Organizing Your Tasks

Are you a task freak? Well, I guess I’m becoming one.

With so many projects at hand, may it be personal or work, or anything else, I needed a way to organize my actions and plan my tasks. I have been in the lookout for a good tasks organizer, an organizer that I can access from home and office computers, and even through my cellphone. It has to be digital, as I seemed don’t like the idea of bringing around an organizer with me wherever I go.

The todo list in my home and office computers as well as my cellphone must be synchronized, so the organizer from Microsoft Outlook is not applicable. In as much as I would like to utilize the organizer from my phone (calendar and to-do lists), it may not be able to hold up to my requirements, for a way to separate personal and work related tasks. Also, I would not bother organizing my tasks through the phone’s keypads, it’s just so inconvenient.

Task Freak!

TaskFreak! is a simple but efficient web based task manager written in PHP.

I have been playing with this thing for three days. It’s really cool. You have to install it in your server. It utilizes PHP and MySQL for a backbone. I’ve installed one in http://todo.deuts.net. It’s password protected so you can’t browse and try out the same, though a demo is available at the application’s site.

Task Freak Tour

It organizes your tasks into projects. You can set status in multiples of 20%. You can set priorities for your tasks and assign due dates. As a matter of fact, the multiuser version is very useful for group/team projects.

With Task Freak!, I can access my to-do list in my home and office computers. However, there just can’t seem a way to synchronize them with my phone, just in case I’m on the road and I needed to check or edit my tasks.

Remember the Milk (RTM)

Remember the milk is perhaps, in my personal opinion, the most advanced tasks organizer there is so far in terms of features and functionality. You have to sign up for the service, there is a free account and a premium one (pro). The features available for free account might just be everything you need, and inclusive of almost all the features available to pro users.

Remember the Milk Screenshot

Certain features that I like about RTM are:

  • Keyboard shortcuts – for quick adding, tagging, assigning due dates, notes, etc. to your tasks
  • Tagging – in lieu of projects feature in Task Freak!, you can assign tags to your tasks. Moreover, tagging offers you more versatility
  • Offline – through Google Gears, you can access and edit your tasks offline in your favorite browser, and synchronize the changes you’ve made when you go online
  • Reminder – receive reminders via email, SMS, and instant messenger
  • Quick add – adding tasks is as simple as firing off an email (even from your phone). You can also add tasks through twitter, IM, and third party applications/services
  • WAP Access – you can manage your tasks through its mobile-friendly webpage
  • Third Party Services – various applications or services made by third parties that can contribute in making your life easier by planning your tasks accordingly through RTM.

I Choose RTM!

Comparing the two, I guess the most decisive factor for me in choosing RTM is the wap access. There will be those times when I’ll just find myself inside a grocery store and needed a quick access to the grocery list I prepared on my computer (i.e., the items I tagged as “buy” in RTM). Unless maybe if there will be another application that automates the process by offering desktop as well as mobile application, then, maybe until then, I’ll make the switch.

If there are other online applications that I missed but offered better features than the ones I discussed above, feel free to leave a comment, so I can try them out as well. After all, what I’m really up to is a way to better organize my tasks for a more productive workflow.

2 Comments

Obeertym March 19, 2008 Reply

Help! I needed a way to organize my tasks in Microsoft Outlook!

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