Scott on Writing

Feedback

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 7/21/2005 3:28 PM Ron Green

http://www.backpackit.com

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 7/21/2005 3:39 PM Scott Mitchell

Ron, would you say BackPackIt is worth the cost? I see there is a free version, but it's pretty limited. What advantages over my GMail approach would you say it has, other than being specifically designed to handle this approach, thereby likely to have a more intuitive UI? I guess it looks like it allows for selective collaboration/sharing of tasks/files, which is cool.

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 7/21/2005 3:44 PM AzamSharp

Hi,

I have made a very small application that keep track of my TODO tasks. When I complete the task I simply mark it as done or completed.

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 7/21/2005 4:16 PM Rick Strahl

Interesting topic. I've gone through many gyrations on this myself and i have yet to come up with a good way to keep track of tasks. I find it amazing that the Outlook Tasks list is so crappy - this is a pretty major feature for a lot of people.

I've done something similar as your client - I use Outlook drafts too. The advantage is that you can name everything and have something that's close to a real editor (or a real editor if you use Word for mail). I take the drafts though after saving and dump them into a special ToDo folder and pick them up from there.

For a while I was also using OneNote to just track my ToDo list. But that ends up being too free form and I gave up on that. Really you might as well use a Word document if you do that...

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 7/21/2005 4:25 PM James Shaw

FogBugz, hosted by Server Intellect.

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 7/21/2005 5:12 PM rick

Backpack rocks. It can send reminders to your email or phone as well. Their Tadalist app is a free app that specializes just in todo lists. http://tadalist.com

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 7/21/2005 5:29 PM MR

I usually send an email to my wife...then I'm guaranteed daily reminders when she gets home... j/k

I actually use a similar method, except I've been using Yahoo mail.

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 7/21/2005 6:46 PM Arif Khan

http://www.codeproject.com/aspnet/todoapp.asp

alternatively

http://www.eggheadcafe.com/articles/20040612.asp

and if you will prefer a windows app instead of a web app

http://www.codeproject.com/tools/ToDoList2.asp

I prefer the first one!

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 7/21/2005 8:06 PM Justin

If I do not need to share my todo list with others or need to have it available on multiple computers, I use OneNote.

For a web based option, I like to use a Wiki. I currently am using FlexWiki and it has worked great me. The Wiki is very easy to add/edit entries.

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 7/21/2005 9:12 PM Ron Green

Actually I'm using the free version. It gives a maximum of 5 pages and i have yet to find a use for all five. I keep one page for work, one for home, one for special projects. Each page can have it's own todo list as well notes and links. As someone else mentioned, you can email BackPack a list of items and it will add itself as a todo list complete with checkboxes.
Not to mention some cool uses of AJAX.

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 7/21/2005 10:35 PM Brian

I use Outlook Drafts for quick references and temp notepads. I don't really keep a To Do list it is all in my head.

For your client and anyone else I recommend installing Lookout http://www.lookoutsoft.com/Lookout/lookoutinfo.html it is free from MSN/MSFT and indexes Outlook and can do other files. It is an incredible tool. You can search by FROM:, TO:, ATTACHMENT:YES, and a variety of other filters.

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 7/21/2005 10:49 PM Armando Andrade

nothing easier and portable than my Pocket PC with Outlook for windows Mobile.

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 7/22/2005 3:59 AM Benjamin Gauthey

Gmail, good idea !!!!
Thanks for your tips : me+todo@gmail.com

Dubrow

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 7/22/2005 8:13 AM Mark

I pretty much store my entire brain in Gmail. For project specific info, I created a bugs page where I have a red-red, green-red, and green-green list of items. Once I finish an item (or think I have) I go to the red-red page and change the status to green-red so the client can see it. He then goes to the green-red page, views the item and then hopefully sends the item to the green-green page (it goes back to red-red if it is not fixed correctly). It's nice b/c I can catch potential areas where they asked me to do one thing a year ago and now there is suddenly a contradiction.

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 7/22/2005 8:30 AM Jeffrey Palermo

I'm suprised that no one has mentioned Yahoo yet. I use Yahoo for everything. I add to my Calendar, Todo list, and I use their free Intellisync program to sync with Outlook at work _and_ on my person laptop for home. Then I have everything (contacts, calendar, and todo) available wherever I am.

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 7/22/2005 1:04 PM Walt Lounsbery

Scott,

Thanks for the hint on GMail. After a lengthy trial period, I'm convinced GMail is a great tool as long as it has a future. Of course, I back up email to my own PC as well. That protects against Google system or company outages :-)

TODO lists are not worth the paper or software wasted on them. What counts is organization. My tool of choice is a FranklinCovey Day Planner.

When the PDA finally matches the Day Planner's simple functionality, I'll switch to the PDA. I do have a Dell PDA on my desk as a permanent display in its charging cradle. It shows its displeasure for undocked operation by quickly running down the battery and erasing my stuff. I also have a Compaq Tablet PC. So I keep trying that advanced tech...

