With the release of another personal task manager (a term I personally prefer over "to-do list" or otherwise), I thought it might be useful to take a look at what these task managers should be able to do. The number of programs I've looked at for task management must be approaching three figures, and I still haven't found one I would happily use. Many task managers start off with great plans but a good many never reach maturity (and I could name names), so I think we need to look at what the software currently does rather than the plans the developer has for it.

I don't think my needs are particularly individual to me - I'm an empiricist and try to let the nature of tasks themselves define what the software should be able to do. Many claim to support Getting Things Done principles though, having ploughed through that book, I can contest that many don't. Many aim for usability but confuse it with lack of sophistication - a program can be powerful and also simple to use. Also, for me, the software can be embedded in PIM software or be standalone - as long as it fulfils basic requirements.

To my mind personal task management should fulfil these criteria:

Critical:

- Full support for recurrence (which universe do developers live in where tasks don't recur?); automatic recreation of a recurring task upon completion/deletion
- Date and time due
- Alarms and snoozing
- (Definable) priority indications
- (Definable) categorisation/tagging
- (Definable) status indication (waiting, complete, pending etc.)
- Full featured notes editor (RTF/HTML, tables and graphics enabled)

Important:

- Unlimited sub-tasking (i.e. a tree-like structure)
- (Definable) colour coding (font and background)
- Import/Export/Synchronisation (with Outlook, Palm etc.)
- User-defined views by any aspect (dates, tags, categories, text etc.)
- Undo
- Easy entry of tasks into the program using drag and drop and/or key combination

Nice to have

- (Definable) icons per task
- Date started/date ended
- Time planned for task/time actually taken
- Reporting

I did find one personal task manager that did almost all of this but had a problem with database corruption. I am therefore currently having to use a blend of Outlook, Zoot and Sciral Consistency.

What does everybody think? Will the grail be obtained? Is there a program out there I've missed? What other features have I forgotten?

Graham

A great list Graham,

May I agree with all points made and add one of my own:

I seldom have a task that does not involve other people, either I need something from them, or they are waiting for me to deliver.
Therefore I would add assigning tasks to other people (if possible a contact from outlook or so) and also a (user defined) assignment type (waiting for, deliver to, contact, etc.).

Susanne

As far as I can tell, Ecco does all of the things on your list except "definable icons per task"... I suppose even that one could be done with a customized bullet column.

Ecco will probably never be bettered as a total package of good user interface + functionality for task management. (I think of it as an operating system for projects, really, it's so customizable and poewrful.) SQL Notes looks like it's coming along and betters it in several ways functionality-wise, but the UI leaves a lot to be desired. On the Mac, OmniFocus is similar in some ways but is too GTD-inspired. Good if you really want to get into that methodology, but what makes Ecco genius is its freeform nature.

I honestly think "GTD" is a liability, and software developers are in some sense chasing a false grail by trying to jump on that bandwagon. For instance, David's notion that every task should have exactly one context is poorly thought out. For instance, what about an item I can buy either at the grocery store or at a drugstore? What context do I use for that. OmniFocus tries to stay within the GTD mindset by keeping the single context restriction but introducing hierarchical contexts, but that only partially solves the problem. Also, contexts are in some sense inherently counterproductive... a big part of the GTD approach is the idea that you should be able to dump items into your inbox as quickly as possible. Yet as soon as you introduce contexts into a program, you not only have to hit some hotkey, enter your task, then you have to tab to another field, decide what context this task should be in (is it "business" or "phone"?), type some more stuff, then hit OK. Too much work for no payoff.

Some of Allen's ideas, like delegation, periodic reviews, etc. are useful though. But I'm skeptical of systems that aim too much to the GTD paradigm. The better systems are freeform like Ecco or Things.

-- Chris

Graham Rhind wrote:

I did find one personal task manager that did
almost all of this but had a problem with database corruption. I am therefore
currently having to use a blend of Outlook, Zoot and Sciral Consistency.

You probably looked at Agenda at Once. See http://www.agendaatonce.com/features.html

As far as I can tell, it does most of what you want except import/export of Palm and Outlook and different icons for tasks. I think they are working Outlook and PDA synchronization, don't know about different icons.

