So it was with great excitement that I found Digitizd’s recent post, “9 Tools for Simple Productivity,” which highlights Fictive Kin’s TeuxDeux, a bare-bones, elegantly designed and eminently usable list-based task manager, which also incorporates a “someday list.” (The post also discusses Ommwriter, a tool that was recently covered here at WWD).

TeuxDeux orients the user around days of the week, rather than the traditional task and priority view of most to-do applications. Each day is displayed as a column on a horizontally scrolling carousel; underneath each day is a simple text field and a list of things to do that day.

The simplicity and elegance of the user experience is striking and immediate — a running list of days, one-click editing and a separate list of “someday” tasks.

Though the user experience and clean design is wonderful, TeuxDeux is missing a few useful features — a mobile app or desktop widget would be useful, and I would like to see a lightweight API, or even an RSS feed. It seems however, that the constrained feature set is actually part of the value of TeuxDeux and such distraction-free and simplicity-driven applications are always welcome with its team.

Coincidentally, I just discovered that Netscape luminary Marc Andressen practices a “3 x 5 To Do List“ methodology, writing out three tasks he wishes to accomplish each day, constraining his goals to only those with the highest importance.

Such boundaries and constraints could actually enhance services such as TeuxDeux even further, so I’m looking forward to seeing how the service develops and, in turn, how it affects my own productivity.

Do you use TeuxDeux? Does the constrained feature set enhance its value?

For a while, I’d sync Outlook and Palm Desktop, and then Outlook would update the BlackBerry (I didn’t actually use Outlook at all, it just acted as the middleman). It worked great. But then my dependence on Google Calendar  grew, because I could access it from any computer as well as my BlackBerry, and it wouldn’t work with my sync setup.

I investigated many tools and synchronization applications to find a perfect sync solution. I didn’t want to use lots of different applications to syncing needs.

The almost perfect solution was to find a dedicated synchronization app. Mine comes from CompanionLink. This method cuts out Outlook for good. CompanionLink now has a Google edition available that synchronizes all of Palm Desktop’s features with Google, too. For updating my BlackBerry, I use Google Sync for Mobile. It’s still not perfect, but it works and I can access and update my information in Google or Palm, while my BlackBerry just has access to the information.

If you’re struggling to find the perfect syncing app, here are some options (some free and some paid):

• Chapura: PocketMirror has been around for a long time, and syncs Palms with Outlook. Its Echo and PocketMirror work with Palm Pre.
• CompanionLink: Syncs Google, Palm Pre, ACT!, LotusNotes, Outlook and many others.
• Google Sync: free Google syncing applications for Mac, Linux, Android and others.
• gSyncit: Syncs Outlook and Gmail.
• Mark/Space: Sync apps for Macs.
• Sync’Em: Connects Macs with Exchange and Outlook.

How do you keep your data in sync?

Photo credit: djwudi

• Tab: Moves the current task to the right (makes the task a sub-task).
• Shift+Tab: Moves the task to the left.
• Ctrl (Win)/Cmd (Mac) + Up/Down: Moves the task up or down the list.
• Shift + Enter: Edits the current task.
• Alt + Enter: Marks a task as complete (will also mark a completed task as incomplete).
• Alt + Shift + Enter: Removes completed task from the list.
• Esc: Closes Tasks.
• Shift + Esc: Switches focus from Tasks to Gmail.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a shortcut for moving tasks between lists, which is something that I would find very useful with my GTD system. Tasks has been getting some nice, incremental improvements recently that make it into a very useful task manager (Calendar integration and last week’s addition of the ability to export task lists via email, for example); better keyboard shortcuts would be the icing on the cake.

Bonus tip: While in Gmail hit G then K, which will open Tasks and switch the focus to it. (This will only work if you have keyboard shortcuts enabled — the option is available on the Settings page.) You can also create a task from the current message using Shift + T.

If you’ve found any hidden keyboard shortcuts in Tasks, let us know in the comments.

