At work I manage many different projects and have a very good system for keeping track of what needs to get done. I’m using the OmniFocus beta and very pleased with it. There are two weaknesses with this systems however: Capture and simple lists. By “capture”, I’m talking about getting tasks from your brain into your system and by “simple lists”, I’m talking about that day to day flotsom and jetsom. Those little lists that remind me to pick up a certain book at the library, or spicy carrots at Trader Joe’s. It would help if the iPhone had a task list manager but frankly, I’m not sure I want my spicy carrots getting mixed in with all of my work tasks. Anyway, I stumbled upon a great little web 2.0 app solves both of these problems, www.tadalist.com.
This web application from 37 Signals is a simple to do list with a very clean interface. Each list is just a name (like “Trader Joe’s”) and a group of items (like “Carrots”) They have an Edge-friendly iPhone interface and you can both add new items and check off items from anywhere. It also has a memory for items you have already checked off so the next time I need more carrots, I can simply uncheck rather than create a new entry.
While these tools are great for shopping, I also use them for other recurring lists. I’ve got the business trip list, the “giving a presentation” list, the beach list, and a variety of others. The nice thing is I can change, delete, add, check, and uncheck items from any computer plugged into the internet, including the iPhone in my pocket.
For capturing tasks on the go I have a list called OmniFocus. If I think of something that needs to be tracked and I’m not near my Mac I put it in the OmniFocus Tada list and code it into OmniFocus later.
This is not the high powered stuff you are going to get from iGTD or the soon to be released OmniFocus. Neither is it robust as the feature set found at todoist.com as recently reviewed by Darren Rolfe. However, for a system to keep simple repeating lists and capture tasks while on the go, it really scratches the itch.
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MacSparky, web 2.0, tadalist