Give Me Task Management or Give Me Death
Friday, 10 July 2009
I’d like to take this time to vent my frustration at the lack of a task management application that doesn’t suck at some thing or another.
The battle has been narrowed down to two contenders. Things and RememberTheMilk. The latter is a highly effective, globally synchronised todo list that is based entirely in a browser (which sucks) while the former has absolutely no useable syncing, but a beautiful and powerful interface.
Things (here)
Things’ UI really is pleasant to use, it’s pretty full featured when it comes to managing your tasks, and follows GTD principles fairly closely. It also sits in my dock and notifies me with a little badge of what I have left to do. Things boasts very in-depth organisation of tasks and, as I said, presents it beautifully and functionally.
However, the only way I can take my tasks away from my computer (which, as you can guess, is essential to actually getting the things done) is by manually opening up Things on my computer, and on my iPhone and ensuring the two devices are on the same LAN; set up to sync to each other. This syncing is two-way, but only between the two devices and there is a lot of hassle in actually performing the operation. If I leave the house forgetting to sync, then my whole day’s productivity is rendered fucked-up unless I reach into my brain and remember everything I need to (unlikely). This also makes using it on my work computer completely impossible.
While I agree Things has a fantastic UI, I do not believe it should have won their ADA (Apple Design Award, an accolade given for software design excellence at Apple’s WWDC) purely out of principle that it has taken Cultured Code — the developers — so many years to reach 1.0 and still not even be feature complete.
It should also be noted that Cultured Code have recently shut down their forums. I can only assume this is because they were a hotbed of very disgruntled users complaining about CC’s lackluster customer service, arrogant relations with the world outside their offices and complete slothlike outlook to actually delivering features people want out of their software.
Wakey wakey. It’s 2009. Sync that mother fucking data through the cloud. If your UI wasn’t so damn perfectly executed, I’d have declared Things to be an utter waste of money.
Remember The Milk (here)
Remember The Milk (or RTM) gives me the ability to take my tasks wherever I want to. Unfortunately the only way to access my lists, save from a few completely unusable Widgets, is through the web browser (or through an iPhone app which is pretty useful, but only in certain situations). A web app is fine, except it has a pretty important external dependency known as the Internet. My current service, albeit fast, is very shoddy. Opening up a browser tab whenever I want to check my list, if the tab ever opens at all with this Internet connection, is not a productive way of doing things. My software should be coming to me with this information, certainly not I to it.
Dashboard widgets on OS X do not mitigate this matter, it’s just as unreliable as accessing a web page. I’m looking forward to setting up the Vista (Windows 7) gadget on Monday, as that’ll probably work better, but it’s still not going to be what I want.
Actually, come to think of it, this personal debate of mine is completely futile. I will be forced to use RTM as of Monday anyway. I just only wish that using it didn’t suck. If Things and RTM were to have some kind of crazy baby, they would absolutely dominate the life, and the wallet, of today’s productivity geek.
As every person who wants to have an efficient and stress-free day knows, you need to be able to trust both your system and your tools. Neither of these task management solutions addresses either of these concerns.
If only the two contenders involved knew how much I would pay out of the nose for that kind of interoperability.