The web app has two key features: adding new to-do items and setting reminders. It also lets you set up email or SMS reminders.

The service provides an iCal link so you can incorporate your reminders into an iCal-compatible calendar. Google Calendar, for one, can import Superminder’s tasks and due dates. In my tests, this worked, although not perfectly: It doesn’t look like it transfers recurring tasks and it sometimes takes quite some time before Superminder updates Google Calendar with tasks, or maybe it’s the other way around. Refreshing the calendar doesn’t speed up the update process.

Superminder can send reminders by SMS and every account receives two free reminders. If you want more, it costs $4 to buy 15 SMS credits or $13 to buy 50. Google Calendar has its own email and SMS notification, so you can work around these charges if you import Superminder into Google Calendar.

Although Superminder doesn’t come with instructions, it’s so simple you don’t really need them. However, it would be nice to know why the iCal feature doesn’t update as regularly as I’d like. Superminder offers a viable solution to those needing a simple to-do application that’s accessible over the web.

What reminders app do you use?

I’ve struggled for years to try to find the right solution for me. I’ve used a Franklin Planner, a Palm T/X, Microsoft Outlook (s msft), Remember The Milk, and a few other options. Nothing ever seemed quite right for me, though, and at times I found myself scribbling on paper pads still.

That was the case until I bought my first Mac and started looking for a task list for OS X. One of my friends recommended Things from Cultured Code. I almost didn’t try it because of the price ($49.95 desktop, $9.95 iPhone app). Thankfully, there is a free trial of the desktop application, so I was able to check it out without committing to the hefty price tag. It’s good that there’s a free trial, because I would otherwise have passed it by.

Put simply, Things has been the solution I’ve been searching for. It has revolutionized my productivity. It works with my natural flow, instead of against it.

I like to make long lists of tasks. There are urgent tasks that I have to get done immediately, the ones I need to get around to soon, and my projects and long-term items. Things gives me ways to track all of those items, without them having to be in my face all the time making me feel overwhelmed.

The desktop version of Things is very Leopard in its look and feel. It is simple, uncluttered and intuitive to use. It syncs with both iCal and the company’s iPhone app (via Wi-Fi).

I can easily drag-and-drop my tasks between the Today, Next and Someday lists to prioritize them. I can use tags or areas of responsibility to filter the list to show only certain types of tasks.

It isn’t quite as easy to move tasks around on the iPhone app. Since drag-and-drop isn’t an option there, it takes a few more steps. But the iPhone app is excellent for adding items on the go, or reviewing your current list and marking tasks complete.

One of my favorite functions in Things is the ability to make project lists. For a large project with multiple tasks or steps, I can create a project list of all those tasks and then drag individual tasks to my Today or Next lists while still also viewing them as part of the project as a whole. If a time comes when I am focusing almost solely on a project (such as the trade show I have in a few days) I can use the project list as my main working list.

Scheduled tasks are probably my other favorite feature of Things. For a future task, either a one-time or a recurring one, it is easy to create a scheduled item that will not appear on my main lists until I need to see it. This avoids distracting clutter and keeps me from feeling overwhelmed by tasks that don’t actually need to be seen at the moment.

Task management that fits well with how I think and work is worth the price of Things to me.  I am getting more things done, and feeling less stressed about it. That is priceless.

Do you love your task manager? Or are you still looking?

Task.fm

The input on the new version is better; the particular input that I complained about in my previous post (“meeting with Dave in 30 minutes”) now works perfectly. However, there are still problems with it. For example, if you enter “dentist today at 4:30,” you’ll get a reminder of “dentist today” set for 4:30 a.m. on the current day. Try “dentist at 4:30 this afternoon” instead, and the result is even worse: You’ll get a task of “dentist this after” set for noon. As I noted in my previous post, natural language input is very hard to get right, and unfortunately Task.fm hasn’t cracked it yet.

The new email and Twitter support means that you can enter tasks by sending Task.fm an email or a tweet, so if you really want to interact with your reminder app through email or Twitter and you’re willing to put up with the shortcomings of the natural language input and learn its syntax, it might be an option for you. But given the problems with task entry, I still can’t recommend this app for widespread use.