Since it's Shareware, you can try before you buy.

Manfred

An interesting new arrival in the Outlook GTD market is Foresight (at www.enhanceyouroutlook.com).

They seem to have ambitious business plans driven by a subscription user model - although the amount is fixed at least in the short term. It would appear to be a direct competitor to My Life Organized.

As you need administrator rights to install it, it's only of academic interest to me at my workplace.

Jack

Graham, I liked your list of requirements.

I used Ecco for years and was quite satisfied. Here's one you probably have not looked at: myTasks (www.kingstairs.com). I admit to knowing NOTHING about it other than it's developer also authored Jot Plus, which is not very sophisticated, but is straightforward to use and has some nice convenience touches.

-c

Graham,

Great list. I have a few additions. The ideal task manager would have a GANTT charting feature (which means tasks would require a start date, as well as a due date). ECCO had this and I found it very useful.

Columnar meta data should allow you to turn any column field into a hieararchy. That is, if you have a column with fields for "project" or you should be able to see a view in which your tasks are show as follows:

Project A
... Budget projection
... Writing of proposal
... Client Review
Project B
... Meet with design team
... Present design to client
... First draft to client
... etc...

or by Client:

Client A
... set up teleconference with client A
... send first bill to client A
Client B
... draft proposal to client B
Client C
... follow-up on Project Z results

These views would be available from any of the column data, so you could view by due date, start date, vendor, etc...

Of course, Zoot, which you are very familiar with, does this and it does most of what is on your list, except for the RTF/HTML part... a big part, admittedly. It does not do GANTT charts, either, of course.

Good topic!

Steve Z.

Thanks for the inputs up to now! Just some responses in the meantime:

Susanne wrote:
I seldom have a task that does not involve other people, either I need something from them, or they are waiting for me to deliver.

Therefore I would add assigning tasks to other people (if possible a contact from outlook or so) and also a (user defined) assignment type (waiting for, deliver to, contact, etc.).

Absolutely. As I work on my own I tend to forget the poor souls who have to take other people into account :-)

Chris Thompson wrote:
I honestly think "GTD" is a liability

I agree entirely! I wrote in an Amazon review of the book that I thought the system flawed and only applicable to certain people in certain circumstances.

Manfred wrote:
You probably looked at Agenda at Once. See http://www.agendaatonce.com/features.html

Agenda at Once comes very close, but there's a bug which stops recurring tasks from recreating themselves in the current version (1.2.3 I believe), which the developer says will be corrected in the next release.

Jack Crawford wrote:

An interesting new arrival in the Outlook GTD market is Foresight (at www.enhanceyouroutlook.com).

It does look interesting, though I dislike greatly software which is sold on a subscription basis and ties you in to your investment. I also have a problem with using Outlook as the basis of task management mainly because of its strange behaviour in deleting an associated e-mail when deleting a task. I know the task can be marked as completed and not deleted, but this stuffs the task manager full of completed tasks which can never be deleted. Strange and utterly annoying.

Cassius wrote:

Here's one you probably have not looked at: myTasks (www.kingstairs.com).

Yes, I tried that (having used JotNotes myself many years ago). I can't remember why I rejected it - I have a feeling recurring tasks aren't supported, though don't quote me on that.

Graham

Chris, re contexts -- admittedly not for everyone.

However, the intention of contexts is to simplify and shorten task lists.

In your example, the context could simply be "Errands" -- and you'd group your errands together. For me, I know right away what items I want from Safeway, what I have to go to the bank for, what I want to go to the drug store for. In the case of Safeway I might have a separate shopping list to make sure I buy everything I came for.

Without contexts, one can get a list of 20 or more items for the day, sometimes more. If you are like me, you go out and might come back with two of three things because you overlooked one item on the list. I find with long lists I overlook things unless I continually review the list.

Or I get overwhelmed, and then in my typical ADHD style start to spin my wheels.

So context is meant as a tool to simplify, to make sure nothing gets left out, and that everything gets done.

