Goodbye, Vitalist
For the past few weeks I’ve been telling everybody I know about the benefits of GTD and my favorite GTD application, Vitalist. I’ve seen a big improvement in my productivity and (most importantly) my stress levels. Now that I’ve organized much of my personal and professional life into todo’s in Vitalist projects, the “Ok, what am I forgetting to do right now” question doesn’t enter my mind. I owe thanks to David Allen for creating a method like GTD that makes it so easy to organize my life, and I owe a HUGE thanks to the people at Vitalist for creating what I think is the best GTD software application. To be honest, most of what I know is what I’ve learned from using Vitalist.
So, it is with sadness that I have to stop my Vitalist crusade. Today, it was announced on the Vitalist blog that the free service they offer would be downgraded. You can still use it for free, but you will be limited to 5 projects and 5 contexts. For $5 a month you can get that limit moved up to 25 projects contexts, and for $10 a month you can have unlimited projects.
Personally, with the way I use Vitalist I would have to get the $10 service. The projects are everything for me. I use projects to distinguish different goals I have. For example, I have a “Maintain my home” project with a “Handle finances” sub-project and a “Clean the house” sub-project. I have an overall “Work” project and many sub-projects to keep different clients separate. And I have a “New Home” project with sub-projects like “Purchase home,” “Furnish new home,” “Move in to house,” and “Close old lease.” I then assign all of the todos in my life to one of those projects. It’s so simple, but it has made living my life so much easier. And this is just the project aspect of GTD! I won’t get into contexts and how they allow me to organize everything even further.
If I have to start thinking about how many contexts and projects I have remaining in my account, I’ll lose some of the mind-clearing benefits the GTD is supposed to give me. I simply don’t want to waste brain-cycles thinking about such things.
Don’t get me wrong, I think the Vitalist software is great and they are perfectly within their rights to charge people for their services. However, I’d prefer to purchase a product like Vitalist instead of pay for it as a service. Ten dollars is not much a month, but over a year or two it adds up. Maybe I’m cheap, but I’d prefer to pay a one-time amount and not have to think about small drip coming out of my bank account. Once I find a better GTD service I’ll pack up my todo list and move.
But how am I going to find an online application that works as great as Vitalist when none exist? Well, I’ve decided that I’m going to create one. I know AJAX, DHTML effects, and Javascript, and I build websites for a living. Normally it is hard for me to find the motivation to give up my free time to code when I already code most of my day, but seeing how great GTD and Vitalist are is enough motivation to get me to do it. My program won’t have the services I don’t use, such as the RSS feed, files, etc., but it will have the basic services with the same Google-type of layout. And it will have some features that I want but don’t get with Vitalist, like sharing with other users.
Until I get my own application to replace Vitalist finished, I’ll probably pay the $10. That will give me even more motivation! 
This won’t be something that competes with Vitalist, and I’ll probably just keep it to myself and only offer it to friends and family. Or maybe not, I don’t know. I tried writing a software-developer’s blog with a project I tried earlier this year but I lost interest in the project. I already know that this one project will be different. We’ll see.
Tags: [gtd, vitalist]Comments
4 Responses to “Goodbye, Vitalist”
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Darren,
Be sure to let me know when you’ve succeeded in creating your own app. Future customer, right here!
I don’t quite know what to do about Vitalist right now. I do love the application. I think I saw that if we freeloaders upgrade within the next month, then we can have the premium product for $5 instead of $10. I guess they’re offering the grandfather clause to us, too. Correct me if I read that wrong. So I think I might upgrade especially if I can get it for $5/month. I’ve got such a good organizational rhythm going, don’t want to disrupt it too much.
Oh, you are right. If you already have a Vitalist account you can get the premium service for $5, which is nice. That makes it easier to accept paying for a few months. I spent a few hours trying out different GTD applications, and I don’t want to go through that hassle again.
I’ll let you know how things are going on my own GTD application. My mind has been racing all day with ideas on how I’m going to complete the project. Coding can be a lot of fun!
Curious if you are still with Vitalist? I abandoned it after the pricing structure because $10/month wasn’t worth it to me ($120 a year!). I’m now using Toodledo, which has a $15 annual subscription that simply permits a broader use of the software but does NOT limit the number of projects you can have. I could probably use it w/o the annual fee but enjoy the collaboration features.
I’m still with Vitalist. I looked at Toodledo and it’s pretty good, but I don’t think its user interface is as good as Vitalist. Vitalist has that drag-and-drop feature that saves me time all day.
I got in when it was still $5 a month ($60 a year). It’s much more than other sites, but it’s worth all of the hassle it would take to move.
If Toodledo ever upgraded their UI, they would be an option. I saw they have an option to import Vitalist data, too.