Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.
Before writing this article, I went back to see if I could count all the different applications and methods I’ve tried for managing tasks and to-do lists. There was Outlook, Toodledo, Todoist, Vitalist, GTDAgenda, Thunderbird, a Moleskine, Doomi – and that’s just the list that came to my head in about 15 seconds.
I’ve been around the block with task managers, for a couple reasons: one, I just get some crazy pleasure out of tweaking and goofing around with my productivity system, often even at the expense of my productivity. Also, though, I never found an application that worked exactly right for me, and did all the things I needed it to do in an easy and enjoyable way.
I’ll be honest: I still haven’t. But I’ve come pretty darn close with Remember the Milk. It allowed me access no other application had, tons of great support and brilliant users, and offered ways to work that just fit the way I think and work.
My RTM setup was constantly changing, but is only recently pretty set, and exactly how I like it. Here’s how I did it:
Tags, Tags, Tags
I’ve only got one actual list in RTM – it’s called “Inbox” and stores every single one of my tasks. I never look at that list, though, except when I’m doing a big, broad overview of all my tasks (at which point having them all in one place is really nice).
Every task in RTM gets at least one tag – the first tag it gets is similar to the GTD “Contexts,” which are geared towards putting similar types of tasks (i.e. phone calls or errands) in the same place. I have five contexts - @School (things I do for school, in the library, etc.), @Computer (This one’s kinda obvious), @Contact (all my emails, phone calls, etc.), @Home (Projects, bills, etc. that I need to be at home to do), and @Out (errands, things to take pictures of, and anything that requires me to go somewhere).
The second tag in RTM is what I call the “Hat” tag. I wear a number of different hats – freelance writer, student, real-job employee, and more – so I try to group my tags underneath which of those is relevant. I try to keep “work hours” both for writing and for my day job, and having all my relevant tasks under one place helps me stay on task.
For instance, I have one called “Pogue” for all the work I do as an assistant to New York Times columnist David Pogue, as well as one for “Writing” for all the freelance work I do around the Web. There’s one called “Admin” for backend stuff for this site, as well as a few others that I try and devote concerted time to periodically.
Smart Lists
The way I view and manage my tasks is through RTM’s “Smart Lists.” Smart Lists are basically constantly updating searches – if I search for a particular tag, every time I create a new task with that tag, the list updates to include it. The other nice thing about a Smart List is that if I add a task while inside a Smart List, it automatically takes on the features of that list (a particular tag or due date, for instance).
I made a Smart List for every one of my contexts, every one of my Hats, and a couple other ones that have helped me a lot – “Due Today”, “No Due Date” and “No Tag.” No Due Date helps me to look through my non-critical tasks easily, and figure out which I want to give a date to, or just do. “No Tag” has been critical for me, for managing tasks I forget to add a tag to. It’s fairly common for me to just enter a task, and then forget about it. If I forgot something, it goes into the “No Tag” list, which I check every day to make sure tasks went where they needed to go.
The “Due Today” list is the one I live in all day, and it’s the default place I go in RTM (and one that makes GTD people cringe). I have tasks, over tons of different contexts, that have to get done today. Sometimes I can’t make phone calls when it’s convenient to make phone calls – I’ve got homework to do! Knowing what’s due today, regardless of what it will take me to do it, is a big boost to my productivity.
Once a week or so, I review all my tasks: I check their tags, to make sure they’re in the right place. I see if one task is actually two or more, in which case I split it. I check due dates, to make sure everything gets done when it needs to. The review is quick, simple, and easy – as long as I’m good about tagging and entering due dates for my tasks up front.
It’s… Everywhere!
The biggest reason I use RTM, and kept leaving other applications, is how universally available RTM is. I use it in Gmail, in iGoogle, on the iPhone, on my Windows Mobile Phone, on the Web, and through Twitter. And that’s just the beginning of what you can do! For more, check out RTM’s Services.
With Google Gears, RTM is also available offline – critical for me, because I spend a lot of time on planes, trains, and the like. With the iPhone app or on my Windows Mobile phone (both do require a $25/year Pro Account, which is 100% worth it), RTM is also available when I’m not sitting at my computer. I can easily add tasks, manage them, and complete them, wherever I am.
One last note- I used a Greasemonkey script called “A Bit Better RTM” to make RTM prettier and more useful. I like it a lot, as it makes navigation easier, as well as putting all the lists on the side, which I think is just nicer-looking. There are a ton of styles for the site – just Google “Greasemonkey Remember the Milk”.
