Remembering the GTD Hive's gooMilk Found in 30Boxes of Joe's Tickler Nutshells

November 17, 2007 12:17 PM

Nowadays, if you're of a mood to be all Web 2.0 about it, to-do lists have gone past the paper and pen with web applications such as Remember the Milk, Hiveminder, Toodledoo, Todoist, Ta-Da Lists, do.Oh, Nozbe, Treedoolist, Vitalist, Web To Do, SimpleGTD, Sandy, Tracks, gootodo, Zirrus, OnMyList, TaskToy, Gubb, Nutshell, Joe's Goals, Tedium, MyTickerFile, voo2do, and 30boxes — even plain old text files have gotten spiffied up with Unix shell scripts to generate graphs and reports and projects.

These groups have developed about 10²⁰ ways of getting tasks into them, including shell scripts, Google gadgets, Dashboard widgets, Firefox extensions, Twits, Gmail, and even just talking into the phone — and they introduce a myriad of organizational features such as tagging, task reviews, braindumps, reminders, and smart searches. A lot of these were created in response to the call of Getting Things Done, although, ironically, there are now so many ways to get wrapped up in entering, organizing, and manipulating tasks that people end up being encouraged to just get the damn work done already.

posted by WCityMike (25 comments total)

MetaFilter is the leading cause of me not getting my work done.
posted by HotPatatta at 12:25 PM on November 17, 2007

Organization porn. I have tried so many these programs and for me, still nothing beats a small spiral steno pad. (Though I do like Todoist)
posted by Razzle Bathbone at 12:43 PM on November 17, 2007

I still prefer pen and paper, and I don't need one of those silly Moleskines. People get less done by playing with tools.
posted by pracowity at 12:44 PM on November 17, 2007

> People get less done by playing with tools.

Those last two links are for you, then. :)
posted by WCityMike at 12:51 PM on November 17, 2007

The Grocery List Collection | To Do List.
posted by ericb at 12:57 PM on November 17, 2007

i need a good todo list app but i don't have time to try all of these.
posted by jcruelty at 12:59 PM on November 17, 2007

> i need a good todo list app but i don't have time to try all of these.

I use Remember the Milk and after surveying most of the above think it's the best of the bunch: it's very quick and yet very fully featured. Hiveminder is a close second: it has almost all of RTM's features and a few it doesn't, although it is slightly slower (no AJAX) and its interface feels a little off to me. If you don't have the time to try all of those, I'd check those two out and pick whichever you like best.
posted by WCityMike at 1:03 PM on November 17, 2007

Mac users will shortly have OmniFocus, which I have been beta testing, and is brilliant. I think it's due to ship January 8th but you may still be able to get into the beta program if you're nice to them...
posted by unSane at 1:20 PM on November 17, 2007

I've been using the free beta of OmniFocus these past few weeks. It's nice, but the price tag ($80) is a bit steep and the interface is a little crowded.

I'll second Todoist. For the plain text file crowd, Taskpaper (from the author of WriteRoom) is pretty spiffy and very simple at the same time.
posted by jiiota at 1:22 PM on November 17, 2007

Oh, in fact I see it's out of private beta and into a public alpha which you can download from the link above.
posted by unSane at 1:22 PM on November 17, 2007

> Mac users will shortly have OmniFocus, which I have been beta testing, and is brilliant. I think it's due to ship January 8th but you may still be able to get into the beta program if you're nice to them...

Well, to be honest, there's a huge list of apps by which to-dos can be done. I concentrated on web apps in this post for two reasons: (i) to limit the focus of the post a little [adding apps would've added about 5.73 x 10³⁰ more links to this] and (ii) web apps have the added benefit of portability: they're accessible with most any OS and many by cell phone as well.
posted by WCityMike at 1:26 PM on November 17, 2007

TODO: Waste lots of time trying out different to-do lists.
posted by delmoi at 1:29 PM on November 17, 2007 [1 favorite]

TLDR.
posted by srboisvert at 1:44 PM on November 17, 2007

I have ADHD, and I can't keep track of any of my crap (even notebooks where I write to-do lists). So, I've been looking for the right web app for managing myself.

Remember The Milk is OK. I should probably go back to it now that they've expanded the feature base.

Tadalist is really straightforward and has an open RSS feed, which means I can follow my list in my reader. It's just a to-do list, though.

Sandy is what I've been using the last few weeks. I like how I can pull others into it and the plain English. However, there's a learning curve in understanding what Sandy is scanning for in your e-mails.

Sandy's sibling product is Stikkit, and.... yearrgh. That was a pain to work with. I used it for two weeks and just abandoned it. (It's remarkably similar to Sandy, but I can't tell why I like Sandy more.)

I keep thinking that Google is going to come up with something to tie all their apps together. And also, that Sergey is the Antichrist. No, wait, that's Larry Ellison.
posted by dw at 1:52 PM on November 17, 2007

> Tadalist is really straightforward and has an open RSS feed, which means I can follow my list in my reader.

A new feature in RTM.
posted by WCityMike at 2:14 PM on November 17, 2007

Small spiral notebook? Check!
Pilot Disposable Fountain Pen? Check!

Um. That's it for me.
posted by willmize at 2:26 PM on November 17, 2007 [1 favorite]

For people who are disorganized, I don’t think time management systems are very helpful. I shudder to think of how much money I’ve wasted on stuff by David Allen, Steven Covey, Anthony Robbins, Day-Timers, etc., and whenever I’ve tried one of these web apps, I’ve managed to stick with it for only a few weeks at most. Playing around with these systems and tools just becomes another way to procrastinate. Most are too complicated and have too many features. For people who are already well organized, they are helpful, but for others they’re overwhelming. The best method I’ve found is to simply write shit down.
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear at 2:45 PM on November 17, 2007

I'm fond of emacs's org-mode, but I need a way to get todo lists and nested checklists out of in and into my Nokia 770, which is very much a stylus and 4-way dpad & buttons beast.

Any advice, or should I go code my own?
posted by sebastienbailard at 2:58 PM on November 17, 2007

The more meta-organization one does, the less time one has for actually getting the work done (re the warpspire link in the post).

Hence I tried to make Gootodo as simple as possible. First empty your inbox by forwarding action items as far as possible into the future, then actually get stuff done by working off of today's todo list.
posted by mark7570 at 3:23 PM on November 17, 2007

Folks, all ya' need is a hipster PDA!
posted by ericb at 3:40 PM on November 17, 2007 [1 favorite]

Who needs a PDA when I've got paper?
posted by ericb at 3:43 PM on November 17, 2007

I've been using omnifocus for months but dropped it for taskpaper. I didn't realize how much I hated using omnifocus until I tried taskpaper.
posted by justgary at 3:48 PM on November 17, 2007

I assume Web 3.0 is going to figure out how to actually get me to DO the things on my list right?
posted by any major dude at 4:42 PM on November 17, 2007

Metafilter is my ToDo list.
posted by spiderskull at 4:45 PM on November 17, 2007

The only one worth the time and money is a secretary, a Friday who will make sure you get your shit done and will actually help you do it.
posted by pracowity at 3:16 AM on November 18, 2007