Things for Mac: Intuitive & Streamlined Task Management Software

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I've followed the development of Cultured Lawmaking'south Things with keen involvement since information technology was announced in its early stages. It seemed like it was going to come up closer to providing a truly seamless and ubiquitous, simply most importantly, smooth application for managing the things that need to become done each day.

My problem with chore management applications is this: they require too much conscious endeavor on my part. Task management apps should menstruation, should brand using them easier than jotting things down on a napkin. Many are perfectly functional just don't put the endeavour into creating that flow. Things is the first Bone X task management application I tried where I felt like I didn't really have to endeavour, despite information technology some similar features to other offerings.

Information technology received its fair share of praise and criticism while in beta, and I referenced both Things for Mac and Things Touch (the iPhone and iPod touch version) in articles here and elsewhere, but I always find it all-time – in terms of practiced etiquette, at to the lowest degree – to permit a production to exit beta before judging it.

For those of you who want to save time, my verdict is this: it's even so the smoothest experience, and I still don't feel like I have to try. For those who want the grand bout, follow along with me.

The Inbox

The start thing you lot'll see when you open up Things is the Inbox. Falling in line with good GTD methodology, you capture everything in your inbox every bit you go, and you process it later at an advisable time. For me, this is the cornerstone of the system, and whatever adept custom productivity system, because it allows you lot to keep track of everything that needs doing without allowing it to steal mental processing power and attending at that time.

The Inbox is built so that you can rapidly enter tasks in succession every bit they come to mind, which is neat for a mind-dumping session. You lot tin can merely enter the tasks every bit they are, or you tin can include notes and a borderline. Ordinarily for a heed-dump, the description of the task is sufficient, but the extra features come in handy.

Of grade, rapid mind-dumping is of import and Things caters to this, but perhaps fifty-fifty more of import is ubiquitous capture. If all you want is ubiquitous capture on your one estimator running Things, you've got it with the help of the Quick Entry characteristic. Tap a keystroke on your keyboard, and this window will appear:

After yous've captured tasks either on the wing with Quick Entry or in a listen-dumping session, getting those tasks sorted is an easy and polish process. One time yous've washed some initial set-up work with Things, it's a affair of elevate-and-drop, and the occasional need to begin a new project or expanse of responsibility.

Things offers ubiquitous capture beyond the calculator, but it comes at a price. That price is the need to ain an iPhone or iPod impact. Y'all can then purchase and install Things Bear on which is an excellent companion with sync capability, but is the subject of some other review, some other day.

Today

One of my favorite parts of Things is the Today screen. This section allows you to run into tasks you have either manually designated or automatically (and perhaps recurringly) scheduled to fall on the current 24-hour interval. Basically, information technology lets yous narrow down and focus exclusively on the tasks you wanted to get washed today, and it reminds you of any deadlines that might've slipped by your memory.

I oft have hundreds or thousands of tasks floating around in my task management software. Don't worry, I haven't been writing one affair here and doing another for the past year, considering many of these are someday/perchance tasks I'd similar to go around to in the time to come, when I have the time and inclination. But still, having dozens of projects and enough of someday ideas can be a piffling distracting when you need to hunker down and work. I don't need to or desire to meet them on a day-to-solar day basis; I need to run into what I assigned for today on my final weekly review, hunker down, and get off the figurer in time for dinner.

And this is something I miss in too many programs: there'southward not enough to focus you. There'due south enough to capture, sort, record, archive, and do all sorts of librarianesque stuff. But focus is mayhap the nearly of import, and about frequently missing, key to having an effective and efficient day.

Next

The Next screen is another pane of focus, but of a dissimilar sort. Today is a focus restrained by chronological factors. Next is, as GTDers would expect, a listing of the immediate next actions of each project or area of responsibleness you've used Things to track. Today helps you focus on what you need to do to finish work and get abode. Next helps y'all focus on what y'all need to practice to motion each of your projects forwards, whether you want to cease them this week or this year.

Scheduled & Projects

The Scheduled pane shows y'all a list of all tasks for which you lot've elected to assign a due date or a recurrence. The way the data is presented is refreshing; some programs sort the tasks past numerical dates (like 12/12/12). It's important to meet this data, just what's better is to sort the tasks by a more human-readable name and provide the exact appointment next to the task description as Things has done.

So what you get hither are tasks sorted by names like Daily, Every month, or only March, to give you an overview of when and how often things happen:

I would suggest that Cultured Code implement a agenda view so yous tin can run into what'due south coming up in a more than tangible way.

Projects is a succinct, well-presented listing of all your active projects, too equally your someday and scheduled projects which can be hidden from view until the time comes. I oasis't got a lot of them going on in this reviewing deployment of Things – there are a heap in my twenty-four hour period-to-solar day deployment and I've but taken that and stripped information technology of sensitive projects for screenshots, and that happened to exist about of them!

Things will give you the proper noun and rough due engagement of the project, along with the number of tasks inside and a satisfying checkbox for when yous've completed the whole affair.

The pane for agile projects themselves gives you all the information you lot've recorded regarding the projection every bit a whole at the top — description, due engagement, notes, tags, and so on — followed by a listing of all the tasks that contain the project, with similar data available. You need to double-click tasks to see info other than the clarification (which I call back is a good affair), but the projection overview data is persistent:

Area of Responsibleness provides a place to assign those tasks that don't autumn under a time-constrainted, results-oriented projection, and are either one-offs or recurring tasks for a function you occupy. This pane works a lot like the Inbox, a clean listing of the tasks, and nothing but the tasks.

Anytime

Every skillful organisation needs a place for yous to dump the ideas you lot've ubiquitously captured but tin can't or don't want to piece of work on yet. Someday items and projects stay out of the road until y'all're ready to review them or drag them onto the product line. If a slice of task management software doesn't have a Someday department, I won't use information technology, so I'm glad to see this.

What I'd Like to Run into

While Things is a great slice of software and is now my preferred solar day-to-day digital task management system, there's ane place where I call back it falls downwards the most: synchronization. The ability to sync between my phone and one Mac is a great outset, but I have more than one Mac and I spend equal amounts of time working on each.

And so while Things works great when I'm out and most and need to remember something, or I'thousand plugging away at my iMac, I'm left out in the common cold while I'yard on my Macbook Pro. So far I've made this piece of work by using Things Bear upon, but trust me when I say this approach gets mighty tiresome. I'm longing for Things to synchronize betwixt my iPhone and multiple Macs.

Perhaps the all-time way to facilitate this would be past syncing through a service like Retrieve the Milk; it saves Cultured Code from having to develop an entire online infrastructure to facilitate said synchronization over the Net, and it allows you to access your tasks wherever there's an Internet connection if you lot don't have an iPhone or you lose it.

Become take a look at Things for Mac — I highly recommend information technology!

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Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/things-for-mac-intuitive-streamlined-task-management-software.html

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