Choosing the best task tracking system for GTD

For the past few weeks I have had an item on my ToDo list "Set up GTD folders and actions tracking system" which never seems to get done. This week I didn't get it done eaither, so I decided instead to write a blog post about the factors affecting my choice. I am hoping that this might prompt some people to offer me advice. I am also going to start a formal multi-week project plan for how I will evaluate all of the options and set up a tracking system that suits me personally.

In David Allen's GTD book, he stresses the importance of setting up a tracking system that suits both your personal circumstances and preferences. The points to note are:

1. The system I use for storing information about what I need to do must be one that I trust totally, because otherwise my mind won't be focusing on what I am doing if I am distracted by worrying about whether or not I have accurately captured the next actions. What this means is that I can't entrust to a web based service that I think might be down at the times when I need to use it most.
2. The system I use for tracking my work must be really easy to get information into and out of, because otherwise I will carry information in my head and resist dumping it into the storage system.
3. Since I will be notified of work items in a variety of places I may need some form of temporary storage that is always available to be so that I can store the tasks until I get a chance to record them properly. David Allen suggests a small notebook or a collections of index cards - in my case perhaps my mobile phone would be something I would be more likely to have with me at all times.
4. I will be doing work in different places. So I need to be able to access my task list from anywhere.
   

My personal circumstances are:

• At work I will be primarily driven by my Notes email and the associated calendaring system. This is a simple fact of life in IBM. It is of course acceptable to use a program other than the Notes client to read my email and to track my personal calendar. However, I find Notes to be a great tool and I feel it makes sense for me to to be familiar with the latest innovations from Lotus, so I will not seriously consider anything other than Notes.
• At the moment I use GMail for my personal email and I also use the Google calendar for personal appointments. In addition I have recently invested in a phone running the Android operating system - this means that I have easy access to my Google data at all times, but since IBM only has a limited trial of an Android compatible VPN I won't have easy access to my Notes data when I am not at my laptop.
  
• David Allen recommends a single tracking system for both work and personal tasks, but my personal inclination is to continue maintaining a separation between them. In any case, it will be necessary that whatever task tracking system should interface well with both the Notes client and with my Android mobile phone.
  
• Both Notes and Google provide task tracking systems, but these are rudimentary. I might consider some other systems that provide GTD compatible task tracking i.e.:
• Toodleoo
• Remember the milk (RTM)
• The eProductivity template for Notes.
  

My plan for coming up with a GTD tracking system that suit me are:

1. For the first week I will investigate each of the GTD task tracking systems.
2. I will spend a week using each of the GTD tracking systems in turn to see how well they work out for me.
3. I will make a decision on what GTD tracking system I am going to use and then configure the interface between my chosen system and both Notes and GMail. This may involve a small bit of programming, but I am hopeful that there will be tools available to smooth the interface (the existence of such tools may be one of the deciding factor when choosing between the various options).