I'm in the middle of testing out Chandler, an open-source project founded by Mitch Kapor, who some of you may remember as the designer of Lotus 1-2-3.

Chandler is kind of an offshoot of David Allen's Getting Things Done productivity model for "mastering workflow." It's not the same thing, just based on very similar concepts.

Anyway, it's meant to completely reshape how we designate and accomplish tasks. Its targeted user is a knowledge worker, someone who most likely holds the title of project, product or program manager.

It is also designed with startups in mind: those offices that currently have no concrete procedures in place.

Since I am neither a manager nor at a startup, I've really been struggling with how to restructure the way I currently delegate and complete tasks under this entirely new system.

Well, OK, it might not be because of existing procedures that I have or my company has in place; rather, I am old-fashioned when it comes to task managing.

I make a pen-and-paper "to do" list and then cross items off when they're done. Anyone else who does this knows how satisfying this tactile sensation can be.

It works pretty well for tasks that need to get done this week, or today. But it hasn't been the best system for keeping me on the straight and narrow for more long-term projects, or anything that doesn't have a set deadline, something that is still more of a concept.

This has been a hard thing to admit.

Besides having to keep up on my various responsibilities here at eWEEK, I am also a rather busy food, cocktail and theater writer here in San Francisco. I get pitched all the time and invited to a lot of different kinds of events. Some of these pitches can be responded to immediately. Others require some reworking because they aren't solid pitches, but there is the potential to do something else with it. There are some events that definitely should be attended, and others that might just require a phone call.

Any freelance stories that have an immediate deadline in place get my attention right away. But those lingering, conceptual, not hard-nor-fast items waste away on a sea of Post-It notes and scrap paper, or just glut my inbox.

And I have a lot of inboxes.

My Gmail account currently has approximately 800 e-mails that are kept mainly because I plan on giving them some kind of treatment.

In my Yahoo account I have about 2,000 e-mails and I know there are to-do items in there that will probably fail to get done.

Meanwhile, my Hotmail account BARELY ever gets my attention, so who knows what potential stories or requests have been left for dead there.

And last, but not least, is my work e-mail, where I have a haphazard system for going through my inbox at least once a week to make sure everything pressing has been squared away, and then anything that can be put off is placed into one of several folders (that I rarely, if ever, check).

My boss reads this. Great.

Those tasks are all work-related, but then I've been trying to get better organized about a training program I need to initiate for a marathon I'd like to run in the fall. I've run it before, with a fund-raising organization that is near and dear to my heart, so not only do I really need to jump on the physical training, but must hash out a plan for raising the money.

Oh, and my best friend is getting married in July and I have my fair share of responsibilities for that event, given I am both the maid of honor and minister.

I'm also part of a performance group that is planning a pretty major upcoming show that'll require not only a lot of calendaring items, but well, collaboration. There are five of us in the group and we are constantly swapping e-mails that often have some kind of chain of action, but with so MANY back-and-forth messages, more often than not does it feel like we are starting from scratch.

Honestly, I could go on and on and on. I am not trying to sound self-important. Just writing this into a blog is making me realize how crazy I've been to think keeping a pen and paper handy at all times would somehow get me in the right place.

I am seeing where Chandler could help bring some kind of proper workflow to this hunk of clutter that sits in my inbox with nowhere to go.

It's still in the beta version so it's understandable that not all the kinks have been worked out. And there's no way I can really expect the application to make me the well-oiled machine I'd like to be by Friday (when the story is due), but I've committed to giving it 100 percent.

I'm curious if this is really the way to go after years of being so gosh-darn stubborn about these kinds of productivity programs.