Thursday, October 15, 2009

Latest trends to manage your tasks electronically

Like most of you, and well before web2, the cloud and the smart-phones, I have been a user of electronic agendas and personal productivity tools for a long time. Lotus organizer was a pretty good tool for its time back in the 90's. But, as most people, I did not have a handheld or PDA. So, completely managing my tasks electronically was impractical. My tasks were not with me when I need them the most, on the road. When handheld appeared, things were much better. My Palm Pilot and a few years later the machines with Windows CE machine allowed me to do a lot but still was not perfect. You needed to synchronize with your desktop computer and that was cumbersome for things that change fast like tasks. Now, Web2, the cloud and the smarphones have changed the landscape and we finally reached the point of having a complete platform for personal productivity and I want to share my latest experience with you.
After moving all my personal files to my Google account and accessing them from my computer as well as from my iphone, I am almost reaching total integration and practicality. My agenda and my emails are automatically synchronized and both accessible form any computer and from my iphone all the time.

The question that still remains is: Which task manager to use?. Unfortunately, Google current solution for tasks is very poor.
But Google is not alone, until recently, most personal productivity software were also very basic or difficult to use. Outlook seems to offer a lot, but I have tried for years and I could not organize things in the way I liked. I wanted to related tasks with goals, with certain tags and other criteria and it was just not natural. Too much flexibility that ended up confusing me and not going to the point.

Now, I have discovered a web service that very naturally accommodates my style and I think it will accommodate yours: http://www.toodledo.com The site is can be used for free (or paid a little for some premium features). Toodledo is one more tool supporting GTD (Getting Things Done) methodologies.

Now, I can organize my tasks by folder, goals, tags, due date and many other criteria and I can see them on my iphone via a very easy-to-use interface that I can operate with my fingers. No need to synchronize. Everything will be in sync automatically. You can edit your tasks on the web as in the next figure.
And then, you can go to your mobile phone and see and manipulate your tasks there as well. Of course, you can set alarms that will remind you all the time via your smartphone.

Summarizing, by moving all your files, calendar and contact to Google and your tasks to Toodledo, you get a complete solution for personal productivity 24/7 reachable from your computer or your smartphone. The other good news is that all this tools are free or almost free.

4 comments:

  1. Nice article Pablo! What iPhone application do you use to interact with Toodledo?

    --Jorge

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  2. Hi Pablo, I don't have an iPhone, but have a Black Berry, will Toledo work as nicely on my BB?

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  3. Hi Jorge,
    I use the iphone application develope by Toodledo, you can dowload this for free from the apple store. Toodledo - To do List ($2.99).

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  4. Hi Gustavo,
    I do not have a blackberry :), but this client should do the trick: http://www.taskjot.com/

    Please ,try it and write about it!

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