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Dec
1
Productivity Ninja: Todoist vs. Google Tasks vs. Remember the Milk
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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.
Sep
11
Living and working in the same space
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Whether it’s in a studio apartment, a dorm room, or even just a room in a shared house, a lot of us wrestle with the challenge of living and working in the same space. It’s easy to let one overtake the other if you don’t have a plan in place.
I’ve been wrestling with this problem for over a year now. In my case, the problem stems from the room’s architecture. It’s an odd size. The window and doors, placed well for a bedroom, impede the development of a good workspace. I’m finally to the point where I’m thinking about making the room look more like an office that someone just happens to live in, but that hasn’t been terribly helpful yet, either. I’m also looking at keeping the furniture simple and modular so I can experiment with arrangements until I find the right one.
Through this process, though, I’ve learned a lot about how I live and how I work. I’ve known for years that I don’t need a whole lot of living space because I tend to either be at my computer working or playing, or I’m curled up on my bed with a book or my DS. Now I know that I need space to spread out to work. (It’s amazing how often I work on my bed because of space issues.) I also work better if I have something interesting to look at (and sadly, my lilac wall covered with a calendar and to-do lists isn’t it). That’s helping me stay focused on what I really want as I redesign the room.
So, what I’ve learned about trying to create a space I can both live and work in:
- If something doesn’t work, tweak it before making a radical change. A small change can sometimes make a big difference. (I moved my desk over to a wall to make room for my bookshelves. The move wasn’t thought out beforehand, and now I’m stuck at a desk that doesn’t inspire to do anything but ask myself why I did this.)
- If something worked but needs to change to make another change happen, think through the change carefully before implementing.
- Figure out what your must-haves are, and then don’t give them up and call it “compromise”. It’ll make you miserable and potentially leave you with a productivity-sapping workspace.
If you’ve had to arrange a space so that you could both live and work in it (or if you’re currently going through this process), how did you resolve problems?
Sep
9
I mentioned last week that I’m cleaning up and reorganizing my digital workspace. When I started, I had notes, ideas, and links spread over LiveJournal, Evernote, delicious, and Todoist. I had a hard time keeping up with projects and ideas because I was never sure where I had stored the associated information, and it had finally pushed me over the edge.
To make matters worse, I’m an avid reader with a well-populated Google Reader keeping up with my subscriptions and saved search results, and I couldn’t decide where to put the information I was picking up there.
What’s an infovore to do? I couldn’t just put my reading on hold while I organized everything else because I had no idea what direction I wanted to organize in. I couldn’t cross my fingers and hope that I would start organizing as I either added or looked up information.
Except that’s kind of what I’m now doing. I allow myself two reading periods during the day, not counting the time I spend reading (only one book at a time instead of two or three). By slowing down the flow of information into my system, I have found that I have the time to sit down with one of my tools and work on cleaning it up and organizing it.
I feel like I’m regaining control over my information while at the same time still learning more, and that’s making this a much more tolerable project.
Sep
4
Tagging, revisited
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When I finally surrendered to the evil ways to tagging last year, I discussed part of what I was thinking (mostly in regards to organizing and playing music).
Now, I’m trying to bring some order to what I would call my workspace (others would call my PLE), and I’m really relying on tags in a way that I think reflects what tagging is supposed to be while making it very useful to me personally. I’m still thinking about how tagging not only promotes findability, but also how it promotes that rip-mix-burn mindset to look at what you have in a different light.
I’m also researching terms for the best fitting tag. Nuances can not only make all the difference in the world, but researching them can help develop and strengthen your own vocabulary. Synonyms, on the other hand, strengthen nothing but your sense of frustration when you can’t remember how you tagged something and sends you to the search box, completing defeating the purpose for the tags to begin with.
I still have a lot of work to do, but I think I’m finally finding a common ground with tagging and determining how it fits within my own organization structure.
Jun
26
One way to reduce stress is to do things you enjoy. The idea is if you enjoy what you’re doing, then it will be less likely to add to your stress.
Unless you’re like me. I keep a master to-do list of various projects I need and want to get through, many of which involve activities I enjoy. Then, I select a few to work on for the time being. On the surface, this looks like a great idea. When I need to unwind, I have a selection of ways to chill out and do something I enjoy.
Instead, what happens sometimes is that I’ve become so overwhelmed that those few choices feel overwhelming and I can’t do anything until I’ve resolved some of that stress. Then, I can narrow down my choices and start getting things done.
