The topic that Productive Organizer talks about more so then others are task management. In fact I even have a whole set of tutorials to carry out task management the Getting Things Done way (see here)

The problem is that there isn’t much tutorial taught in school how to manage your to do list (amongst other things like finances and keeping healthy)

The Wall Street Journal have a great article today talking about why people don’t complete their tasks.

Among the different problems faced are such

• Kat Nagel, a technical-communications consultant in Rochester, N.Y., used to let her to-do list balloon to 14 pages and "it was never up-to-date," once causing her to miss a project deadline
• Kris Paige, a veterinary technician, used to keep her to-dos on sticky notes, "but the glue failed,"
• Kim Bauer’s long paper lists of all the tasks and goals she hopes to accomplish sometimes "get completely out of hand," says the Vancouver, Wash., writer

The problem with not managing well normally boils down to

1. You do not collect everything in your head outside. You don’t always have your list. When you want to write down you forgot them already
2. Your list is so jumble up that you do not know which one to do first
3. Your tasks are not well describe and are so big that you do not know how to start!
4. When you are at the place you want to do something you don’t have your list with you
5. Your tasks are too vague!
6. You don’t trust your list at all!

Why I advocate Getting Things Done is because I believe it address all these issues. It is not a fad but an education of how you can manage tasks and calendaring.

The smartphone and web is probably the best thing that happen to task management.You can now collect tasks wherever you are because you always have your cell phones (unless like me you work in a situation where you cannot bring camera devices haha)

Do read my Getting things Done Tutorial or To do list review on the side bar

There are more helpful thoughts from experts in the wall street article so do read it as well.

What is your greatest problem with task management?

The first item on a highly successful to-do list: Make a better to-do list.

With the new year comes the urge to accomplish all the things that were meant to be done the year before, and it often starts with long to-do lists. The lists themselves can fuel anxiety, says Sasha Cagen, an Oakland, Calif., life coach and author of a book on to-do lists. She sees many new clients at this time of year and often advises them to put more tasks on their list that they genuinely enjoy. Some 23% of list-makers spend more time making the lists than doing the tasks on them, according to a 2006 online survey of 600 people conducted by Ms. Cagen.

There are, of course, all kinds of ways to stay on top of tasks. Some people like the tactile experience of hand written to-do lists on paper, embellished with doodles or designs. Others think more clearly when they type, sort and store tasks in computers, tablets or smartphones, and they like the mobility of programs that update lists on all their devices.

Even with so many methods, it is still easy to muck up list making. Kat Nagel, a technical-communications consultant in Rochester, N.Y., used to let her to-do list balloon to 14 pages and "it was never up-to-date," once causing her to miss a project deadline. Ran Barton, an operations analyst in Wilmington, Del., wrote his to-dos on pieces of paper—which he sometimes lost.

Kris Paige, a veterinary technician, used to keep her to-dos on sticky notes, "but the glue failed," she says. She started writing up to 20 tasks on her bathroom mirror in dry-erase marker so she would be sure to see them, but the method sometimes caused embarrassment when she forgot to erase the list before visitors arrived. Using a digital app to enter tasks in her phone and computer reduced the mirror list to two items, says Ms. Paige, who owns a Livermore, Colo., llama ranch.

Kim Bauer’s long paper lists of all the tasks and goals she hopes to accomplish sometimes "get completely out of hand," says the Vancouver, Wash., writer. Rewriting and prioritizing them becomes an excuse to procrastinate. Now, she forces herself to condense them into a single, more realistic list, and it "makes me feel more organized."

A well-maintained list is "an essential tool for staying grounded, for saving your energy and for doing things rather than trying to remember what to do," says Julie Morgenstern, a New York author and expert on time management.

Effective to-do lists are limited to specific tasks that can be tackled right away and finished fairly soon, Ms. Morgenstern says. Instead of listing "solve client issue," write, "spend one hour defining the scope of client problem."

A list should reflect a time estimate needed for each task. And it should be integrated into a calendar or schedule, to avoid "planning 17 things for tomorrow which, if you added them up, are going to take 20 hours," Ms. Morgenstern says.

