Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Tadalist -- simple but powerful task management

I've been using the free Tadalist service lately to keep track of my TODO lists. It has a deceivingly simple user interface, but for me at least it turned out to be a powerful ally in keeping on top of my ever-increasing TODO lists.

In Tadalist you can only do a few things: create a list, add an item to a list, edit the list title, edit the description of an item, check off an item as done, and reorder the items in the list. It turns out this is really all you need. I especially like the feeling of checking off an item and seeing it drop to the bottom of the list, in smaller font, joining the list of tasks that are DONE! It's almost as addictive as seeing those dots when you run unit tests. Reordering items is also a very nice feature, because an item that wasn't so hot yesterday can become really critical today, in which case you want it at the top of the list.

One feature I'd like to see is for checked off items to also get a timestamp, so you can go back and see when exactly you completed a given task.

If you're not using any task management software (in which case I hope you're still using old-school pen and paper), then give Tadalist a try.

BTW -- what task management software have YOU used successfully? Please leave a comment.

13 comments:

stechert said...

OmniFocus for the win. Highly usable, syncs between desktop and iphone, implements GTD basics such as organizing tasks by project for input and by context for execution. I haven't seen anything better yet personally.

r. said...

From time to time I use http://taskodone.com when I need an online application. But my "true" every day todo lists are managed in my Old Palm T5. Mainly as I have it every where: e.g. I can review my lists in the bus, even add a note or task while waiting at the red light when riding my bike...

Unknown said...

With respect to 37s, but todoist.com is much better for todo lists.

Unknown said...

Taskpaper -- http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/taskpaper -- is the only software-based todo list manager where I've felt comfortable dumping ideas into, reviewing the contents of, and checking off completed tasks from, on a regular enough basis that it was actually useful. :)

Kevin Dangoor said...

(These are all Mac): I started off with iGTD back in the day, switched to OmniFocus. OmniFocus does everything imaginable... but I ultimately switched to Things which I've been happily using for a while now.

Things has a beautifully simply UI that fits the way I think about tasks. And it also has great iPhone sync.

Keegan said...

I used to use http://www.rememberthemilk.com/ I've now switched to org-mode in emacs with a similiar setup to http://members.optusnet.com.au/~charles57/GTD/orgmode.html

Anonymous said...

I used to use tadalist, but I recently switched to "Tasks" in GMail Labs

Paul Hildebrandt said...

I use toodledo.com. It works well with the iphone.

Paul Hildebrandt said...

I use toodledo.com. It works nicely with the iphone.

Anonymous said...

I'm a fan of "Things" for the iPhone. Never tried the desktop version.

Anonymous said...

I use Tasks in Gmail and it's quite convenient as its there with my mails.

Unknown said...

I'm using leo (http://webpages.charter.net/edreamleo/front.html) as my TODO manager (and for many other things).

It has a plugin which especially facilitates management of TODO list.

It's open-source, supports two GUI interfaces (tk and qt), it is scriptable and written in Python.

Henry Grisham said...

For me it's Qiknr http://qiknr.com/ It's dead simple, no registration required, you can share your lists and the main thing is that you can add a timer to each task, so you kinda force yourself to complete something in that given time. Pretty awesome!

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