These are the tools I'm using on MacOSX.
For my to-do list, I'm using OmniOutliner with Kinkless GTD. The nice thing about this system is that I can hierarchically organize my projects/tasks, then easily switch to just seeing the appropriate context.
For email, I'm using a set of things. First I'm using Act-On a plugin for Apple Mail. I have the standard GTD folders in mail: @Action, @Archives, @Read, @Reference, @Someday, @WaitingFor. I've set Act-On so that if I hit the space bar and then another key, that it shoves the email into that folder. Act-On's default setting was the ` key, but that was too hard to use. I've made one tweak, as a friend of mine gave me this AppleScript which I put in ~/Library/Scripts/Mail Scripts. What this does is store emails in folders by year/month. So I have that wired to the “archive” action in Act-On. That makes my archive folders a little more manageable. One addition that's unique to me is that I have a “Registration” folder where I file usernames/passwords from websites.
This morning I added a new AppleScript to mail, found here. I then added an action to iCal to run this script every morning. This lets me do email ticklers, which is something I was trying to figure out how to do. Annoyingly, it puts it in a folder named @INBOX instead of my main inbox, and I haven't figured out how to fix that. So now I can send emails to myself in the future. Write an email: save it, which puts it in “Drafts”, then drag it to the appropriate ticker folder.
Other things I've figured out: For capturing things, I've scattered a stacks of 3x5 cards with a mini-binder clip throughout the house, and I carry one. When a thought occurs to me (and with the whole Mind Like Water thing it happens a lot now), I scribble it on the card and dump it in my inbox, which is a physical tray. The next day I collect them all when doing my daily review and enter them into kGTD.
This is where there's some synergy between Qi Gong and GTD. When I'm doing Qi Gong, I often get “mindplay”, usually relating to projects/tasks. Now I write them down on a 3x5 card and I can forget about them. This turns out to be a good way to empty my mind into my collection basket, because my mind can get bored doing Qi Gong, and will dredge up anything I still have floating around. You don't have to learn Qi Gong to do this. Try counting your exhales up to 100. As things occur to you, write them down on a 3x5 card, then start over. If you can get to 100 (you'll find this is amazingly hard), your mind is empty.
For those “@home” items, I've made two contexts. One is called “Morning” and the other “Evening”. That's how I'm dealing with the issue most people have where GTD for work is easy, but more of a problem for @home stuff.
Things I haven't figured out yet: How to do a weekly review. I have to re-read that section of the book as I actually either haven't done one yet, or have been doing it every 2 days...
One of the things that's helped me in all this is reading:
FIRST THINGS FIRSTbefore I read GTD, which helped me realize that I needed to do Important items before Urgent items. That helped when I had my own consulting business, and Franklin Covey organizers worked well for me then. When I became a worker bee for Marketocracy, it didn't help so much because I had a long list of things to do, rather then a list of things I needed to do on a certain date. That is, 90% of what you have to do involves doing a certain thing on a certain date, organizers are great because they're like a 12-month ticker file. When what you have to do every day is “work on my giant to-do list”, organizers don't help so much.
Of course, Covey would argue that once/week you schedule some of your to-do items into various days of the week, but that doesn't work for programming tasks that are “work on this until its done”. You end up just forwarding the to-do forward day after day, picking up others as you go. That's the problem with iCal too...
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