[Francesco]

Part II - Life balance
I spent the first three days trying to figure out what was the best sw to implement GTD on my palm. As I told you in a previous post, I chose Life Balance.
LB, as almost any other software would have, presented another challenge: I had to learn how to use it. I don't really know why I was so obsessed about using any other app than the built-in ToDo. To tell you the truth, I haven't ruled out that option.
Well, I had a couple of days to learn at least the basics of LB. And I have to say I chose a rather complicated app. Really, even today I don't use all of its features.

So, what's LB? It is a task manager. Yeah, it is an app that sort all your tasks according to an algorithm that takes into account the importance of each task to its parent. The parent of a task can be a project, another task or an area of your life. What follows is a brief description. You can learn more about LB at Llamagraphics site.

LB has four main areas:
The outline. Here is where you input all the things you have to do, but not like in your regular to do list. Instead, you have Top Level Items. This TLIs should be the main areas in your life, i.e., Work, Health, Familiy, etc. My approach is different, though, as I'll describe later.
You can further subdivide each TLI. Health, for example, can be subdivided into Food, Exercise, etc. Or you might not subdivide. The thing here is that only the deepest items in the outline will be displayed in the...
To do list. A to do list sorted automatically by LB. You can filter the items that will appear in the list. LB filters are called...
Places. This is like the category in the standard to do list, but not quite so. Places have two particular features: you set the times at which they are "open", and they can be contained into others: i.e., Errands may contain Errands Home and Errands Office.
Balance. This is (obviously) the... the what? The climax (?) of this app. I don't use it. Here, LB tells you where you are expending your efforts, I mean, towards what TLI. This should help in balancing your life (in case you were wondering where LB got its name from). This doesn't work for me because of the way I set my TLIs, because most of the tasks related to my job are registered through pen and paper (it would appear as if I were focused in everything but my job!), and because, as a firm believer in GTD, I never register all those less-than-two-minute actions in any form, and, as you should know if you ever keep a log about your activities, most of your efforts will be spent there.
My plan is to eventually rearrange my TLIs into long term goals (something 7-habits-esque... that is, once I read it) and use more of the features that make LB a somewhat expensive app. I mean, I should, now that I registered my copy.
So why I'm using LB? One of the most interesting features is recurrence in tasks. You can set any task to reactivate itself some time after it was checked off for the last time. This single feature is helping me build a discipline of my own.