Firstly thank you Charles for being kind enough to extend a beta copy of Action Lists for me to do this review.
So far i have the chance to investigate 2 Task Management Software:
- Appigo ToDo [Review Here >>]
- eToDo [Review Here >>]
For sure, these are not the only lists around and the fact that the competition is so hot means there is only one winner here, which is you the consumer!
Action Lists is brought to you by Daze End Software, you may have come across another of its software which is ListMaker and this one is working on the same formula as List Maker.In fact you can say that action Lists is building on the same formula as List Maker.
Action Lists, like most task management applications on iPhone enables you to follow the GTD Workflow by David Allen but for me, it can be much more than that.
How much does it cost?
There is a free version for you to try that is FREE. However, it only enables you to create a limited number of tasks and projects.
The paid application cost USD9.99, which is the same cost as Appigo Todo and Things.
When you cost that much, you gotta be as competitive as them. Here we will see if it measures up.
How does it work?
Action Lists does task management according to the GTD workflow, but you have the flexibility to do it in alot of ways.
Typically you start off by doing a sweep to collect any thing that you can think of. Any thoughts that translates to actionable tasks will go into the Inbox.
Task entry is similar to Appigo ToDo in that you can use a Quick Add button to add a task without detail specifications. But most would prefer to use the detail entry screen.
Here you can enter the
- description of your task
- start date of the task
- end date of the task
- notes for the task
- context/categories of the task and
- which project it belongs to
- set task to repeating
whatever a good todo list have, Action Lists have it for you. You can specify your own contexts and later you can filter by them.
The repeating task is abit special. You can set them to continous repeat, and the tasks will be generated either when the day have been reached, or when the task have been completed.
the options that you can have for repeating tasks
I find this to necessary in the past to have the task recur on its own when the day comes but i realise that doing this, you can very likely litter your todo list should you fall off the to do list bandwagon and attempt to hop back on.
The preferred method will be to recur when you have complete the task. Either way, once you marked a task completed, a new recur task is added to the Inbox
new recurring task is in inbox
This is abit different but its Action Lists way to make sure that all new task is handled at Inbox level. some people will like this, some will not.
Nested Projects
When you are organizing your tasks in your inbox, if the task needs more than 1-2 steps to be handled, you will create a Project to group them together.
This is where Action Lists differs from all task list on the market. Action Lists enables you to have unlimited projects within projects and there will alot of folks who appreciate this as you can really group your tasks by:
- Personal and Work
- Strategic Goals
- Area of Responsibilities
- Project Milestones
- Small Projects
I used to want this nested feature alot as i think it makes alot of sense. Even the Desktop ToDoList that i have created based on Nested Tree List. People that are in software development would have use Microsoft Project and it enables you to have nested task. If you look at your life as one big project then having nested list will really help.
first level has 2 projects. we go into work
second level have 3 area of responsibilities. we go into the first area of responsibilities
third level have 2 more projects. we go into the btm project
fourth level.the tasks
Not having it is not end of the world. In fact most people will just make do with 2 levels: the first level being your Area of Responsibilities be it Project A, Being a good family man and the second level being your Project milestones to achieve that area of responsibility.
Task Status and Doing the Task via Context
How you perform the “Do It” after “Organzing it” will be based on 2 things: the Status of the task and the Context.
setting the status will determine whether the task shows up in action lists
When defining the task you can select the status.
Setting the Task to Waiting will cost the task to pop up at the Waiting Tab (notice the increase in number badge indicating the number of waiting task) for me this is good as it really provides a clear seperation of tasks that are currently waiting. Currently with Appigo ToDo, i have it as one of my Tags and while i have said Appigo toDo main problem is that you need to go into the tags to see how many unfinish task you have. With Action Lists you don’t have this problem.
set status to waiting will show task up at waiting tab
The Same goes with Someday. Once you decide to do a Someday task, just switch the status to Active or Next Action
As i have said, you hop on over to Action Lists Tab to go through your context to see your next action.
contexts provides the navigation depending on your current location/person you are with
You will note that there aren’t alot of task queued here. Why is that? This is because only task set to Next Action Status will appear here!
Its a novel way of filtering away all the freaking task and only show what you have to do next.
There is abit of a problem here. So lets say you completed a task, what you need to do next is go to the Projects tab and go to that particular project and set the next task status to Next Action from Active.
what happens when your task is so deeply nested inside?
This is where Task Queue comes in. Touch the blue arrow next to each project folder and you will see the option “Queue Next Actions“.
Toggle it on and after you finish one next action, it will immediately set the next earliest due task to Next action from Active. This may not work well if you have tasks that have dependency not based on time of completion. the jury is still out if this performs well enough
auto queue the next task to process
Synchronize and backup to ToodleDo
Action Lists enables you to back up your tasks and folders to Toodledo. I have not tested how well this works since my ToodleDo syncs with Appigo ToDo but i have a feeling it will be another case that ToodleDo will act as a backup rather than allow you to use it both online and on your iPhone.
Do tell me your experience with syncing.
enter your toodledo info to sync.
Where to improve upon
This App have alot of potential i feel.However here are some things that they need to iron out.
Full Calendar selection – We cannot rely on the roller to select the date! As we are setting dates, we want to see clearly which day of the week or which weekday we set upon. Using a roller selector is not good for this.
rolling datepicker in Action Lists
ToDo's calendar date picker implementation
More Description details – from the picture below you will see that its very difficult to tell at one glance what you need to do. you will have to go into the task itself. I feel this needs to be expanded
Notice that there are truncation that will hinder a quick review of task. you will need to go in to know more.
Conclusion
On the whole a very good to do list i feel. Does everything the competition has and a very niche and competitive feature in Nested Projects. Fix the problems that i mention and its well worthed the price.
For one that have program a todo list, i can truely appreciate this product and its difficulties. We hope that the next 1 month users will give ample feedbacks to increase the stability of the software. Appigo Todo have this problem for all versions, due to the complexity of to do lists in general.
so do contribute and highlight the issues to make this a good todo list!
