For the past year, I have been implementing the GTD system using Google Calendar and Toodledo (for tasks), while using Appigo’s Todo on my Touch/iPhone. I liked these tools because of their simplicity and compatibility with GTD methods, and because the web-based apps did not require a particular operating system. The only thing required to use them is a browser, whether that is IE7 on my Windows Vista laptop, Firefox/Safari on my iMac, or Firefox on my Ubuntu laptop.
I avoided trying out the many new apps that are operating-system specific, such as OmniFocus and Things for the Mac and iPhone. But, after seeing so many rave reviews for these two products, I decided to give Things a try.
Although I am still using the 15-day trial version of Things on my iMac, I like the app more each day and may very well wind up purchasing it (although I will probably give OmniFocus a try, too). Below are my initial thoughts on it.
As you can see from the above screenshot of Things running on my computer, it provides a left-hand pane that gives you quick access to several task-management views:
- Inbox – a list of tasks you still have to assign to contexts/projects/schedule
- Today – items that are due today. These are scheduled via drop-down selection menus or drag and drop.
- Next – a by-projects view of the items you can work on next. That is view shown in the above screen shot.
- Scheduled – tasks or projects that are scheduled for later
- Someday – tasks or projects that are beyond your active focus (that is, that you will get to “someday”)
- Projects – a full list of your projects, including those that are scheduled or moved to the “someday” category. Gives a nice summary of which ones you have classified as hard or medium in difficulty, along with any other tags you may have assigned.
- Active Projects – just as the name implies.
- Areas (of Focus) – just as the name implies: a Covey-like list of your Roles and Responsibilities.
What’s not to like about that, eh? Those are great views for giving you a good picture of where you are at, and for inputting data, too. I particularly like the Areas of Focus, as it lets me see whether I am overdoing one area at the expense of others.
I also like the Scheduled view, in that it takes any task that you have scheduled and keeps it out of your active lists until it is time for you to see it. You can set the time that you will see an item, for each scheduled item, by using a menu to select days in advance of its schedule you want to begin seeing it.
I should note that the use of Scheduled Tasks really goes against the philosophy of GTD, though. The GTD philosophy, and one that I try to adhere to, is to put date-sensitive material on your calendar instead of your task list. The way I like to do it is to schedule an “all-day appointment” within Google Calendar for the day I want to be reminded. An example is the appointment shown in the figure below:
Also, again referring to the first figure above, note that it has a horizontal set of tabs, one for each “tag” you have assigned to tasks, projects, and/or areas. For example, there are context-related ones (couch, work, home, calls, errands, etc.), ones associated with estimated amount of time to complete task (15 min, 1 hr, etc.), ones associated with level of difficulty (medium, hard, etc.), and so on. You can edit the tags to your liking.
The Things iPhone app replicates as much of the functionality of the desktop as practical, given that it uses a different form factor.
As I mentioned, this seems like a very nice app to me. I am still undecided on it, partly because I want to try out OmniFocus and a few other apps, but also because my previous methods worked well enough and had the advantage of not being tied to a particular operating system. For those of you who are less passionate about having some OS independence, though, this app might just be what you are looking for.
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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Things is simpler than Omnifocus, but I feel Omnifocus is more GTDer. As an avid fan of GTD, I opted to Omnifocus. It’s picey, so my husband bought the family pack. In fact, our lifes are in sync now, as we sign to each other’s calendars in MobileMe and exchange tasks through Omnifocus (via Mail).
A also keep a list of my Covey’s roles to see if I dedicate enough energy and time to each one. I met Covey much earlier than Allen and kept some of its principles.
I have a Macbook and an iPhone as my main system. Until last year, it was Windows, Windows Mobile and Exchange server. Don’t bother me changing the system, the most important is it working well.
I love cloud computing, but I don’t trust connections enough to keep everything out there. I prefer devices *syncing* with cloud, not only *accessing*.
Hi Bia,
Very nice to hear from you again.
Thanks for the input on OmniFocus … I will most certainly give it a try.
Like you, I like the ability to *sync* so I have up-to-date information wherever I am looking.
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Just wondering where you’re at on this. I paid for the iphone version, but can’t sync tasks with my work pc. I’m trying the trial version at home on my macbook pro. Since I got my calendar sync’s between my iphone and ms exchange at work, I’m ahead of the game. I also have my partners calendar in gmail as a shared calendar. It’s progress, but I seem to spend a huge amount of time getting organized.
Hi Helene,
I went ahead and bought the desktop version of Things … I had already purchased the iPhone version at the time of writing this post.
For me, it is a good system … I particularly like the projects and areas implementations, so I can handle projects and “Covey Roles” both. The real downside that I see with this app for a lot of people is that many, like yourself, like to have a system that works on a PC and on a Mac and on their Mobile device. Because Things is designed only for the Mac (and iPhone), it leaves out the PC. I can live with that because I finally decided that the Mac and iPhone combo is all I need … I use a PC, but only 5% of the time, and really don’t need an task management software on it.
But, if you are accustomed to entering a lot of tasks in Outlook, then Things is going to be unsatisfying for you. And, I have yet to find a system that handles syncing Outlook tasks to an iPhone and transferring those to the Mac.
What worked well for me when I tried to use my PC for task management, too, was to have all my tasks online in either Toodledo or Remember The Milk. Both have apps that sync with the iPhone, or you can use Appigo’s Todo app, which syncs with either one. That way I could enter data on either the Mac or PC or iPhone and see it online from any of the devices. On the iPhone, you don’t even have to be “online” for it to work (in terms of viewing existing tasks), as Appigo stores the data on the iPhone (so if you are somewhere where the AT&T signal is zero and there is no wifi, you can still see your tasks, and you can add new ones in on the iPhone). Of course this method bypasses Outlook, instead of cooperating with it, but it does work. Also, Toodledo has a list of third party apps, and one of those is an app that supposedly syncs Toodledo tasks to Outlook (and vice versa) … however, the last time I checked, it got bad reviews because it sometimes ate the data.
Anyway, to summarize, if you are content inputting tasks only on the iPhone and Mac, then Things is nice … it has a good interface. But, honestly, Toodledo (or Remember The Milk) can do just as good of a job for you, and not limit you to just your Mac and iPhone. In fact, I am giving some thought to going back to Toodledo, and upgrading to their Pro account (like $20 or so a year), because it adds a “sub tasks” feature that is nice, and their iPhone app supports that sub-task feature. While you are still experimenting, you might want to check them out.
I do know what you mean about spending so much time getting organized. Sometimes I think it would be easier to just use paper and say to heck with it.
Good luck. Keep me posted.
Has anyone found a way to have the Scheduled items in Things sync with iCal?
If this were possible, then those tasks could be easily moved to those dates on the calendar; therefore creating a more GTD-like implementation.
Dave,
Sure would be great if it would do that. I notice that they continue to add features, and already have some iCal syncing capabilities. I did a quick trot through their forums to see if anyone had developed an AppleScript that would sync Scheduled items to iCal, but didn’t find one. However, you might want to suggest that to the folks at Things to see if they will build it in, or at least develop a separate AppleScipt that would allow this.
Perhaps some enterprising developer reading this can come up with an AppleScript to do this and let us know. Doesn’t sound like it would be extremely hard, but then I am not into coding in AppleScript so I don’t know.
Thanks for bringing the question up … I look forward to other answers to it.