What a To-Do
Mar. 13th, 2008 11:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewduckerI'm _awful_ at organisation. I have the memory of a mayfly and the attention span of a kitten on acid. Which means that if I'm going to cope with the hectic social whirlwind then I need some kind of system.
In an ideal world I'd have a social secretary who would let me know where I was supposed to be, and when. Lacking that, some kind of portable calendar is ideal - which is why I have my setup where I use Google Calendar <-GooSync-> My Phone's Calendar. This at least means I know where I'm supposed to be at any time
This, however, doesn't cover my actual To-Do list. I have to keep track of what I'm up to, and I frequently find that I'm working on about 15 things at once. I'll be in the middle of task A when someone will ask me to look at task B. I'll get halfway through that and I'll be interrupted by task C. I'll go to lunch, come back, and not have any idea what on earth I was doing. Clearly I was going to have to get myself organised with a to-do list. And as no piece of paper remains unlost on my desk for more than 24 hours, it was going to have to be software.
I've gone through a series of different task list programs to try and find one that did what I want:
1) Tada List.
This is a fantastic online todo list program. Its three main advantages are simplicity, sharing and notifications. It allows you to keep as many lists as you like, and each list consists of entries that are just a line of text. Very easy to use. You can allow other people to share your lists, so that multiple people can keep a list up to date (I have one which Julie and I use to keep track of stuff we'd like to do together). And you can subscribe to the lists via RSS, so I can tell when Julie's thought of something else she'd like us to do together.
It's perfect for my personal life, where I mostly just have "stuff I'd like to do.", but not nearly good enough for work, where I need to keep notes on tasks, and group them.
2) Swift's To-Do List Lite
This is a free version of a bigger application. It's nice, allows for multiple lists, and for notes on each entry. It's pretty, easy to use, and good enough for a lot of people. It also allows you to enter due-dates on your tasks, which I don't generally need, but some people do. However, what it's missing is heirarchical tasks, where each task can be made up of subtasks. And I really need that, which is why I ended up with:
3) AbstractSpoon's ToDoList
It looks complex, but so far it's been just as easy to use as the Swift program, allows for tasks within tasks, you can ignore 95% of the functionality if you don't need it, and it just plain works. Can't recommend it highly enough. Ideally, it'd be a web app, or synchronise with an online repository, but other than that I can't think of anything I'd like that it doesn't do. If you need a decent to-do list then give it a go.
In an ideal world I'd have a social secretary who would let me know where I was supposed to be, and when. Lacking that, some kind of portable calendar is ideal - which is why I have my setup where I use Google Calendar <-GooSync-> My Phone's Calendar. This at least means I know where I'm supposed to be at any time
This, however, doesn't cover my actual To-Do list. I have to keep track of what I'm up to, and I frequently find that I'm working on about 15 things at once. I'll be in the middle of task A when someone will ask me to look at task B. I'll get halfway through that and I'll be interrupted by task C. I'll go to lunch, come back, and not have any idea what on earth I was doing. Clearly I was going to have to get myself organised with a to-do list. And as no piece of paper remains unlost on my desk for more than 24 hours, it was going to have to be software.
I've gone through a series of different task list programs to try and find one that did what I want:
1) Tada List.
This is a fantastic online todo list program. Its three main advantages are simplicity, sharing and notifications. It allows you to keep as many lists as you like, and each list consists of entries that are just a line of text. Very easy to use. You can allow other people to share your lists, so that multiple people can keep a list up to date (I have one which Julie and I use to keep track of stuff we'd like to do together). And you can subscribe to the lists via RSS, so I can tell when Julie's thought of something else she'd like us to do together.
It's perfect for my personal life, where I mostly just have "stuff I'd like to do.", but not nearly good enough for work, where I need to keep notes on tasks, and group them.
2) Swift's To-Do List Lite
This is a free version of a bigger application. It's nice, allows for multiple lists, and for notes on each entry. It's pretty, easy to use, and good enough for a lot of people. It also allows you to enter due-dates on your tasks, which I don't generally need, but some people do. However, what it's missing is heirarchical tasks, where each task can be made up of subtasks. And I really need that, which is why I ended up with:
3) AbstractSpoon's ToDoList
It looks complex, but so far it's been just as easy to use as the Swift program, allows for tasks within tasks, you can ignore 95% of the functionality if you don't need it, and it just plain works. Can't recommend it highly enough. Ideally, it'd be a web app, or synchronise with an online repository, but other than that I can't think of anything I'd like that it doesn't do. If you need a decent to-do list then give it a go.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-03-14 12:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-14 07:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-14 08:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-14 05:11 pm (UTC)Does everything I need in a combined Diary / To Do list with alarms, repeats, etc and it synchronises with Outlook which I have up, all day, on my desktop.
Nice and simple.
It's a shame my Clie's battery is (finally) on the way out :(
no subject
Date: 2008-03-15 02:10 pm (UTC)