Sometimes, I”ll set a deadline for parts of projects I’m working on and that works well for me. I can work to a deadline and not get stressed out about it. Except there are times I can’t meet my own deadline for whatever reason. When I’m just juggling projects, I’ll often shift around deadlines so I can finish what I’m working on. But when that sense of being overwhelmed kicks in, I become annoyed that I missed the deadline, which adds to my stress, and I have to take a step back, relax, and then shuffle the current deadlines.
Lesson learned: Working on projects or activities you enjoy can be a great way to relax. Just make sure the project or activity isn’t adding to your stress level.
Jun
4
Twitter Updates for 2009-06-04
Filed Under book love, daily tweets, productivity | View Comments
- I’m going to do something amazing and actually add things to my calendar! (It’s been neglected for months.) #
- On page 191 of 400 of The Serpent’s Shadow by Mercedes Lackey. I’m interested to see how the Snow White references play out. #
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Oct
1
Tags and Playlists
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Since I’m talking about tagging this week, it’s as good a time as any to talk about building playlists through tagging, and mood playlists and birthday playlists…even if I’m still not working on my mood playlists!
One of the things that’s always frustrated me is that if I add a song to a playlist, my computer perceives that as two different songs and uses up the appropriate memory. If I add it to two or three lists, it’s like having two or three copies of the song lying around.
In playing with tagging and manipulating my content, I got to thinking about building playlists through tagging instead. I know last.fm allows this. Please let me know if any players allow for this. The way I see this working (or at least have seen it work on last.fm) is that you can add as many tags as you feel necessary (album, artist, genre, mood, etc), and then you select the tag into player’s interface to hear just the songs with that particular tag. You could also conceivably select multiple tags to build a playlist appropriate to the moment.
Jan
21
Since working with Google Apps is a bit buggy more often than not, I’ve been trying to find a better way to work online. I keep looking at Zoho, but there’s something about it that just makes me walk away, quickly. I’ve looked into some other online apps that focus just on organizing (I kind of like having my documents online, too, though.), but so few of them organize the way my mind organizes.
I considered moving to an offline PIM, but quickly found that neither the Mozilla productivity apps nor Evolution would let me work the way I want, either.
What is a poor girl to do?
I guess for now I’m stuck cobbling together apps I like (like Todoist) and wishing favorite apps (like EverNote) would either develop on online app or a Linux version, and use Google Apps while I work on finding a suitable replacement.
Jan
7
Working against the advice
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I am a huge fan of Todoist. I love being able to set up a list for each area of my life and for separate projects. I love being able to form smaller projects out of larger ones. I love setting due dates and then manipulating those dates as necessary. (I want more colors for the labels…in a wider variety.) I love being able to manage it from my iGoogle page.
I just love Todoist. It’s like the to-do list on steroids.
I love playing with my lists, too. I try every evening to sit down and go through all of the to-do lists to pick out a handful of items to work on the next day (sometimes, this doesn’t happen until the following morning). During the day, I also comb through it at least once or twice to find more work.
Here’s the funny thing, though: I can’t “walk through” Todoist without doing at least two or three smaller tasks…just to get them off my list. It never fails. I’m just looking for a project to work on for a little bit, and boom, I’ve knocked another five things off the list. It’s really pretty funny.
Productivity gurus say to stay focused on the tasks at hand, but I find letting my to-do list have a certain amount of flexibility keeps me far more productive.
Dec
17
Planning life by writing a screenplay
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Goal-setting can be a daunting task. It’s easy to set small goals because you can see where they’re taking you.
Long-term goals, especially ones changing a part or three of your life, are a bit harder to see because you don’t actually know what the end of the rod is going to look like. You can make your best guess, and try to visualize it from your current knowledge, but even that can be a bit taxing.
Lately, a number of people have been talking about writing these goals into a screenplay rather than a to-do list. Screenplays, by their very nature, are visual creatures. They are scripts to be followed, and reworked when a scene isn’t working.
It’s a great visualization tool because it really forces you to think about the story, or the flow, of your life, and then allows you to find your path through the flow scene by scene, act by act. You can measure the actions of the character (yourself) against a character bio that you’ve hopefully drawn up.
If you’re a visual person, give this method a try and see if it helps you move forward more than other methods. You might find it fun and productive.
(In case anyone wonders, I’m laying the groundwork for my “screenplay”, which is more a television show than a movie because an episodic structure fits my life much better at the moment.)