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 7/22/2005 1:32 PM Sadeer

I use gmail to track my TODOs too, but I didn't know about the "qualifier" in the email address. I'd basically include it in the subject line of the message.

Thanks for the tip.

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 7/23/2005 10:56 AM Tarek Bohsali

I used to do the Outlook draft thing.. then a friend of mine introduced me to Ms OneNote. It's extremely useful!
I use it to take meeting notes, draft ideas, etc.. but the nice thing is that you can mark anything as a task. Just press CTRL+1. Then you can click a button to get all the tasks in all your notes.
So every time I need to record tasks, I just click the task bar icon to open a new side note, and start typing, pressing CTRL+1 for every task.
When your task is accomplished, just press CTRL+1 again, and it's checked.

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 7/24/2005 2:33 PM Friendlycoder

I'm currently working on a small application for a todo list. Just got a grid working at the moment, but once I got a working demo, I'll post it to you, just to get your feedback.

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 7/24/2005 4:38 PM Travis

Microsoft OneNote. I used to use little scraps of paper. But OneNote is like virtual scraps of paper that can be easily categorized and filed.

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 7/25/2005 1:52 PM BigJim in STL

Great tip on the gmail qualifier thing, but I don't know anything about how to do the next part:

"The benefit of this is that you can create a filter that looks for incoming messages addresses to me+todo@gmail.com and have them automatically labeled and archived, thereby bypassing your Inbox."

I must be missing something here, I tried to look up how to do this but am coming up blank...thanks again,

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 7/25/2005 4:04 PM Scott Mitchell

BigJim, in your GMail Filters section simply add a Filter that is applied to messages whose 'To' field is yourAddress+Qualifier@gmail.com. Then, in the second page, have a label applied to it and have it archived. Does this answer your question?

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 7/26/2005 4:40 PM Francesco

I use Quick Books Customer Manager. If you haven't seen it yet, take a look. It has a very nice UI that ties all sorts of related bits of information together: contacts, todos, projects, calendar dates/events/reminders, notes, phone calls, etc. Everything is related. I click on the name of a project I am working on and instantly I see all contacts, notes, todos, phone calls, etc. associated with that project. I love the UI and it has just enough functionality, but not the overkill and clutter of Outlook.

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 7/29/2005 8:19 PM Scott Hanselman

I use Plaxo to keep all my Outlook data freely sync'ed between multiple machines. I use GTD techniques including the 43 Folders technique to manage projects and todos.

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 8/1/2005 7:54 PM rob

Designate a special folder on your pc for your "todo" items. Each list entry will be a simple text file. The file name will be a simple description of the task. If you need to record any additional details related to a task (notes, comments, URL's, etc), these become the actual content of the text file.


Priority items can be named with a leading underscore to keep them at the top of the list.


If you email these tasks to yourself, most web mail clients that I know of will simply display the contents of each text file attachment for you.


If you have a PDA, you can configure your "sync" folder to point to this folder. PDA's have an easy enough time working with text files.


List management is as easy as working with a file system, because it IS a file system!

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 8/3/2005 4:42 PM Darren Kopp

For my work i created a simple task system (similar to tasks in outlook) and will just create myself a task. It can be fairly complex with due dates, but the textboxes are prefilled with the current days date so you can really just type the details and add the task.

By default i am the receipient of the task, but you can also send tasks to other people.

For personal use i would just use the msde and maybe some quick system to jot down what's in your head.

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 8/8/2005 2:17 PM Rob Walling

I do it the old fashioned way - a spiral notebook that I carry around with me at all times. I tried keeping the list online for a while but found that when I was out and about - in my car, in a restaurant, at the beach...and wanted to jot something down I was out of luck. With my notebook I always have easy access to my list to add, edit and delete entries.

If you have more than 40 or 50 items my approach won't work, but luckily I tend to stay around 30 items.

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 8/12/2005 2:39 PM Chinedu Opara

I keep track of my TODO items on my small flip phone, which also has voice-recording for quick reminders, and also synchs up with MS Outlook.

It's called the Samsung i600 with Windows Mobile Edition :)

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 8/13/2005 9:10 PM Santosh Tiruvan

While the concept of gmail qualifier's sound interesting ... I would rather stick with my yahoo calendar.

# re: How Do You Keep Track of TODO Items? 8/22/2005 11:05 PM Darren Kopp

Check out the new <a href="http://desktop.google.com">google">http://desktop.google.com">google desktop</a> (http://desktop.google.com). There is a <a href="http://desktop.google.com/plugins/i/todo.html">todo plugin</a> (http://desktop.google.com/plugins/i/todo.html) as well as a side notes manager.

# Re: TODO list application 9/6/2005 11:54 AM .Avery Blog

Title:
Name:
Url:
Enter the code you see:
Comments
Remember Me?