Have you tried Task.fm’s natural language input? How could it be improved?

Capturing and Tracking Your Thoughts

To use reQall over the phone you just dial a toll-free number and talk to it. reQall accepts voice commands to add items, share a reminder with another reQall user (a useful feature for teams of web workers), listen to your current lists and ask reQall to send a list to your phone.

reQall’s call-in system works for me even though I’m deaf. The detailed step-by-step quickstart guide shows how to call reQall to add an item. It transcribes your audio message into text and keeps the audio file. The system did a decent job of transcribing my notes, although it missed a couple of things with my imperfect speech. Still, the accuracy is impressive and you can edit anything it gets wrong. The system publishes the audio recording to your account on the web site in an instant and the text version of the audio shows up within a few minutes.

Of course, you can also enter capture items from within the web app, in the large “Add” box on the left of the screen, as you can see.

Communication Options

There are many ways to view your lists from the reQall application. In fact, at first it can seem a bit overwhelming. You can receive transcripts of new audio items by email, text message (SMS) or instant message (IM). You can also receive reminders and shared items in the same way. reQall sends a daily memory jog by email at a scheduled time.

You can also interact with it over IM. Once you add reQall to your buddy list,  it will message you to confirm receipt of items or to let you know that it doesn’t understand a command.

reQall comes with a free application for BlackBerrys and iPhones that syncs with your reQall account. The reQall app also works with iPod Touch, except for the voice recording feature, unless you have a microphone.

A plug-in for Microsft Outlook integrates reQall with Outlook’s contacts, calendar and tasks. reQall also works with Google Calendar and calendars that support the iCal standard, including Apple iCal.

reQall Jogger on BlackBerry

reQall iPhone app

Unique Features

Memory Jogger reviews your notes, current location and upcoming calendar items to predict when you need a reminder to jog your memory. Those on an iPhone can shake their phones for a EureQa, which opens a reminder or Memory Jog each time it shakes.

reQall is location-aware. The “My Places” tab stores your notes that are specific to certain locations such as home, school, work, grocery store, etc. However, I found this feature is buggy, as it rarely adds items when they refer to a place that appears on the list. Furthermore, reQall for the BlackBerry won’t recognize any of my locations, even though Google Maps knows exactly where I am. If it worked, it would prove valuable in giving you relevant reminders when you’re near one of your listed places.

So, Is it Useful?

Honestly, reQall has many features to meet every communications preference. While it looks overwhelming, it won’t be once you decide how you want to interact with it.

It’ll take time to get the hang of reQall’s limited vocabulary, which makes it tricky to figure out how to give it the correct command. But being able to access, and interact with, your to-dos wherever you are, no matter what you are doing is extremely useful for any web worker.

reQall comes in two flavors: Standard and Pro. Standard is free while Pro costs $2.99 per month or $24.99 per year. You can try Pro for 30-days free without entering a credit card.The key difference between the two is that Standard doesn’t include Pro Memory Jogger, location-based reminders and the ability to manage items with email.

Those in the U.S., the UK and Canada can register by phone; otherwise you can sign up on the web site.

How do you remember things?

ForceDo works just like any other online to-do list management app — users of Gmail Tasks and Remember the Milk should feel very much at home — except that when you set up a task you can estimate how long it should take to complete. When you start the task, you set the clock running. You can optionally set alarms to sound before the end of the task and when the time is up.

The idea behind the app is that by heaving a timed deadline to work toward, you’ll be less likely to procrastinate or get distracted. You can also use ForceDo to measure the amount of time you take to complete your tasks.

Here’s a quick screencast of ForceDo in action:

WWD Screencast: ForceDo from WebWorkerDaily on Vimeo.