There are strategies for tackling dreaded tasks as well. Ms. Morgenstern tells of a computer consultant who was energized by appointments with clients, but stalled with administrative tasks like paying bills, writing proposals or planning strategy. She suggested he assign start and end times to mundane tasks as if they were appointments, and break them up with activities requiring contact with people. The new approach stopped his procrastinating.

To prevent getting mired in mindless make-work, some software helps people measure tasks against broad life goals. Ms. Nagel, the Rochester consultant, uses Life Balance by Llamagraphics. The software has her start with a master list of goals, such as doing fulfilling and financially rewarding work and volunteering for community causes. These are prioritized and broken into tasks, with details about the time and effort required and where and when they must be done.

Using this data, the app assigns eight to 12 items to Ms. Nagel’s to-do list. She hasn’t missed a deadline since she starting using the software, which has helped her shift plans to balance work demands, singing in a choir and volunteering at a food bank.

[Full article @ WSJ]

Now at WATODO! we are trying to integrate with Toodledo. Why we choose Toodledo is because they provide us with a very nice and comprehensive API. Toodledo strives to be very extensive in what you can do with tasking, be it nesting, repeating and scheduling.

But what a lot of people yearns for is for Google to really focus on making their Google Tasks great. Google finally listen to what we want and started taking in view and opinions of what we want for Google Tasks.

on May 11,2011, Google released their Google Tasks API. The question is whether this will be better than Toodledo.

I will have to do some exploring and my start a new project on this.

The API is available in Labs and can be activated for your project through the API Console. Get started today by trying the Tasks API yourself using the API Explorer and taking a look at the documentation.

Merlin Mann is the man behind 43Folders a leading site talking about productivity.

Here is a must see videos gotten off DidIGetThingsDone.com talking about why he likes OmniFocus and how he uses the perspective aspect of it.

Tricking-out Your OmniFocus Perspectives from The Omni Group on Vimeo.

If you are into task management, you should watch this!

Around June last year, 3 friends and I got ourselves interested in this new open source platform called Android. Back then, we only have Astrid as the main to do list.

Over at iOS we have very competitive alternatives to choose from and we felt can offer something competitive over at the Android platform.

This week we release WAToDo! Android To Do List on the Android Market.

For Agile and Simple task management

WAToDo! aims to be the to do list to help users to Collect, Plan, Execute and Monitor tasks on their Android Smartphones and in the future Android tablets.

It aims to not just follow David Allen’s Getting Things Done to make sense of task management (For a primer on this, read my Getting Things Done Series), but also to be malleable for users from all walks of life to bend WAToDo! to fit their personal task management system.

Community Driven Development

For this to work, we decided to offer what we feel are the most basic functionality and seek users support and feed backs through our community forum to build subsequent features or workflows into it.

Apply Getting Things Done to manage task the right way

WAToDo! was created very much with the GTD methodology in mind, but really what it hopes to achieve is to make you the user more effective.

Here is a modified workflow diagram from my Getting Things Done Series. Why GTD works is because it make sense of the aggregation of ideas, thoughts, frustrations, finds a way to process them and teaches you how to execute and monitor them in a systematic manner.

In the following sections, I will guide everyone through how GTD can be carried out with WAToDo!

Collecting your thoughts, ideas, frustrations and things encounter

What makes the smartphone such a great device is that we always have our cell phone with us, when we have an idea or something that we just thought of that needs to be done, we want to lock in that idea immediately and not forget about it.

With WAToDo! your thoughts and ideas can be entered into your smartphone Inbox. Just like a mail inbox, this will be information in the most raw form.

The cross in each Task List brings you to the task creation section. Be sure to use actionable key words to describe your task. The more clearly define your task, the more likely it gets done.

Our interface is coherent in the sense that for most decision and entries area there is a Save and Cancel button on the top action bar.

Upon Save, task will be created. You will be brought to the detail manage task section

WAToDo! provides numerous parameters to tag to each task.

