Dec

1

Productivity Ninja: Todoist vs. Google Tasks vs. Remember the Milk

Filed Under productivity 

I’ve been slowly trying to convince myself to streamline my workflow. I wanted to start with my calendar, but that soon gave way to wanting to think about how I maintain my online notes, which in turn gave way to stressing over my to-do lists.

Actually, it may have been the last Firefox upgrade that led to my focusing on my to-do lists over everything else. You see, I’m in love with Todoist. I have been for quite some time now. I used to keep it open in my sidebar so it was always right in front of me, keeping me on task. But the extension didn’t keep up with Firefox through the latest upgrade, and I’ve been forced to find another way to keep my to-do list in front of me while I try to work out my calendar.

Really, my calendar and my to-do list are tightly tied together, so I guess learning that Google Tasks integrated into Google Calendar also led to my focusing on my to-do list. At first, I thought I’d like Google Tasks. It allows for hierarchical tasks like Todoist, and it allow for separate projects like Todoist. It actually puts the task on my calendar on the due date, which makes it far more visible.

There was a problem, though. It only shows tasks for the selected project, and only one project can be selected at a time. Those familiar with how I work know that I’m usually juggling two or three projects at a time. It wasn’t practical because I was almost spending more time jumping between lists as I tried to make sure I was getting everything done.

I thought about going back to Todoist, but I am starting to have my calendar tab open more than my iGoogle tab (where my Todoist gadget happily keeps me company). It wasn’t the right solution.

Then, I learned Remember the Milk, which I’ve avoided forever because it doesn’t offer hierarchical tasks, had a Calendar gadget. I’ve decided to give it a try. I’ve only been using it for a week, but I find that I’m liking it for managing recurring tasks (which it handles far better than Google Tasks) and for more straightforward, smaller projects. It’s easy to use, has gadgets for both Calendar and iGoogle that allow me to see what’s due on all of my projects today and through the next few days. It also allows me to tag and annotate tasks, which has already proven useful more than once.

I’m not really ready to give up Todoist for Remember the Milk on larger, more complicated projects yet, but the two working in tandem seems to be my best solution so far.

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Comments

  • I've had similar issues which led me to your blog.. although mine is integrating GMail with Tasks, not Calendar. I chose Todoist for the time being because it has a Bookmarklet to add the GMail email into tasks easily with a link back, and RTMs Create Task frmo Email seems to be broken, and has been for weeks. I also prefer Todoits simple layout compared to RTM... RTM seems a bit more overloaded. But you can email RTM a task, but not Todoist, and RTM seems better for iPhone management.

    Either way, I think I will stick with Todoist until the RTM create task from email thing is fixed (I think its a Googl/Greasemonkey issue).

    I found this post because I wanted to find out if Todoist can integrate with Google Calendar and create tasks from appointments without me having to go to my calendar. That would be a great selling point. This is because I have someone else manage a shared calendar, but I dont check the calendar often, only Tasks!

    P.S. I fing GQueues is treating me like a 5 year old with its colour and layout. I find Google apps very good, but just always that little too basic for me.
  • I'm now giving GQueues a try, and I have to agree that all of the color is a bit much. But I can match list colors up with their respective calendar color in GCal (even if they all show up in GQueues' color on GCal), so I'm telling myself I can live with this for now.

    Once I'm more familiar with GQueues, I'm planning to do a follow-up post.
  • MikeyB
    Take a look at Gqueues www.gqueues.com I feeds into a Google calendar and is much more flexible than Google tasks.
  • This looks like an interesting tool. Thanks for pointing it out!
  • Dez
    To use Todoist in Firefox you just need the bookmarklet:

    http://lifehacker.com/5369279/todoist-anywhere-...
  • The problem is, I don't want one more thing I have to click to work with my to-do list, which is why the sidebar was a much better solution for me. I also am not a fan of things covering what I'm trying to work on.

    Apps that can be added as widgets are a second-best solution for me because I can mark things off when I go to record things on my calendar. It's more streamlining for me.
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