In the past few weeks and months, I've been trying hard to get my life a little more organized: have a plan for meals and groceries, note down on the calendar when the car needs an oil change, sort my email into folders—that sort of thing. As much as I hate to admit it, this kick I've been on has been inspired by the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People class I was forced to go to. I normally put about as much trust in business gurus/self-help/whatever as I do in astrology (I'm looking at you, Myers-Briggs)—er, that's none at all, by the way. But since I had to go to the class, I figured I should listen while I was there, if only so I could make fun of it later. Sadly there wasn't any material for mockery because really, Stephen Covey's just enunciated clearly what people should be doing anyway: (1) focusing on the important stuff, and (2) not being a jackass while accomplishing whatever it is. This strikes most people, I think, as common sense—although obviously it isn't, since if it were, Dr. Covey wouldn't be rich as Croesus.
So since my memory about some things is appallingly bad—and it's hard to prioritize if you can't remember what things you need to do—I've been making To Do lists. And being a savvy guy of the 21st century, I've been making them on the computer. This turns out to be problematic.
Basic tasklist functionality seems to be easy. All you need is
- Short statement of the task
- Date—if any—the task is due
- Ability to sort tasks by date
- Visually marking overdue tasks
and pretty much every task application gets these right. Actually, you could really do these in
your favorite spreadsheet fairly easily. Overkill, but you've probably got a spreadsheet installed already.
It's probably also good for a task application to have
- Multiple tasklists (work, personal, etc)
- A big free-form text box for each task in case you need more info
which seem to be harder (why a big, non-parsed, text box would be hard, I don't know).
Now the biggies. Some people don't need 'em, but enough people do that if you're writing a to do list app to end all to do list apps, you should include them.
- Recurring tasks—this is my number one need after the basics
- Sending tasks to other people
- Sending a report on a task to someone
- Making the task lists accessible and editable from any location
- Integrates with a calendar
Outlook, which is what I use currently for to do lists, gets all of these right except for 10. Evolution doesn't do 10 or 7 (and don't hold your breath on the latter: Bug 200907's been open for eight and a half years). Remember the Milk doesn't do 6, 9, or 11 but is otherwise perfect for pure task list management. Tasks, which Moblin ships with, doesn't even do 2 and 3, although it does do 5.
I've come to the conclusion that I'm either going to have to settle for less than I really want or else write my own app. Anybody wanna work on a task list program with me?
Labels: productivity, software