1. Make Task into a Project
2. Due date for task
3. Assign Priority to task
4. Change status easily between uncompleted, completed or next action
5. Assign multiple tags to task
6. Assign which Task List or Project the task belongs to
7. Recur task upon completion
8. Tag Notes to task

We recommend assigning due date to task that are constraint to finish within a certain day and tags to better describe how this task should be handled. We will go into Tags, Task Lists and Projects later.

Better Monthly Calendar Date Selector

One of the thing I find lacking about the Android platform was the date selector. While on the iOS we have a calendar selector that we can at one glance see where Today falls upon, how far we want the due date to be.

At WAToDo! we provide one step further by providing some commonly used date entries like “Today”, “2 Weeks from now” or “3 Months from now” simply because most of the time this is how our cognitive minds think about setting due dates.

Setting Task to Next Action

Why do we enable you to toggle a task to “Next Action” ? Simply because while reviewing your task it makes it easy for you to select a task to do immediately and highlight it as Next to do.

Attach Multiple Tags

WAToDo! thinks Tags is one of the most important aspect of a to do list, so much so that you need to be able to create your own tags and choose multiple tags to tag to your task. We will later see why this is important.

Repeating Task

Some people see value in repeating task. We do as well as some tasks you will do it every day, every 2 weeks or every 30th of the month.

At WAToDo! you can easily specify this.

Planning with Task Lists and Projects

Once you have collect the task it is time to organize them so that they make sense.

WAToDo! provides 2 kinds of task containers: Task Lists and Projects. What is the difference between the 2? When do you use each type?

Each Task List can contain Projects. And Each Projects can contain more Projects. Nested Projects is a feature of the Full Paid version.

For a better tutorial on this read Organizing Lists and Tasks with WAToDo! >>

Task List

We would recommend using Task List to group your 1 year goals or your areas of responsibilities.

Some examples are

• Personal (Family Man) – for all things done to be a good father or mother or spouse.
• Project Manager Duties (Work) – to be objective in your focus to be a good planner/manager at work
• Project Armada – all tasks and projects to ensure the success and completion of Project Armada
• Project Waterloo – another project but its another key performance indicator and better to be kept seperate.
• Investor & Money – to be focus in your pursuit for good wealth and capital appreciation

Project

Readers would be aware that a task can be toggle to be a project. A task can be explicitly define as a project when its likely make up of multiple actionable tasks to fulfill an objective.

A good example is this:

• draft out documents required for the audit coming up
• check with the QA personnel what is required for the upcoming audit
• get my subordinates to validate the existing documents for audit again

These tasks belong to a common theme. They are not so much of an area of responsibility or focus to create a custom list for them, but you cannot group them under a task called "To prepare for audit".

This task is too big and if you define it as just "To prepare for audit" you will procrastinate and not fulfill it.

A better definition will be a task project.

 

Easily move tasks between Inbox, Lists and Projects

WAToDo! makes it easy for you to move tasks

Doing the Tasks

Each individual have a different way of doing their task. They either:

1. Go by date
2. Go to a specific List or Project and do it

What we recommend based on Getting Things Done is to really Tag tasks well and execute them by filtering the Tags.

We believe that tasks fall within 3 dimensions:

1. Location Specific – Tasks can only and only be carried out in this specific location. e.g. Site A, Office, Home, Errands, Commuting
2. Person/Group Specific – Tasks that are related to a person. Agendas with a certain person or group of people. e.g. Team A, Boss, Best Friend
3. Time Intensity – An estimate of how much time it requires to carry this out. Normally broken up into Low, Medium and High Intensity or Long/Short, 1 hour/half a day/1 day or more.

Either way, with WAToDo! you can easily create tags flexibly based on these 3 categories of contexts

Notice that next to each tag, you will be able to see the overdue in red and uncompleted tasks in blue.

So how do you do the tasks based on these tags? We have provide you with a workflow as follows:

WAToDo! enables you to filter by ANY or ALL tags selected to carry out the workflow above

More Tutorials at WAToDo! Guides

We can’t cover everything because there are just so much you can do with WAToDo!