I`d agree that some people do better with more freeform systems -- or are able to carry in their minds what they need to be doing. Allen`s idea, however, is that many of us don`t, so empty the mind of the stuff that can be put on paper or in software.

Daly

Discuss and learn about David Allen’s Getting Things Done:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Getting_Things_Done

Chris Thompson wrote:

As far as I can tell, Ecco does all of the things on your list except "definable icons per
task"... I suppose even that one could be done with a customized bullet column.

Ecco
will probably never be bettered as a total package of good user interface +
functionality for task management. (I think of it as an operating system for
projects, really, it's so customizable and poewrful.) SQL Notes looks like it's
coming along and betters it in several ways functionality-wise, but the UI leaves a
lot to be desired. On the Mac, OmniFocus is similar in some ways but is too
GTD-inspired. Good if you really want to get into that methodology, but what makes
Ecco genius is its freeform nature.

I honestly think "GTD" is a liability, and
software developers are in some sense chasing a false grail by trying to jump on that
bandwagon. For instance, David's notion that every task should have exactly one
context is poorly thought out. For instance, what about an item I can buy either at the
grocery store or at a drugstore? What context do I use for that. OmniFocus tries to stay
within the GTD mindset by keeping the single context restriction but introducing
hierarchical contexts, but that only partially solves the problem. Also, contexts
are in some sense inherently counterproductive... a big part of the GTD approach is
the idea that you should be able to dump items into your inbox as quickly as possible.
Yet as soon as you introduce contexts into a program, you not only have to hit some
hotkey, enter your task, then you have to tab to another field, decide what context
this task should be in (is it "business" or "phone"?), type some more stuff, then hit
OK. Too much work for no payoff.

Some of Allen's ideas, like delegation, periodic
reviews, etc. are useful though. But I'm skeptical of systems that aim too much to the
GTD paradigm. The better systems are freeform like Ecco or Things.

--
Chris

Graham Rhind wrote:
>I did find one personal task manager that did
>almost
all of this but had a problem with database corruption. I am therefore
>currently
having to use a blend of Outlook, Zoot and Sciral Consistency.

Graham, I like the web-based program given with my signature.

I am also using Central Desktop http://www.centraldesktop.com , also a web-based program, to see how it goes.

Part of this is crimping on my part because I prefer to do a lot of this stuff on paper.

For example, I have a wonderful Circa notebook from Levenger in Boston that has plastic sheets with 96 pockets for conventionally sized index cards to be inserted vertically. Levenger has its own take on the index card -- lined on both sides, vertically. I love this system because nothing gets lost in it, and it is helpful to me as a pre-planning step, plus keeping notes temporarily from journals or books. http://www.levenger.com/

Daly
Try This Great Web-Based GTD Site:
http://www.nozbe.com/a-A3F240E3

Discuss and learn about David Allen’s Getting Things Done:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Getting_Things_Done/


Graham Rhind wrote:

With the release of another personal task manager (a term I personally prefer over
"to-do list" or otherwise), I thought it might be useful to take a look at what these
task managers should be able to do. The number of programs I've looked at for task
management must be approaching three figures, and I still haven't found one I would
happily use. Many task managers start off with great plans but a good many never reach
maturity (and I could name names), so I think we need to look at what the software
currently does rather than the plans the developer has for it.

I don't think my needs
are particularly individual to me - I'm an empiricist and try to let the nature of tasks
themselves define what the software should be able to do. Many claim to support
Getting Things Done principles though, having ploughed through that book, I can
contest that many don't. Many aim for usability but confuse it with lack of
sophistication - a program can be powerful and also simple to use. Also, for me, the
software can be embedded in PIM software or be standalone - as long as it fulfils basic
requirements.

