Corporate computer policies and GTD

What do you do when you can no longer use your computer platform of choice at work even when you’re more productive with it and are used to the tools available for it which are generally superior to the offerings (if they exist) on other platforms?  You go back to web applications.

I had been using a combination of GMail, Remember the Milk, and Google Calendar for my GTD/personal organization needs.  This was prior to getting a Mac.   At that time I started using Apple Mail and iCal both of which I have grown to love.   I then ended up getting an iPhone for my mobile needs and life was wonderful.  About 3 weeks ago the axe was dropped on me and my Mac usage at work so it’s back to the drawing board.

I have to say I’m still pretty livid about the corporate computer policies at work that seem to keep springing out of nowhere.   Not being able to use personal equipment on the corporate network is just the latest policy to fly in out of left field.  But all that aside where does that leave me?

I guess I move mail back to GMail which I never really abandoned.  I just set up Apple Mail to retrieve my email from the IMAP interface of GMail.    I actually also still used Google Calendar in the respect that I bought and installed Spanning Sync to sync my iCal calendars with Goolge Calendar.  For tasks lists I really hadn’t found a replacement for Remember the Milk but then again i wasn’t using it much anyhow.  My list-keeping fell off and I just scheduled things directly in the calendar either on specific days and times or just on specific days as all-day events.

I do really need to get back in to keeping task lists though but I’m less than thrilled with having to pay $25 for RTM Pro to get the iPhone interface.  I’d be more inclined at this point to give ToodleDo a try again since at $14.95 a year you get the iPhone interface and quite a bit more.  I like RTM but the $25 is hard to swallow simply for the iPhone CSS and HTML they send out.

At any rate I’m back to square one because of a corporate policy that doesn’t take into account an employee’s productivity.   Maybe things won’t be so bad since I had woven in my gmail/gcal use with the client apps on the Mac.  Once again though it all comes down to the list-keeping and task lists and I’m not sure what I’m going to do there.