I’ve been thinking for a long (long, long…) time that it would be helpful for me to maintain a todo list and to actually schedule my time. I’ve done it for brief periods before, but like so many other things, I’ve never exactly stuck with it for no particular reason (lack of discipline I suppose). I literally mean to schedule all (or at least most) of my time. This seams a bit anal, but I tend to waste so much time that I think it would be helpful to try to commit to accomplishing certain items at certain times.
I’ve been looking through various programs to properly manage these things. I believe I started looking beyond Outlook specially because I was looking for hierarchical tasks (which seem to be rather rare). Plus, I’d rather not have Outlook lock me out again so I can’t actually access any data.
Essentially, I look at the whole thing like this: I’d like to have a todo list that pretty much lists everything that I want to do. I’m likely to forget half of these things if I don’t have them recorded. I’ll then schedule these tasks on the calendar to see that they get done. These tasks really should have some sort of a hierarchy to them. That way, I can list one larger task and then break it up into smaller sub-tasks that are related. Which is to say, some tasks will always rely on others being completed first. A simple example might be painting a room. There might be a task ‘Paint living room.’ But you can break that down into sub-tasks such as ‘buy paint and brushes’ , ‘fill in holes on walls’, ‘wash/prime walls’, ‘paint first coat’, etc. Each task should be able to have a priority, a category, and a percent complete among other things. I’d also like a spot to put the amount of time that the task should take to complete. This could be useful for the calendar, and also if I have say an hour free, then I could just browse through my list and find something that should take about that long. The percent complete field should be there especially so that as you complete sub tasks, the parent task(s) can update how far along they are (this should be weighted based on the planned time for each sub-task as well). The tasks should also be able to be grouped in different ways to simplify what could be a quite large list. These are the most basic things that I was looking for.
Early on I more or less gave up on trying to find a program that would combine both a compelling task manager along with a calendar. There are lots of stand-alone task list programs, but most of the ones that have a calendar as well are fairly simple. Plus, none of them integrate well anyways (including Outlook, though it does better than most).
About the only program I found that had any time of integration was Outlook. Sure, most programs have a task section and a calendar section. Many will even show a task list next to the calendar. But in Outlook, you can drag the task straight to the calendar and it become and it creates a net appointment. This is, of course, very handy. On the down side, although Outlook has a field in which to put time, it won’t automatically make the calendar entry to correct length of time (tried on Outlook 2002, 2003). Since integration was poor in most cases, I didn’t figure it much mattered to have a separate program for the todo list and the calendar.
Still, I really had no luck. To me anyways, there isn’t much of a trick to calendars, so most of them are on fairly even grounds. If I had to choose, Mozilla’s Sunbird ( or Lightning, pretty much the same thing, but integrated into Thunderbird) works fine for me. Naturally, a version of .3 alpha 2 is kind of scary, but it seems fairly capable and reasonably stable none the less. It has a task list, but it’s nothing fancy and thus isn’t part of the program I would use.
The two task list managers that I found that best fit my needs are the open source Task Coach, and the commercial Swift To-Do List. Both are hierarchical. Task Coach is beta, but it has some nice options, including a way to track expenses and such based on the amount of time that you’ve entered. This isn’t something I was looking for, but it is something I didn’t see on any other program I looked at (although I suppose there are programs designed to track that sort of thing that aren’t just task list programs). It offers some colorization, which is handy, but the GUI is somewhat inflexible on the all and all. Swift To-Do List offers up quite a bit of colorization, but it stores very little information about each task, including no planned time field. The full version has “advanced export” options, but these don’t include a way to export to iCal, which is a standard (of course, neither does Outlook, even though it will import from an iCal file).
In the course of things, I found that Outlook can kind of do task hierarchy in that you can create a task folder and store separate tasks under it, but it’s relatively hard to get to the folder (it doesn’t just display with the rest of your tasks so it’s not out in plain sight). Plus, it’s literally a folder, so you can’t check it off as being done or anything like that.
In the end, I’ve chosen….Outlook. Bah. With the way I use the task list, the due date is usually not something I use. This would normally serve as a good way to sort the list. Instead, I can take advantage of Outlook’s ability to group the tasks by a field and then sort within each group. If I group by category, this can be very useful. Other programs really didn’t allow for this. Plus, I can kind of simulate task hierarchy by using groups if I need to. To go with the above example, I could make a category “Paint living room”, and then put all the sub tasks inside of it. It’s not perfect, but it’s something at least. The simulation thing occurred to me as I was looking through things as well. For instance, even if a task list doesn’t allow for something you want, like time planned, you can just throw it into a different field that you won’t ever use, like say, location. As long as you know what’s going on, and nothing else depends on that field for a certain function, it’s a decent application.
It should be noted that I didn’t look at much in the way of commercial software (though I did look at a few things to get a feel for what was out there). Also, I tended to steer clear of web-based systems. I’m not looking to keep everything on someone else’s server, and I’d rather not run my own. Plus, web interfaces tend to be slow and rather clumsy.
I’ve got too many ideas running through my head for how to make a really fancy task list manager though. I should really check out that Sunbird source… 
Anyways though, I’d really rather not use Outlook. I’d be much more comfortable with something that I know won’t lock me out after I put in a new hard drive. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. Which actually leads me to ask: What do you use? I’m just curious to see what different people do.
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iCal list organization outlook scheduling Software sunbird task list Technology todo Popularity: 6% [?]
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