To my mind personal task management should fulfil these
criteria:

Critical:

- Full support for recurrence (which universe do
developers live in where tasks don't recur?); automatic recreation of a recurring
task upon completion/deletion
- Date and time due
- Alarms and snoozing
-
(Definable) priority indications
- (Definable) categorisation/tagging
-
(Definable) status indication (waiting, complete, pending etc.)
- Full featured
notes editor (RTF/HTML, tables and graphics enabled)

Important:

- Unlimited
sub-tasking (i.e. a tree-like structure)
- (Definable) colour coding (font and
background)
- Import/Export/Synchronisation (with Outlook, Palm etc.)
-
User-defined views by any aspect (dates, tags, categories, text etc.)
- Undo
- Easy
entry of tasks into the program using drag and drop and/or key combination

Nice to
have

- (Definable) icons per task
- Date started/date ended
- Time planned for
task/time actually taken
- Reporting

I did find one personal task manager that did
almost all of this but had a problem with database corruption. I am therefore
currently having to use a blend of Outlook, Zoot and Sciral Consistency.

What does
everybody think? Will the grail be obtained? Is there a program out there I've missed?
What other features have I forgotten?

Graham

Ah, good point Daly! I should also have mentioned for (my) list: locally based (i.e., not online). Apart from the dangers of my personal information being hacked from a site, I won't even consider trusting a company enough to be always there. If a developer stops developing their offline task manager, I can export my data into something else because the software won't suddenly stop working. That's not the case when my data is on somebody else's server, which could be offline tomorrow and every day after that.

You do bring up in me a nostalgia for my old paper-based Filofax, though! I wish they could be synced with my Palm ;-)

Graham

Daly de Gagne wrote:

Graham, I like the web-based program given with my signature.

I am also using
Central Desktop http://www.centraldesktop.com , also a web-based program, to see
how it goes.

Part of this is crimping on my part because I prefer to do a lot of this
stuff on paper.

For example, I have a wonderful Circa notebook from Levenger in
Boston that has plastic sheets with 96 pockets for conventionally sized index cards
to be inserted vertically. Levenger has its own take on the index card -- lined on both
sides, vertically. I love this system because nothing gets lost in it, and it is
helpful to me as a pre-planning step, plus keeping notes temporarily from journals or
books. http://www.levenger.com/

Daly
Try This Great Web-Based GTD
Site:
http://www.nozbe.com/a-A3F240E3

I'm founder of Dataland Software, developers of Agenda At Once.

Manfred wrote:

You probably looked at Agenda at Once. See
http://www.agendaatonce.com/features.html

Manfred, thank you for mentioning AAO.

Graham Rhind wrote:

Agenda at Once comes very close,
but there's a bug which stops recurring tasks from recreating themselves in the
current version (1.2.3 I believe), which the developer says will be corrected in the
next release.

Yes, this bug was actual in v3.0.2, but starting with v3.0.3 released several days ago, it shouldn't be a problem anymore.

Your features list is really impressive, and although AAO doesn't cover all, it might satisfy your needs. Feel free to try it and let me know for any ideas or problems you have.

Graham Rhind wrote:

...You do bring up in me a nostalgia for my old paper-based Filofax, though! I wish they could be synced with my Palm ;-)

I think Filofax is still around. Many years ago it bought the US version, Lefax. For a while, I kept college notes, etc. in Lefax. I still have the binders, including the double-ring ones. Now that I'm retired, I keep my plans/tasks and my may-need-at-any-time info in a shirt-pocket planner. It also serves as a money bely, toothpick holder, etc., etc.

-c

Graham Rhind wrote:

Thanks for the inputs up to now! Just some responses in the meantime:

>Chris Thompson wrote:
>I honestly think "GTD" is a
liability

I agree entirely! I wrote in an Amazon review of the book that I thought the
system flawed and only applicable to certain people in certain
circumstances.

Interesting observations. Maybe I'll start a new thread on this. I don't think we've really covered GTD in much detail here.

Graham, can you point me to your Amazon review? I don't have time to wade through the hundreds of comments.

Jack

Graham Rhind wrote:

I also have a problem with using Outlook as the basis of task
management mainly because of its strange behaviour in deleting an associated e-mail
when deleting a task. I know the task can be marked as completed and not deleted, but
this stuffs the task manager full of completed tasks which can never be deleted.
Strange and utterly annoying.

Graham

If you drag & drop an Outlook email onto the tasks panel, it gives you the option of copying the email as a text or attachment. If you subsequently delete the task, the original email remains untouched.

Or I am misunderstanding your point?

