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Task managers
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Posted by Jack Crawford
Apr 19, 2007 at 11:13 PM
Whenever I feel disorganized (which happens at regular intervals), I usually respond by trying to use a dedicated task manager. After a while, I find that it doesn’t deliver the results I expected - which probably says more about me than the software’s functionality.
I like ITSD, especially the clarity and simplicity of its design. But for me, these apps ultimately don’t work because:
- tasks, calendaring, email etc work well in an integrated environment. I presume it’s one of the reasons why PIMs were developed in the first place.
- project tasks are best outlined in a project management, not a separate to-do environment.
My 2c worth
Jack
Posted by Thomas
Apr 19, 2007 at 11:42 PM
I used MLO, and now use Bonsai, but that doesn’t fit criteria.
Apart from what was already suggested, I can’t think of one more, most that I know are lacking in one or more aspects.
Maybe http://www.safarisoftware.com/mlp.htm MasterList Professional, but I don’t remember whether it handles recurring tasks It has Outlook sync, though.
Jack Crawford wrote:
>But for me, these apps ultimately don’t work because:
>
>- tasks, calendaring, email
>etc work well in an integrated environment. I presume it’s one of the reasons why PIMs
>were developed in the first place.
I have yet to find an all-in-one PIM that is perfect in all aspects. Some try imitate Outlook, others are lacking in one or more areas. There is always some compromise to be made, either having one lacking in desired functionality, or running five apps instead of one.
>- project tasks are best outlined in a project
>management, not a separate to-do environment.
Life is a project management. I don’t have much standalone tasks, most are project related (in GTD terms where anything that has more next action items/tasks is a project)
Posted by Graham Rhind
Apr 20, 2007 at 08:27 AM
Jan Rifkinson wrote:
>Can’t comment about footprint or sluggishness but, if you
>feel like it, could you be a bit more specific about not being able to quickly add, edit &
>list tasks.
>Do you think it might be a matter of use, i.e. familiarity w UR? It does have a rather
>steep learning curve & is awkward is some areas for sure.
I can try. Familiarity is certainly an issue, but I did try hard to get UR to work as a task manager, but it just isn’t slick enough for me.
I want a task manager to allow me to add a task with a single click/keystroke, show me at a glance what has to be done, and remove the task with a single click.
With UR, to set up a task I need to highlight the task folder, Insert and then add the task. Not a problem as such. But to see what has to be done at a glance, I have to open favourites and choose a pre-saved search (which can be done with a keystroke), but then I have to correct the date in the search to be for today, run the search and then check the results. When a task is done, I have to change a property in the task (e.g. completed -> 100%) and then re-run the search to remove the completed task from the overview.
Perhaps I’m not doing it right, but UR’s flexibility just makes it too cumbersome for something that should be simple. Incidentally, though I know the focus is different, Priorganizer also works as an interface on a database, like UR, and it does it so much better - UR could learn a thing from them in terms of ease of use.
>I also have a feeling Kinook
>is working on some of these things including a better way to input data along the lines
>of ADM or Zoot. Although they don’t make a habit of commenting on these things, they did
>mention that while I was testing v3 beta, now v3.06
Yes, their lack of feedback is bloody annoying, frankly. I was surprised as people mentioned how good their support was before I bought the software. For me support is not just solving technical problems but also communicating with their customers, and they don’t do that well in my view.
>Likewise I’m a little confused by
>what you mean about its poor handling of recurring tasks. After setting it up, it’s one
>click to re-set the recurrence.
You may have found a way of doing it that I’ve missed, but recurring tasks is one of those very simple things which about half of all PIMs and task managers miss the point of. There are limited numbers of options and it’s easy to program, so I don’t know why this is. I mentioned my feelings about not working with reminders in the Kinook forum, but apart from that, the recurring option in the task template allows daily, weekday, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly. So if I want a task to repeat every Monday and Wednesday? Or every 3rd Tuesday of the month? Priorganizer fails in this too.
Graham
Posted by Graham Rhind
Apr 20, 2007 at 08:29 AM
Jack Crawford wrote:
>- tasks, calendaring, email
>etc work well in an integrated environment. I presume it’s one of the reasons why PIMs
>were developed in the first place.
I agree, which is why I cracked and installed Outlook 2007 after years of rebellion. But Outlook’s task management is a litle cumbersome for those short and quick tasks that get shot at me during the day, so I wanted a supplement to that.
Graham
Posted by Hugh Pile
Apr 20, 2007 at 09:18 AM
I’m also a fan of Achieve Planner.
However, when I used it, I didn’t find it was particularly good at quick and simple data entry; it didn’t have a system-tray “side-note-type” entry system, as MLO has with its text-parsing function. It was also resource-heavy and had quite a steep learning curve. Those drawbacks may have been reduced now. What AP did do very well was provide effective task management for users with relatively long tasks that could be blocked out and scheduled on a weekly basis. That seemed to me to be its USP (although as Stephen says it also nodded in the direction of MLO-style task management with its task chooser).
Needless to say, the Mac world also has some neat task-management tools, such as iGTD and Kinkless/OmniOutliner, which somehow seem to hit the nail rather more directly on the head than some of their Windows rivals.