

Todoist is a very capable outliner, for that matter. And there are some really good ones out there! Workflowy, Dynalist, Zavala, Outlinely, OutlineEdit, not to mention others like NoteTaker, Tidy Mind (Pro), Dashword, SpringNotes, Cloud Outliner (Pro) etc. How, then, to make task management exciting? Perhaps using outliners! After all, they’re effectively a kind of rich-text writing tool, so you can highlight things, embolden things, and above all, tuck things away (as notes, attachments etc., depending on the outliner). It IS a boring list! SEVERAL boring lists! It’s depressing, even frustrating, not least because even the most colourful task list can’t easily prevent this matrix of tasks from looking very dull and uniform. My basic task list of things I really need to do over the next week or so is rarely less than 30, with dozens more lined up in the equivalent of “Next” silos.

Like most of you, I have a lot of stuff to keep track of. Noteship (my favourite, but still confined to macOS only). Things 3 and Pagico (both very impressive in very different ways). I’ve been looking at all the task management apps I’ve used most recently: TickTick (does pretty much everything you could possibly want, and as a result allows you to follow more or less any approach you could possibly want). And that allows you to add quick but clear notes if you really, really need to. But one that allows you to highlight the tasks that are really, really important (for whatever reason), or which you can’t do unless someone else first does something critical first (dependencies). Just as when managing tasks with a pen and paper, what you really want is a minimum-touch approach. Life!Īnd I’ve tried and continue to try so many of them, not least out of sheer fascination at the ingenuity – and often, sheer beauty – of the approaches taken by so many very clever minds.īut I am gradually coming to a really important conclusion. What a cornucopia of wonderful apps there are out there. I have been reflecting, as a confirmed and obsessive CRIMPer, on the nature of task management.

A frustrated user's thoughts on efficient task management for Apple users (and others)