Jack

Graham, can you
point me to your Amazon review? I don't have time to wade through the hundreds of
comments.

Jack

This is what I wrote in my GTD review:

"As the author admits throughout this book, it contains little more than good common sense. There's nothing wrong with this - many people need common sense solutions to be spelled out to them. However, it's a real slog to get through this book - the material is dry and it could have been better written and less repetitive.

The book is very USA-centric. It annoyingly uses local product names, for example, that won't mean much to people outside the USA. Furthermore, despite Allen's protests to the contrary, I would contend that his system needs tweaking to make it more useful for many people outside his own main area of experience (white collar higher management in Western societies). Understandably, Allen's experience with those of us in other jobs and in other cultures and who wouldn't dream of hiring a consultant to tell us how to organise ourselves, let alone be able to pay them, is limited, and though the main (common sense) approach is fine, it can be approached more flexibly than Allen suggests.

I do have to ask myself how Allen's customers had managed to become top executives of large companies without being able to organise themselves, even with all the resources at their disposal ..."

Graham

Hello Jack,

I only started using Outlook with version 2007 (I'm no expert with it!) and I think it's the new flagging system in that version that gives no option to copy the e-mail instead of flagging it as a todo. See http://blogs.msdn.com/melissamacbeth/archive/2006/10/26/don-t-delete-mark-it-complete.aspx

It would be nice if there was a way around it.

Graham

Jack Crawford wrote:

Graham Rhind wrote:
I also have a problem with using Outlook as the basis of task

>management mainly because of its strange behaviour in deleting an associated
e-mail
>when deleting a task. I know the task can be marked as completed and not
deleted, but
>this stuffs the task manager full of completed tasks which can never be
deleted.
>Strange and utterly annoying.

Graham

If you drag & drop an Outlook
email onto the tasks panel, it gives you the option of copying the email as a text or
attachment. If you subsequently delete the task, the original email remains
untouched.

Or I am misunderstanding your point?

Jack

Graham Rhind wrote:

I only started using Outlook with version 2007 (I’m no expert with it!) and I think it’s the new flagging system in that version that gives >no option to copy the e-mail instead of flagging it as a todo. See http://blogs.msdn.com/melissamacbeth/archive/2006/10/26/don-t-delete-mark-it-complete.aspx

It would be nice if there was a way around it.

Hi Graham

I just tested this and I get a different result on my Outlook 2007 SP1. Flagging an email (i.e. follow-up) places a task in the To-do Bar. Trying to delete the task there does give the message about deleting the email as well. However, marking it complete in the To-do Bar (right click | follow-up | mark complete) causes the task to disappear. It does not appear at all in my tasks folder. The original email remains where it was, but now with the header changed to indicate that there had been a follow-up now completed. Was the problem fixed in SP1?

If this still doesn't work, I would use the old 2003 techniques: drag & drop the email onto the task folder to create a new task, or open a blank new task and insert item (the relevant email).

I agree it's important to be able to link emails and tasks (as well as emails and calendar items).

Hope this helps somehow.

Jack

You're right Jack, and I see that views can be filtered so as not to show completed tasks. However, it's a process that doesn't fit comfortably into my tidy mind, and occasionally I need to view all tasks, and then the huge number of completed tasks make the process unnecessarily painful.

It's probably just me. I hate to have completed tasks listed anywhere.

Graham

Graham, I find your comments on GTD being American-centric and other cultures interesting, and would like to invite you to join our discussion on the Yahoo GTD group. This group, which I own, is one of the largest GTD groups on the net with about 6,000 plus members. We have talked about many aspects of GTD, but I cannot recall that we looked in any detail at the points that you raise.

Our group often discusses various software alternatives for GTD also. But some of us are more paper oriented, and prefer talking about the latest sales at Levenger, and what's happening in the high tech world of fountain pens and inks -- actually, there is a high tech fountain pen ink, developed by Noodler; it is water based as all fountain pen inks need to be for the health of the pen, but a special chemical in the ink immediately binds the ink tot he cellulose in paper, thus making it truly permanent, non-smudgeable, etc.