At WAToDo! we provide these guides:

• Defining and collecting tasks with WAToDo!
• Organizing lists and projects with WAToDo!
• Reviewing and executing tasks with WAToDo!

In addition, we continue to add more guides to the site to help users make sense of task management.

Value Pricing

There will be 2 version of WAToDo!

1. The LITE Version will be Ad-Supported. Although it is termed LITE, it is fully functional and we are not limiting the duration you can use it or number of task input. You can download and install it here >>
2. The FULL Version is priced at USD 1.50. We believe this is less or around the cost of a burger in US. In UK its even lower than that. You can purchase and install it here >>

 

Conclusion

We humbly don’t think we have gotten everything right currently, but we made a commitment to continue to improve upon WAToDo!

The great thing is that Android is a great platform for us to see how we can take leverage on.

We continue to explore features that would benefit our users. A list of what we are exploring can be found here.

So why not download a FREE copy of LITE version and experience WAToDo! first hand today

So far most of the To do List applications that i have been talking about seems to be revolving around the iPhone platform. Don’t worry i am not a fanboy, just that i used this device more than alot of others that i have come across with.

I actually started off using a to do list with Remember the Milk some time ago, so i do know abit on web task management.

This week i was given the opportunity to try out a Web To-Do application called GTD Agenda. GTD Agenda, as its name sounds is a task management application that attempts to be close to what David Allen have envisioned to help a person manages his task.

Pricing

Like ToodleDo or Remember The Milk, GTD Agenda is those web app that have different tier pricing. The free package gives you just about enough to try, but if you are going to run it as your main to do dashboard then i think its not gonna be enough.

You should be thinking about the Basic and the Premium

Using GTD Agenda

Most of the web apps nowadays would have an element that makes them compatible with GTD (or Stephen Covey) for the matter. The only web app that blatantly does not is Remember the Milk.

GTD Agenda’s strength is that it is constructed out with GTD in mind. For those that are new to this term you can check out this series of articles on what Getting Things Done is About.

What i like about the presentation of the interface is that it is more clean compare to apps like ToodleDo which is very cluttered. A clean interface enables the user to focus on what he should be occupied with at this moment.

The user can go about setting his 20000 feet to 50000 feet goals and visions under the goal tab

Notice that all the goals would need to below to a certain category.

After all these are defined you can get down to planning your projects. Projects can be linked to a particular goal. So that during review you are able to list out the projects that you will undertake to meet that goal.

With the goals and projects defined we have set up the basic infrastructure of our todo list. Whats left is to explore how we use it daily.

Suppose that a thought enters you head that you have an actionable task to perform or you are doing your daily mindsweep, you can enter the task one at a time through its easy to use interface.

By doing this, you will not bother about the Categories/Contexts and due dates, notes. A key difference between GTD Agenda and many of the other todo list applications is the absence of an Inbox when you work on tasks that have not been processed yet.

At times i would need to skim though all my tasks to identify those that i have not organized.

The task details is important and gives you a good idea how you can filter in your review and do it phase. The Context enables you to freely define whether you want it to be based on Location, Person or Something else. You can set 5 levels of priority and you have a check box to mark this as next action.

The repeating option is great. But most other todo list have this and they do provide for more flexibility like repeating on Thur,Sat and  Sun. Repeating is important to me and certainly is a good initiative here.

Reviewing

A good feature for GTD agenda is the ability to set Daily and Weekly Schedule. Before you go about doing your task you gotta plan what you want to do for that day. That would mean breaking your days down into chunks. This will give you a good marker what is planned out for that day so that you attempt to use each day to the fullest.

When it comes to actually making use of the task list to do work, you will always want to use a Next Action and GTD Agenda does provide that.

Else when you switch to another location or with a person that you might have things for you can make use of the contexts to bring up tasks related to the person.

If you would like to have a one stop shop where you can view key milestones or important events there is a calendar section for it too.

Mobile GTD Agenda

In this age and time, if a web application is not ubiquitous then its not really going to be useful. I try out the mobile version of it and i have to say its very good.

