Comparing Foresight

Today on the David Allen Company – Getting Things Done Forum, someone posted a great question.

“How does [Foresight] compare to the official GTD Netcentrics Add-on?”

This is a great question; I appreciate the user asking it.

If you need to process a lot of emails, and you want to do it exactly in the GTD way, then they have a great product.

If you want to be focused, project oriented and manage all interruptions (not just email), then Foresight is what you are looking for. Let me show you…

Project Focus

I loaded and created a quick project in their product. As I often do, I create a project and brainstorm out the first few steps. As brainstorming goes, I think about different tasks that belong to different parts of the project. This is what I ended up with:

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The list you get is not very helpful.

When I do the same thing in Foresight, this is what I get:

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This was one of our biggest goals with Foresight. (In addition, this was one of my personal issues with other software packages out there.) The user can brainstorm out and organize their project in an order that makes sense to them. The project uses Outlook Tasks and Calendar Items which can be reorganized, collapsed and expanded. I could have, for example, put all of the above tasks under the calendar item if I wanted to:

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A couple of other quick notes:

• In a similar fashion to their product, you can link emails to the project for easy and quick reference.
• Unlike their product, you can also link in your PC Files (Word Documents, Excel Spreadsheets, etc.) for quick and easy reference. No more looking endlessly through “My Documents” or a big hierarchy of folders to find your project reference (PC Files) materials!

Daily Focus

Another area where Foresight excels is helping you Focus on a daily basis. After I was done entering just this project and one other project with their product, this is what my Outlook Today window looked like:

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I have never understood how Outlook Today is supposed to help you focus!

Foresight will help you keep focus and control up, while keeping stress down. Below is the Foresight Today window, which replaces the Outlook Today window:

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You can focus on your Next Actions. You can see your commitments coming up over the next couple of days. You can remember things you need to do weekly (like the “weekly progress report” your boss or clients want, or, the GTD Weekly Review!). You can focus and keep, as David Allen says, all the other “open loops” out of sight.

Interruptions

On the Foresight Today window, you also see our Quick Captureâ„¢ widget. This is one of my favorites! When something (an interruption) comes up, I can quickly type it into Quick Capture and forget about it. If Foresight knows what to do with it, it automatically puts it into Outlook. If not, I can answer a couple of questions now to finish it, or, Foresight will remind me later during my processing time. Quick Capture lets me get back to focusing on my project and not let the interruption get me off track. More information about Quick Capture can be found here.

So, in closing, again, I appreciate the question. This was a great exercise for me personally, and for our company. It is also a great feeling as it reinforces that we are on the right track.

More information on Foresight can be found here at our main website.