There are a ton of other reasons to use RTM, including some I’ve written about before (both here and elsewhere – and another place). It’s a simple application, with ridiculous functionality and availability. If you’re looking for a task-manager, or have one you don’t like, give Remember the Milk a shot.
How do you manage your tasks?
Photo: dmachiavello
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- Random Encounters » Blog Archive » How to Remember The Milk
- Daily Digest for 2009-09-15 | Pedro Trindade
I utilize a combination of RTM with my Google Calendar. Then I have that sync to my work Outlook Calendar. With the combination all synced tofgether, it makes my reminders pop on my phone/Skype/Email and keep me going efficiently. Some of it is overkill (like when I get a SMS, Skype, Email all at the same time saying “Do this” but better safe than sorry.
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Definitely agree about the redundancy – better to be safe than sorry. Skype
reminders are a good call, I might have to take a look at that… Thanks!
Unfortunately the Skype reminders seem a bit iffy. Days will go by when they don't pop up, and then 1 day I'll get a message with 10 of them in it. Same thing with the Twitter reminders as well.
Anthony
Interesting… I've noticed the same thing with Twitter, and it's actually a bit obnoxious. I wonder why it happens that way? Seems odd that there would be some built-in holding feature that's buggy.
Great post, David! I've been using Lotus Notes with a very GTD style set-up for several years. This synced up to my Blackberry (I carry that for work and an iPhone for personal use), but with my recent adoption (and love affair!) with Evernote, I'd been craving an “access anywhere” tool to manage my lists.
Using this post as a starting point, I got myself totally up and running on RTM yesterday. I modified your approach a bit to make it a bit more GTD-ish. I use a combination of 2-3 tags for each task. The first is kind of like your “hat” tag, but I call it the Area of Responsibility tag. These identify the major work area of responsibility (like manaing my team, multi-year projects or processes) as well as personal AoRs (like wellness, financial, etc). Then I have a “type” tag and these I preface with a “.” including .projects, .someday, and .na (for next actions). If the item gets a .na tag, then it also gets a context tag, like @computer or @calls. Using the “.” and the “@” to preface the last two types of tags allows those to be grouped together in the tag cloud widget on my screen. I've also set up Smart Lists for these, which get grouped accordingly as well. You can see a screen shot of my set up at http://screencast.com/t/8JeEPDMDHyo
This approach has some great advantages over Lotus Notes, including the flexibility and ability to use multiple tags. Also, the ease of searching the whole database of tasks is vastly superior to LN.
Now I'm just working on getting facile with the keyboard shortcuts and will work on setting up a template so that I can email tasks to my inbox.
Thanks for such a great post and a great blog!
Interesting stuff – I like the “Area of Responsibility” tag. I tried using the “na” tags, much like you did, but for some reason never found it particularly useful.
Using multiple tags is critical, particularly with the ability to search – you're absolutely right! This is great stuff, thanks for sharing!
David
Great article, but how do you get that view on RTM with your Smart Lists as a pane on the left (instead of tabs)? Mine only show up as tabs. Your setup is a lot cleaner, IMHO.
Nevermind, ignore my earlier comment. I just saw your link to the answer later in your article. Thanks!
Glad you found it! The script is AWESOME, and is one of the biggest reasons I still use Firefox. Definitely better-looking, imo.
Apologies if this comment has already been posted but the previous comment I made did not appear to have been sent properly
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Great post,
I'm very much a gtd newb so its nice to see a post about how to use it with rtm
Atm I'm trying out another posts system about using gtd and rtm but I think your system might be a bit lighter on the lists front (I currently have 20 lists not including smart lists), so your system would certainly make it easier to find things as my rtm tasks page is a bit cluttered
As for rtm reminders I made a air app which reminds me whenever a task is due and allows me to postpone complete etc the task from the notification, anyone interested can find it at http://rtm-notifier.com.
Its very handy for notifications and its got the rtm gmail gadget embedded in it for creating / editing tasks etc, hopefully when I've got my gtd'ish system in place I'll be able to incorporate a bit more of that as well into the app.
Tony
I just wish that they get Evernote support for RTM. An admin on the formus said they were doing it, so they should hurry up!
I have it on good authority (the Evernote folks) that that's coming. But it's on RTM to get it done with the API – I'm waiting for it too!
I found your Evernote post from April and I thought when you said you were going to talk about RTM the next day you were going to explain how you integrate the two.
I saw that you recently said the two companies are working to make things play better together, but in the meantime you probably have some workarounds. Thanks much!
I'm also interested in how you make the two programs work together (RTM and Evernote).
I'm also interested in how you make the two programs work together (RTM and Evernote).