I am using an iPod Touch trying it out on the Safari browser. You can bascially review and add new task on your phone or pda now. The flaw is that you cannot use this offline on your mobile device.

Conclusion

Its a good package i feel and it certainly helps that if you are going to do GTD you might as well go for one that matches the work flow as close as it can. However, i think there could be some challenges for GTD Agenda as the free Web apps around are getting close to this capability. They would need to up their game if they really want to start differentiating themselves  from them.

Do give GTD Agenda a try by using the image url below

Introduction

This is part of a series where i talk about my GTD experience and  my setup.

Part 1 here talks about my plan and overview of my GTD system

Part 2 here talks about why i eventually chose iPod Touch 2G as my main to do list console

Part 3 here talks about why i choose Appigo ToDo for iPhone as my main task manager

Part 4 here talks about how to plan for big projects and smaller projects

Part 5 here talks about how to make use of Contexts, Tags to Execute your tasks

Part 6 here discuss about how you can review projects better using iThoughts mind mapping software

In today’s article i will share with  you how I normally go about planning for tasks, projects and sub-projects.

Where are we now?

Ok, so in Part 1 I have presented this workflow chart which is how i would illustrate my collection, planning, processing and execution model.

Today, I will talk a fair bit on project planning. I skipped the collection portion cause I think this is a more complex portion of GTD thus i would explain more on this first.

What Constitutes as Projects?

When you collected an idea, piece of information or a probem, you decide if it is actionable. If it is, the key to decide if it is a project or a simple actionable task is how much steps you need to execute to reach your successful outcome.

Remember, thinking about your successful outcome is important, just like defining clear and manageable goals, it keeps you on the right direction on what you are suppose to do.

Personally, that was what is described about projects, but to me there is no hard and fast rule. Why this is important is because you need to break a task down to actionable steps.

If it is too complicated, you do not know how to start the blardy task and you end up procrastinating on it.

So for task that is named:

“Get Son a new bicycle”

It can be a very simple actionable step, like go downstairs go to the nearest bike shop and buy the bike. That is, if you already know what you are looking for.  But most of the times it is not so simple.

That simple task normally consist of:

1. Ask Son what kind of bicycle he likes
2. Find out how much your family have to pay for the bike (budgeting)
3. Research on where to buy the cheapest bike on the internet
4. Give son a look at the bike see if he likes it
5. Find out what to look out for if it is the first time you are buying a bike
6. Go down and buy the bike
7. Wait for the bike to be delivered to you

So, you see, our task may not be that simple at all.

Another small problem that maybe isn’t that small

In life, most of the time don’t end up the way you wanted it to turn out. Take the example that in your work as an IT engineer, you are suppose to solve a problem on your IT system you are supporting.

So again, the simple task will go something like this in your normal to do list:

“Solve why the entries do not show up on the procurement page.”

It is a simple task, if you investigated and found that a bug in your source code will delete off these entries when the user view it. So Simple

Or it could be you investigated and turn out that the entries don’t come just from your system but goes to another system and then back to your system.

Then it becomes a bigger problem that could go something like

1. Find out from database whether the entries are there
2. If database entries are there, investigate at source codes to find out if there is a problem with the codes
3. If your codes do not have a problem, find out if the other system did give us the right entries to combine to ours
4. If they didn’t inform the engineers from the other system to investigate and get back to you
5. Engineer gets back to you say that the problem is related to them but they do not have the expertise to fix it nor the budget
6. Inform your boss about this and discuss with him
7. Set up a meeting between the manager of both projects
8. more shit stuff
9. more shit stuff

Yes, sometimes our lives can get quite bad in IT line. but it is a good illustration and our friends in other industry can attest that one small problem can remain small but most times they just get bigger and bigger and take longer and longer.

The above 2 serves as examples of why certain task, you have to break them down into projects with actionable steps. Had they remain as the original task entry, you will not see what needs to be done. I can list down the steps to this xamples well because i have experience with them, but sadly not everything is like that. Making them actionable and asking “What is the next action?” would enable you to kick start the engine to perform the work.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

The guys at Remember the Milk are really trying to become the kings of task management with their ubiquitous task management system. I blog about it before that i used to spend some time on remember the milk as my main task manager and its a pretty good application.

