Re: Your To-Do List
What do you use to handle your ongoing to-do list? I want to find a
program that does these things:
I am using Google Calendars for this purpose. I create a calendar for each
project I work on. I have a generic one for tasks unassociated with
projects. I can show/hide each or all calendars allowing me to focus on one
project or the interactions, resource-wise, of many projects. Each project
has its own color, so when viewing lots of them, I can tell them apart
without reading each task. I schedule some tasks as multi-day tasks to show
effort rather than milestone type tasks. For example, if I need to code for
a week, I create a task/all-day-event with a 5-day duration. If I need to
make a phone call, I'd create a single-day duration event. It's searchable
(duh, google). It's accessible from anywhere you have a net connection.
It is beta and occasionally ... rarely ... disappears for a while.
Theoretically it can pull in iCal formatted calendars from anywhere on the
net however at present it only pulls the calendar once. It doesn't regularly
go back and pull updates. Too bad, it'd be really nice to be able to also
integrate this with my home calendars (iCal from a Mac and Mozilla Calendar
on a PC).
Google calendars are web accessible from other iCal applications (maybe rss,
too) so you can create off-google versions of the data. Nice for "backup."
1. Relates the list to a daily calendar. Ideally, I'd like to have this
calendar start up automatically, so as soon as I log in, it opens and
displays the current day's list.
It relates to a calendar since, uh, it is a calendar. I set each task as an
all-day event. Google Calendar does not start automatically (well, I haven't
tried to do that). You can configure what it displays on start (day, week,
somewhat configurable n-week range, month, "agenda" or list view).
2. Carries forward all tasks from the previous day that I haven't marked
as complete.
This is a manual process. Drag and drop works. You can also edit each
"task's" date.
3. Keeps a historic record of each day's tasks, so I can see what I was
doing a year and a day ago if I want.
I re-assign each item to a "completed" calendar and rename the task with a
project-prefix so I know which project each completed task was associated
with.
4. Enables me to print out the to-do lists for a range of days (or months).
Supported. Use Agenda view.
5. In the best of all possible worlds, enables me to link to my address
book, the emails I've received and sent for a particular day, and notes
(for a day, a task, whatever).
Some of this may be possible if you use gmail and/or other google stuff, but
I don't attempt to do this.
I've been using an elderly copy of Mozilla, a relic of my desire to give
Microsoft a wide berth. At this point, I'm desperate to get my calendar
and tasks coordinated, and I'll bow to Microsoft if Outlook or some
other product is the best for the purpose. (I will say that I tried to
use the Outlook feature at my last job and found it odd. Hard to read,
obscure procedures. But maybe I just didn't learn it well enough.)
I use Outlook at work for meetings and e-mail. I could not make its task
functionality work for me, though. The only thing I track this way (and I
may even be able to stop once I get a little time to explore gcalendar
recurrence functionality are weekly/monthly/quarterly tasks that are not
typically project related and are easily scheduled within Outlook.
--
Paul Nagai
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Follow-Ups:
- Your To-Do List?, Geoff Hart
References:
Your To-Do List: From: Nancy Allison
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