Personally, I think it’s a bit gimmicky, and as it’s a very basic to-do manager it won’t be suitable for GTD-devotees, although it does support multiple to-do lists. I’m not tempted to move from my current app, Tudumo, but if procrastination and distraction are ruining your productivity and you’re looking for a very simple to-do manager, you might like to give ForceDo a try and see if it works for you — it’s free.

Thanks to WWD reader Dane Baker for the tip.

Would working to a deadline with ForceDo force you to concentrate?

Now there’s a service that aims to provide the benefit of regular status updates without (one hopes) the productivity-killing distraction inherent in Twitter or Facebook, for example. It’s called Remindo, and it provides you with a bare-bones company network for free. The company network is organized by email address. In fact, the service is so based upon email addresses that I had trouble figuring out how to sign up when I initially visited the site.

Apparently, you start by “Joining your company network”, which may or may not yet exist. Being a freelancer, I of course signed up using my work email, which is a MobileMe address. The result? I now belong to the Me.com top-level user group, of which I think I am currently the only member. The email address limitation I can see as being both Remindo’s greatest virtue and its single biggest undoing. On the one hand, it keeps out the riffraff, making sure that a company network can only contain company employees. On the other, it makes it rather difficult for the tool to be used by more loose affiliations, like freelancers engaged in coworking, or a project team made up of independent contractors.

Once you’re logged in, you’re presented with a home screen that has a Twitter-like “Talk” pane on the left, and a menu along the top through which you can navigate Remindo’s different features. There’s “Messages”, “Files”, “Milestones”, and “To-Do” and also your profile page. You can also create groups to control access within a larger company, so that your Sales department, for instance, won’t be unnecessarily distracted by what’s going on in Engineering.

Messages and Files are pretty straightforward, allowing you to do just what you’d expect, share messages and files with coworkers and group members. Milestones is a nice and simple project goal tracker that operates via a basic calendar interface. You can add titles to milestones, set deadlines, and set those responsible (although only one individual per task is selectable, which could be quite limiting).

You can also create as many To-Do lists as you want, and then optionally attach them to Milestones. To-Do list items are similar to Milestones in their simplicity, allowing you to add a title, and assign a person responsible. Items themselves don’t have associated dates, but by attaching them to Milestones you can make sure they’re time-based.

While I wouldn’t recommend it for freelancers because of the email restriction, Remindo is a good alternative for small companies who aren’t looking for a costly, full-fledged content-management system or corporate intranet, but who would like some of the productivity tools that come along with such a solution. It’s free, it’s easy to pick up and learn, and it is simple enough that the possibility of distraction is suitably lessened.

Have you tried a Remindo or a similar system? What did you think?

A common goal for a lot of folks is to get organized and be more productive, and for many this means committing to an organizational framework like David Allen’s Getting Things Done.  I’ve been thinking about throwing my hat into the GTD ring but it seems like an overwhelming task.

So I was pleased to see our fine mobile friends at jkOnTheRun alerting us that the premier issue of Productive Magazine is available as a free downloadable PDF.  This new publication is full of useful information about the GTD system and should be a good resource for the newbie or a seasoned veteran.

My first action item of the day – Done!

Do you GTD? Will Productive Magazine help you Get Things Done?

WWD: What’s wrong with traditional to-do lists?

LF: My compliance with traditional to-do lists is patchy. Sometimes great, sometimes awful. It’s at its worst when the to-do list is too tactical, largely because projects and environments shift, and you can’t always predict in advance what the right mix of actions, efforts, conversations and relationships is. Breaking tasks down into manageable pieces is important too, but there’s a balance because the piece that seems important Monday might be irrelevant by Wednesday.

I’ve also noticed that deferring tasks to a to-do list can be its own form of procrastination.

WWD: So what did you come up with as a better way to keep yourself focused on the important things?

LF: Out of the blue one day, I made a note to myself in TextEdit, named it FRIDAY and stuck it on my desktop. The note was a brief description of my Friday afternoon, and referred to a kind of “state of the company” as of mid afternoon on the coming Friday.

I didn’t even really open the file that much that week, but I had written down the goals the way they always say you should – as done deals – and the file sat there in plain view all week.