The good thing about it is that

• they make task collection and reviewing a ubiquitous experience. you can find it
  • on their cool web interface
  • on google gadgets
  • on gmail
  • print it out
  • iphone
  • mobile web browser

Now you can add Android to it! My experience with Android have been that many establish task management developers have not taken to this platform yet and Remember the Milk looks to be the first among them to establish a foothold on this platform.

Shortly after refining their web task input methodology, they announce that their Android platform will be available to those that are willing to pay $25 per year for the Pro Account.

Here’s taking a look at the features and announcement:

Stay in sync.

Yup, it’s got background sync. Background sync! (Sorry to make all you iPhone users jealous! Everything that you create in the app syncs back to RTM (and likewise everything from RTM syncs to your device). That’s tasks, notes, lists, Smart Lists, tags, locations… everything! You can even use the entire app offline without an Internet connection, then sync up later when you’re back online.

Get notified.

The app wants to help you stay on top of things; it will pop up your reminders in the notification bar so you’ll know instantly when tasks are due. Running around town? The app can (optionally) keep an eye on your location, and let you know when a location with tasks is nearby.

Organize your way.

Organize efficiently by list, Smart List, tag, or location and prioritize your tasks. Not sure what’s next? See at a glance how many tasks are due today, tomorrow, and this week. Don’t like the ordering? Choose to sort by priority, due date, or task name for each list.

Manage your tasks.

Add and edit tasks with ease: choose from a quick ‘Add task’ bar and a full add mode. All the fields you’ve come to know and love are supported (task name, list, priority, due date/time, repeat, time estimate, tags, location, and URL) and you can even customize the fields shown. So if you’re big on tagging, you can set that field to always display when adding tasks.

Get stuff done.

Need to complete or postpone multiple tasks? No problem, just check to select those tasks in the list. You can also long press on individual tasks in the list to perform quick actions, or alternatively head over to the task view screen and do it all from there. You’ll be adding tasks just so you can say you’ve completed them.

Add tasks the Smart way.

Use the ‘Add task’ bar to add tasks with our new Smart Add syntax (e.g., “Pick up the milk tomorrow”). Save time with add by context: tasks added to your today list will be due today, while tasks added to Smart Lists inherit their criteria. If your Smart List happens to show all your high priority tasks that are due today and located at the office, any tasks added to this Smart List will automatically inherit all these properties.

Note it.

Need to store additional info about a task? Write a note for quick reference. You can manage your existing notes too, and easily edit or delete them. Email addresses and links in your notes conveniently auto-link to the mail and browser apps. Phone numbers in notes also auto-link for handy one-touch calling.

See tasks located nearby.

This is why we love devices that can detect your location! See your nearby tasks and plan the best way to get things done. Add new locations easily by current location or street address. Remember that if you locate your tasks in the app (e.g., “pick up the milk” at the supermarket), you can view them on a map on the web.

Your own personal tasks search engine.

Not only can you search for tasks by name, you can use any of the advanced search operators. Want to find your high priority tasks located within one mile and tagged with ‘errand’? Done! Save your favourite searches as Smart Lists for quick access.

A handy widget.

No need to leave your Home screen to see what’s due today; this widget will let you know what’s due (and overdue!) so you know where to get started.

The little touches.

Want to quickly switch from the Today to the Tomorrow screen? Just swipe the screen! Prefer landscape mode? No problem, just flip your device. Anything to make managing your tasks (and life easier.

Thanks to…

A big thanks to the RTM users in the Pro Tester Program who helped us to test the app, giving us lots of feedback and reporting the occasional bug. Bob really appreciated your help with testing!

Ready to use RTM on your Android device?

Just search for “Remember The Milk” on the Android Market; you can also find a download link here. If you don’t have a Pro account yet, you’ll be able to try the app free for 15 days (login to the app to start your trial).