Flutterby™! : Project management 2012-09-13 23:18:45.270243+00

Project management

2012-09-13 23:18:45.270243+00 by Dan Lyke 4 comments

On some social media thingie I read a comment about how a recent up-and-coming cool toy spawned from yet another project management development effort, kinda the way that Blogger sprang from Pyra's efforts.

And it got me thinking. I'm currently using Astrid as a to-do list manager, and am not in love. Sure, I like the fact that, with Locale it's got geographically enabled items, so that the phone can remind me when I'm near Trader Joe's that the disaster kit needs restocking with those Indian food MREs, and it's got lists, and indenting of a sort, but...

What I'd really like out of a to-do list is something that...

understands dependency. Probably as more complex than hierarchy.
can turn those dependencies into templates.
lets me group high-order tasks into the day's todo (ie: today's a workshop day, or a house day, or a work day, or I'm in the grocery store right now, show me my lists for those).

What are you using for list and project management?

I use Life Balance on my computer but no longer add anything to it at this point. It's just got all the recurring tasks that it's in charge of reminding me of. I think my major complaint is that adding items is a PITA because it wants too much information up front, rather than letting me just make a quick note now, and then come back later to categorize and fill in the blanks.

On my phone (which is where this sort of thing should really be, IMHO), I use an app titled "ShoppingList" which hasn't been updated in so long that I can't even successfully google it this morning. It's highly inadequate for task management, but better than paper notes, so if you find an answer, I'd love to hear it.

What Eric said. That and a whiteboard in my office. However things are getting to where I have decided I need to go back to a Daytimer.

Don't get me wrong, I use Outlook and One Note to track my calendar and organize email and other electronic documents along with my smart phone but pen and paper has never let me down like the electronic PIMs have.

I use OmniFocus, in theory. In practice, the move totally disrupted my GTD feng shui and I'm currently operating out of a Moleskine, a pile of paper, and a growing sense of desperation.

The phone-based OmniFocus client supports location-awareness, although I haven't used it so I can't comment further. It also supports fairly sophisticated tagging/filtering operations (which can be saved, ala "smart folders"), so you could do your high order grouping that way.

As far as dependencies, it's pretty much straight up hierarchy. It also really doesn't have templates -- you can simulate them by copy-and-paste, but that's a poor substitute IMO.