Even I was amazed on Friday at how much of it got done.

It also cut down on the daily recriminations about to-do list “float” — that raft of items you keep never getting to.

WWD: What benefits are you seeing from keeping a Friday File?

LF: I need to be really attentive to results vs effort. This method helps me. You can do “the right things” all week long and merrily cross them off your task list, but not end up where you and your business need to be.

I don’t do it every single week, but I am definitely more productive in the weeks that I do. This week I am staring down the barrel of a whole lot of urgent and important stuff, and I don’t want to get caught up in the details.

WWD: Has this completely replaced your task list?

LF: Nope, I still use RememberTheMilk, mainly to support processing my inbox, but for big picture strategy and focus I prefer my Friday lists. What the Friday file does for me is pull strategy out of the clouds and put it into my shorter-term working orders. Another relevant distinction is between “goals” and “direction” (for me this comes from Stephen Shapiro’s work on Goal Free Living). It’s important to understand where you want to get in terms that are versatile and flexible enough to take advantage of serendipitous opportunities as they come in. So while some items on my list will be tactics, they are generally supporting a place I want to get to.

That’s an art, and while I don’t claim to have mastered it, my flexibility frequently opens doors I did not even know I should go knock on. That saying “if you don’t know where you’re going, any train will take you there” is double-edged. Being open to other destinations within a general vector/purpose of what you are trying to achieve is important. We no longer kid ourselves that we can taxonomize the world and set everything in stone. We recognize the need to tag and organize collectively in many spheres. I’m getting way off topic now, but there is a need for productivity and tasks and strategy to be a lot more fluid and nonlinear too.

WWD: Can you share any tips about the actual form of the Friday file for you? Narrative style? Bullet lists? Present/past tense? Got a piece to share with readers?

LF: Frankly, I’m not very formal about it. I write it in the present tense, with a positive tone and a combination of bullets and narrative:

FRIDAY:

• Successful wrapup of [event]
  • {Company] team on board with me as the person to help them bring their tool to market. also, acceleration of this deployment
  • three potential client meetings set
• Website readiness
  • products/services info turned in to Maria on Thursday morning.
  • logo/color palette work proceeding ahead
• Business plan is being reviewed by advisors
• David is collaborating on how to land 1 lead

I’d also like to emphasize: it’s not that I am hitting all these objectives every week, it is that i am tremendously more productive working under this system than when i am clearing out tasks. Maybe it’s the confidence and clarity of knowing what needs to happen, not just what line items to poke at.

WWD: Can you use a Friday file to keep a group focused? Or do you see it as strictly an individual endeavor?

LF: Actually, I think it would be great for a group, because in the next team meeting all can keep their eyes on “net results generated” not devolve into a he said/she said about tasks & tactics. Also, I would think that if the group shared consensus on the result needed, they could be more versatile with adjusting their tactics on the fly. Great idea.

WWD: Any final thoughts?

LF: The things that I get the most “stuck-est” on… it frequently turns out I was not supposed to do. I’m not saying that everything I procrastinate turns out to be for a good reason, but there are a lot of times when I get stuck that I later find an infinitely better, different way to handle…

By focusing on the Friday list, it gets a little easier to cut bait on the stilted tactics and approaches and push through to production and results.

Readers: have you built your own techniques for staying focused on the “big picture”? How do you do it?

Photo credit: stock.xchng user superdecor

A preview version is trickling out to newsletter subscribers. For those who can’t wait, the developers are promoting a screencast of the application’s main features. Looks promising. Much of the same functionality as OmniFocus, including a quick entry window for doing a brain dump of tasks to process later. But Things doesn’t force a project/context/task structure the way OmniFocus and other GTD-focused apps do.

So now I’ll wait to get my preview invite before deciding which application I’ll end up paying for. As with email, I’ve found that I prefer using a stand-alone application for task management instead of a browser-based one.

Are you already overloaded on to-do apps or are you giving these newbies a try?