Experiments in Life Because Sometimes Science Screws Up!

Task Management Tools

I am more than willing to admit it; I am horrible at managing tasks on my own. Some people are able to remember what they need to do and where they need to be all on their own. I am not one of those people. I depend on technology to be my memory. It all started so innocently back in college. I needed a reminder of when my classes were and what assignments I had due. So, I purchased a Handspring running PalmOS. I was able to keep track of my calendar, my tasks, and my contacts; everything that you would expect a PDA to do. Life was good.

Then, I started to notice that my cell phone and my PDA were bulky. I hated to carry both of them together. Plus, my address book on the PDA was always getting out of sync with the address book on the phone. I thought, "You know, if they would just put a cell phone and a PDA together, life would be good again." And lo, I discovered the Palm Treo. It was very expensive, so I just made due with what I had and gradually the PDA got less and less use until I had been working for a few years and could afford to get a Palm Treo. Now, I had my calendar, my tasks, and my contacts all together AND I could make phone calls with the same device using the same address book that I synced to my computer! Life was good again.

Then, I started to notice that my Treo and my iPod were bulky. I hated to carry both of them together. I needed the life-line that was the Treo, but I really got used to listening to music while I worked. So, I thought, "You know, if Apple would just put a cell phone, PDA, and iPod together, life would be good again." And lo, Apple did just that and released the iPhone. It was very expensive, so I made due with what I had. Finally, Apple came out with a version that had a lower up-front cost, so I jumped on that and purchased an iPhone 3G. Now, I had my calendar, my tasks, my contacts, my music, my email, the Internet, AND I could make phone calls with the same device. Life was good again.

Then, I started to notice that I had lost the ability to easily track my tasks using the iPhone. It took too long to interrupt my train of thought to pull out the iPhone and enter in appointments and tasks using the iPhone interface. Ideally, I really wanted to be able to just capture information quickly and come back and enter it in at my leisure. So, I signed up for Evernote and installed its iPhone application. Plus, Evernote also has Windows and Mac clients which make it even easier to stash information.

Finally, I became dis-enlightened with the iPhone task-tracking application that I was using. Once again, it just took too long to enter information into it. I could purchase an expensive Mac client that would wirelessly sync with it, but the keyword here is expensive. So, I decided to give Tasks a try. It has some warts, but it is the best solution that I have used so far. Plus, it is a web application, so I can enter information into it from my desktop, my laptop, or my iPhone.

Next time, I will go over my work-flow and explain just how all of these tools work for me.