’s absolutely impossible to get my hands on this book in Dublin), I’ve managed to ensure that I’m consistently more productive. And even times when I’m not so productive, I’m still completely focused on what needs to be done.

To this end, I’ve found some pieces of software very useful. First is the Vim Outliner (nice, but too basic for my needs - I feel as if I’m wasting a small-but-significant amount of time wrestling with the software), then there’s TomBoy (will be an indispensible piece of software (especially now that it’s been hooked into Gnome’s new finder-lite), but is still too early a release to be useful for me), and now finally, Ecco.

I read about Ecco on various posts about Getting Things Done. People were saying that they still can’t live without it, despite the fact that it hasn’t been updated in enough years for it to fall into the “ancient history” category, in internet-years. I downloaded it and gave it a go, and found that it almost perfectly suited my needs.

It manages to present the things I like about the Vim Outliner (the ability to “outline” my goals, obviously) in an well-structured way. You can easily throw a goal together, give it a “todo” date (which combines with its built-in calendar to give you a quick overview of your day’s tasks) and easily mark things as done. Once something has been marked as done, it then moves into your “completed tasks” tab, so you can take it out of your TODO list.

It could almost be the perfect piece of software for my needs.

Almost.

My setup here is strange. My primary workstation is a Debian Linux machine, but since a large part of my job includes supporting Windows clients, I also have a Windows 2000 machine on my desk. I have a monitor for each, and thanks to Synergy, I can control both using one keyboard (stolen from an old iMac, because I love the action of the keys) and mouse (a Logitech optical mouse). And this causes problems with Ecc

Because Ecco is quite old, and isn’t quite optimised for today’s operating systems (and kick-ass TCP keyboard/mouse controllers), it barfs every so often. When I give it a date for the TODO, the mouse and keyboard go unresponsive for a couple of seconds. When I click somewhere I shouldn’t, same deal. It’s like Ecco prevents my Windows machine from accessing the network while it’s performing some task. And perhaps that’s the problem - a misconfiguration somewhere that’s causing Ecco to try and access a network share or something.. I’ll try to look into it.

For now, it’s a nasty problem that’s driving me away from Ecco.

Today, as a last resort (and maybe some over-optimism), I tried running Ecco on Linux using Wine. It went well, despite missing some of the features I liked about Ecco on Windows (like the ability to pull in highlighted text from any application), and I would have been happy to live with it, if it hadn’t been for the fact that Ecco crashes each time I try to access the address book in Linux. Since my Inbox is my address book, I rarely use this feature. It’s just knowing that simply clicking on that link would be enough to crash the application I’d rely on most.

Like Chinese Water Torture, it’s enough to drive a man insane.

If you want to try out Ecco, it’s available for free download from compusol