Today’s post is from Mike St. Pierre of The Daily Saint.

When I was first introduced to GTD some five years ago, I was immediately drawn to David Allen’s appreciation of “the right tool”.  It was as if someone out there was as quirky as me, caring about such little things as the kind of pencil you used or the way in which you organized your PDA.  Amazing!

Since then, I’ve been mindful of a number of good articles on GTD-related tools.  These include:

• 5 Simple and Effective GTD Tools
• List of GTD Tools
• Top 5 GTD Computer Tools

I recently discovered a phenomenon called “tool boredom” and you’ll probably know what I’m talking about.  Your cell phone was so cool and then you saw the new iPhone 3G ad on TV.  As a result, your tool looks tired and so ordinary.  Yet, you can’t just jump ship and go out and sign up for another cellular carrier’s two year contract.  What to do?

I use a Blackberry 8830 which I find to be very utilitarian.  No camera, no fancy ads on TV.  It just works but occasionally, I admit that it feels ordinary and un-iPhony.  I’m not in a position where I can just pay an early termination fee to drop Verizon and head over to AT&T. Instead, I do the following:

1. Discover new things that the tool is capable of.  I recently learned how to watch TV shows on my Blackberry- very cool!
2. Dress it up.  A silicone skin costs less than two cups of coffee at Dunkin Donuts so head over to Ebay and make a purchase.
3. Entertain the fantasy of trading. On CraigsList there are countless people in your area who are looking to trade productivity tools.  People want planners.  They are interested in gadgets.  Joe from the next town over is looking for an audio recorder, etc.  Check it out and find out who is willing to trade what.  If nothing else, it will jog your creativity about tech tools and who knows?  Your unsexy gadget just might look new after all.

Just a quick reminder for those of you who are using the book of days that I put together, it’s time to order the July through December edition if you haven’t already.

For more information on what it is, click here.

To order the second volume of the Book of Days click here.

Via Ryan at Collaborative Ideation:

Augmented Cognition

This short film takes place in 2030 in a command center that is tasked with monitoring cyberspace activities for anomalies that could threaten the global economy. The economy, which functions largely in cyberspace, is the link between countries and is extremely susceptible to instability. As might be expected, given the ever-increasing amount of data to be analyzed even in today’s world, the workers in 2030 are inundated with information from all sources.

They have so much information to contend with that they are literally unable to process it all unaided. Fortunately, AugCog technologies have matured by this point and are commonly integrated into information-rich domains, including the featured command center. The film takes viewers through a near incident that is resolved by one of the analysts in the command center and is designed to tell two sides of the AugCog story: the innumerable benefits of the application of AugCog technology and the explanation of how that technology works.

Getting Things Done With Index Cards 2.0 - a set on Flickr

I do not know what took me so long to find this.