Anyone here is also welcome to join us in our discussions, which have made references from tie to time to this group.

Daly

Discuss and learn about David Allen’s Getting Things Done:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Getting_Things_Done/

Graham Rhind wrote:

>Graham, can you
>point me to your Amazon review? I don't have time to wade through the
hundreds of
>comments.
>
>Jack

This is what I wrote in my GTD review:

"As the
author admits throughout this book, it contains little more than good common sense.
There's nothing wrong with this - many people need common sense solutions to be
spelled out to them. However, it's a real slog to get through this book - the material is
dry and it could have been better written and less repetitive.

The book is very
USA-centric. It annoyingly uses local product names, for example, that won't mean
much to people outside the USA. Furthermore, despite Allen's protests to the
contrary, I would contend that his system needs tweaking to make it more useful for
many people outside his own main area of experience (white collar higher management
in Western societies). Understandably, Allen's experience with those of us in other
jobs and in other cultures and who wouldn't dream of hiring a consultant to tell us how
to organise ourselves, let alone be able to pay them, is limited, and though the main
(common sense) approach is fine, it can be approached more flexibly than Allen
suggests.

I do have to ask myself how Allen's customers had managed to become top
executives of large companies without being able to organise themselves, even with
all the resources at their disposal ..."

Graham

Graham, your impressions of the book are similar to mine. I found it quite a slog to get through, meandering and ponderously written, though there are a few useful ideas.

I think it's interesting that when Allen wrote the book he was using a Palm Pilot, which only had very crude support for his ideas... all you could do with a todo on the Palm was put it into a single category, so you could either categorize by context or project, but not both (and using Palm categories for projects was pretty crummy since there was a maximum number of categories you could create). This suggests to me that the fancy software support for GTD that many people are seeking is basically "CRIMPing on steroids". The core task management ideas in the book are common sense and could be implemented with any system.

-- Chris

Chris, you are right. GTD can be done with, or adapted to many kinds of software and/or paper planners.

And it is all mostly common sense stuff -- one common sense idea after another. But the problem with common sense is that it is not always all that common!

Daly

Chris Thompson wrote:

Graham, your impressions of the book are similar to mine. I found it quite a slog to get
through, meandering and ponderously written, though there are a few useful ideas.


I think it's interesting that when Allen wrote the book he was using a Palm Pilot,
which only had very crude support for his ideas... all you could do with a todo on the
Palm was put it into a single category, so you could either categorize by context or
project, but not both (and using Palm categories for projects was pretty crummy since
there was a maximum number of categories you could create). This suggests to me that
the fancy software support for GTD that many people are seeking is basically
"CRIMPing on steroids". The core task management ideas in the book are common sense
and could be implemented with any system.

-- Chris

Just to get back to Graham's original post and comprehensive list.

My only refinement would be to move email syncing from important to critical.

For many of us in corporate environments, most tasks and projects are linked to (and often start off from) emails. A task manager which doesn't have easy import of emails is not much use for me as it requires double handling.

As a complement to the current GTD conversation, I was looking at some GTD-inspired task software. An interesting solution (and suprisingly high quality given that it is freeware) is ThinkingRock which, like me, comes from Down Under. The problem is that as far as I can see it has no email import at all. You would have to cut and paste emails manually to create the links.

Too many good task managers are effectively standalone applications.

Jack

Jack, Graham,

I am not sure what has happened, but I am unable to view Jack's answer (to which Graham responded as below) on the website. I can on the RSS feed though. I tried it with Opera, IE7 and K-Meleon (Mozzila based) and each time the two posts appear merged.

alx

Graham Rhind wrote:

You're right Jack, and I see that views can be filtered so as not to show completed
tasks.

Same for me Alexander. I cut and paste from the RSS feed when I responded.

Graham

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Jack, Graham,

I am not sure what has happened, but I am unable to view Jack's answer
(to which Graham responded as below) on the website. I can on the RSS feed though. I
tried it with Opera, IE7 and K-Meleon (Mozzila based) and each time the two posts
appear merged.

alx

Graham Rhind wrote:
>You're right Jack, and I see that views
can be filtered so as not to show completed
>tasks.