Hi, I'm Michael Mistretta, a student passionate about technology, photography, and design. Welcome to my online home where I write about technology, reviews, and my thoughts and opinions on technology-related matters. Kyle Baxter has written an excellent review of Cultured Code’s Things:
A productivity application is only as useful as how much users actually use it. A to-do application is utterly useless if users do not use it all of the time — if a user spreads their tasks out across a to-do application and, say, a notebook, they have two places they must reference when working on that project, which wastes time. Ultimately, then, they are likely to stop using the application altogether because it creates little value for them.
Part of the reason I refrained from using a task management system was because most applications required you to take a university course in GTD before actually being able to use them. I don’t want to spend more time maintaining my todo list than actually getting things done from that list.
After reaching the same conclusion as Kyle—that my memory would not suffice as a task management system—I forced myself to develop a GTD workflow. I decided to test both OmniFocus and Things—two of the popular new task management apps for the Mac and iPhone/iPod Touch.
OmniFocus sat stagnant in my Dock for two weeks. I dreaded having to open it up and set up my projects and contexts, so I never actually took the time to do it. It just seemed to require too much of an overhead—too much that I needed to know.
Things, on the other hand, I was able to open up and start working with right away. I started by simply writing down all the things I had to do today. As I continued to use the app, I developed a project and folder hierarchy, and refined my tagging system.
Really, there were only a couple requirements for my ideal GTD app:
- The ability to quickly jot down all the tasks that came to mind.
- Tools to help organize, sort, and filter my tasks.
- Helping me not only to organize, but also to focus on what I have to get done today1.
- An elegant and simple interface, that looks and behaves like a Mac app.
Things has done all these things right. It doesn’t get in the way, but instead puts the focus on my tasks, and allows me to work like my mind thinks. It still needs some polish, which I’m sure will come with it’s 1.0 release, but already, Cultured Code has accomplished an amazing feat.
They’ve brought the power of productivity to the rest of us.
- What good is a GTD application if it can’t actually help you get things done? ↩
I find that the best place to remember things is my brain. Writing things down, especially on the computer, adds an extra (unwanted) level of complexity to life and that totally defeats the whole point of GTD. Whereas, with storing things neatly inside my head, everything is in exactly the right place and it takes only only a split second for me to retrieve that information.
So I do agree with what you were saying in your post, but even when I tried things, I simply forgot it was there. I assume that is because I’m not used to it, but I’m happy with the way I do things and I guess I don;t need to change it. Other people may have the memories of dead goldfish.
Comment by Ted Winder — August 6, 2008 @ 3:48 pm
While I completely respect that viewpoint, that sounds like a comment that I would have written only a year ago. The mind is good for storing very short term projects and tasks, but when I have 10 or 15 projects on the go, with schedules and due dates, I find that it strains my mind.
With Things, I don’t have to remember anything. it does it for me. At the end of the day I don’t have to say to myself, “is there anything I forgot to do?”. Things will tell me that. And while a computer does add an extra layer of complexity, Things is the simplest manifestation of it, and is completely worth it for my, well, sanity.
Comment by Michael Mistretta — August 6, 2008 @ 4:19 pm
Things has become one of those apps that I always have open. After using it for the last week or so it has defiantly affected my GTD routine positively. I also enjoyed the simplicity of the app, I was just overwhelmed with Omnifocus - though I can see why it is so popular. Just not for me.
Things really is shaping up to be a great app. I can’t wait to slam down my $40 at release.
Jonathan
Comment by Jonathan — August 7, 2008 @ 3:22 am
I’ve tried to use various to-do apps before. All the GTD implementations just confuse the hell out of me, and anything else is the opposite - too simple. But now I’ve settled in perfectly happy to use the to-do’s and milestones that come with Basecamp. Granted, we use it at out studio for all our project management, but I’ve found that for once - something works.
Comment by Nathan — August 11, 2008 @ 6:33 am