For those of you looking to be more productive, I have found a nice combination of web apps, online services, and native apps that really help organize my life and boost my ability to get things done. Since purchasing my iPhone, I have been looking for a todo/tasking application. Prior to my iPhone I used LifeBalance, a very nice application that looked to organize your life based on life goals. Examples of life goals are “stay in shape”, “do well at work”, “keep in touch with friends”, etc… Needless to say I created several life goals and subcategories to help me focus on the things that were important to me. This worked well, but was not as task oriented as I would like and was also a bit of work to maintain. In my search for a good replacement, a friend of mine recommended “Remember the Milk” an online todo/tasking application, which led me to the “Getting Things Done (GTD)” methodology. A little more research turned up Toodledo, Jott (native app & online app), and several other native apps for todo/tasking, even some with voice notes. With all this research I was able to identify what I wanted out of a todo/tasking system:
1. Access my tasks everywhere via PC or iPhone
2. Access my tasks when disconnected from the internet
3. Use voice to leave tasks
4. Tasking needed to be rich and support GTD, sub-tasks, and re-occurring tasks
5. Share my tasks
As it turns out, none of the products out there support all these features. However, there is a simple combination of these products that works extremely well. Toodledo satisfies 1, 4 and 5. Jott (the on-line app) satisfies 3. And Appigo’s Todo native app satisfies 2.
Toodledo is a full featured online todo/tasking application equal to or better then Remember the Milk (http://www.toodledo.com/info/compare.php). It fully supports GTD and has a very nice UI for online use and a great iPhone webapp for iphone use.
Jott, the online application, allows one to call in and leave a voice message that it will transcribe and send to your contacts. Basically, you call Jott and it asks you “who do you want to Jott?”. You say the contact and speak your message. This message is transcribed and sent to your contact. Contacts are emails set up via internet. Beleive it or not, Jott intergrates with Toodledo…just another contact!
Appigo’s Todo native app syncs with Toodledo and thus provides the offline capability. It should be noted that Appigo does not currently support context or tags. This is not ideal, but not really an issue since I mostly use the Toodledo web app, and Appigo just for offline use. I can still access and add tasks, but need to add tags and context online.
So here is how I use the system:
-Get up in the morning, peruse tasks on iPhone, and percolate what needs to get done for the day.
-As I walk around and begin my day, I will occasionally call into Jott and add tasks. But since I usually remember things while driving to work that is when Jott gets a full workout.
-When I get to work, I use my pc and Toodledo online application to manage all my work todo/tasking. Since all the Jotted task go to an unornganized inbox (no folder, context, or tag associations), I will usually take a couple of minutes to organize them by adding them to the correct folder and giving them the proper context and do dates.
-While at work, my wife has access to my todo/tasks and can add stuff to the honeydo folder 
-At meetings and when I am about, I use both the Toodledo webapp and Appigo’s Todo (when disconnected) on the iPhone and capture todo/tasks.
-Again, while driving home and sorting through the day, Jott gets a heavy workout.
-At home and about on errands I will mostly use the iPhone and Toodledo webapp.
One last thing people ask me is how to organize their todo/tasking. My method is simple. I only have 4 bins (folders) for my tasks: Work, Personal, Honeydo, and No Folder (inbox). Next, I have 5 contexts (where) for tasks: Office, Home, Online, Errands, and No Context. Then I use tags to further categorize tasks when needed. The best way to illustrate this is by example:
1. The wife wants me to pick up some groceries on the way home. She gets on the internet and adds a task to the Honeydo folder:
- Folder = Honeydo
- Context = Errands
- Sub-tasks for each item
- And if you want, tags for type of items (produce, dairy, freezer…)
- Due date
How this works. When I leave the office, I will change my filter to context:Errands or folder:Honeydo. I will see this task. When I get to the store I can look at the sub-tasks for the items I need to pick up and if I have tags, organize the items by their location in the store.
2. At the office, in a meeting I get tasked to draft a brief for a project. I add this task via iPhone Toodledo webapp or offline via Appigo Todo (no context or tags):
- folder = Work
- context = Online (because it just requires my laptop, and I can do the work anywhere I have internet acccess)
- tags = Project Name, work stream (we usually break out projects into work streams)
- sub-tasks = more detailed tasks to get this done
- set appropriate priority and due dates to task and sub-tasks
- I will often add duration
How this works. Anywhere I am online and want to do work, I switch my folder to work and filter by context:Online and priority. Usually, I will work on the highest priority task and use the tags to filter to the project and workstream that has that highest priority task. This declutters the task list to exactly what you are going to work on. As I focus on the larger task, I will create additional sub-tasks and do the work. Additionally, Toodledo provides something called scheduler where you provide folder and/or context and how much time you have…Toodledo will then provide a list of tasks based on priority and duration to maximize what you can get done in that time. It is a nice little feature.
I hope this blog entry has helped your productivity. I am always looking to better and more efficient ways to get things done. So if you have any comments or suggestions, or things you use or came across, I would love to hear them.
