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How are you Mac folks doing reminders and structuring to-dos?
Scott | Nov 29 2007
As of Leopard, I’m a transplant from Entourage to the Mail/Address Book/iCal/.mac combo. Over in Entourage for the past 7 years, I created a slick Zero Inbox system by using delayed reminders, using a cool combo of Applescripts that removed emails out of the Inbox until a time when I needed to deal with them. I haven’t figured out a system yet in the Mail world. I’d love to hear how you Mac GTD’ers are using timers/reminders to postpone to-dos until the time you need to deal with them. I’m intrigued by OmniFocus, but it doesn’t seem to be set up to do timers; more, it looks like a way to order ones to-dos in the sequence they need to be done. It might work, to switch from a popup timer world, to just remembering to look at a list. But before I dive in to OmniFocus, I’d love to hear how others are dealing with their to-dos using the Mail/Address Book/iCal/.mac combo. Thanks for any ideas. 38 Comments
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 Re: How are you Mac folks doing reminders and structuring to-dosSubmitted by WCityMike on November 29, 2007 - 8:17am.
I use Remind to handle my calendar; it is ever present on my desktop courtesy of GeekTool. (For more, see your very own 43 Folders — Merlin let me do a guest spot.) I use the Remember the Milk website for task management — it is accessible by cell phone, Windows machine, Mac machine, and several other locales, and thus isn’t bound to my home machine. And it does it extremely speedily thanks to a lot of Ajax. As for popup reminders, you can also roll your own by writing a shell script that uses growlnotify to pop up your own message — set to certain times as a cron job. »
 Try iGTDSubmitted by groovechicken on November 29, 2007 - 9:15am.
Sounds like you may want to try iGTD. I have been using it for a while. I checked out OmniFocus, but iGTD better fits the way my brain works. You can set timers and such, although I haven’t taken the time to get those popping up yet as most of the tasks I’m entering right now are not time-dependent. http://bargiel.home.pl/iGTD/ Peace, Todd Russell »
 ask sandySubmitted by erdostom on November 29, 2007 - 10:15am.
I’m trying out ask Sandy… It’s email based, so platform independent, fairly quick and easy on the move… On the downside it tends to spam me a little too much, but that can be taken care of. »
 Moving in this directionSubmitted by epskionline on November 29, 2007 - 11:51am.
Now that I have an iPhone, and Entourage Sync Services crashes whenever I enable iCal and Address Book synching, I have been stuck in this nether world of keeping iCal and Address Book manually up-to-date, just so my iPhone and Entourage basically match. I hate iCal and Address Book, but I have heard they are better in Leopard and expect to move to that OS in a couple of months. I’m still not sure it’s a winner. Task management is so much better in Entourage than in the Tiger version of iCal. It’s not like Tasks sync to iPhone anyway (WTF?). And, no, I don’t want to pay Remember the Milk; I’d rather put my three most important tasks in a note on the iPhone and do it ZTD style. So, what I’m saying here is that I can’t imagine living outside Entourage now that I’ve got it working so reliably as a GTD-oriented system, but I don’t want to keep duplicating work in iCal and Address Book. Maybe a clean system with Leopard and Entourage 2008 will resolve this Sync Services problem and I should just suffer until its release, but I don’t know. Looking forward to seeing what people actually do with Apple’s toolset instead of 3rd party apps. I’m tired of downloading and trying new tools… and paying extra for them. Plus, I like how iCal and Address Book sync flawlessly with my iPhone. (Now, if only the iPhone handled tasks, and the Notes synced with Entourage Notes… If Notes are great in Leopard, I guess I’ll be fine with moving to that) »
Bad News for you...Submitted by groovechicken on November 29, 2007 - 1:46pm.
Ummmmmm… ask for some second opinions. I find that I actually like iCal LESS in Leopard than in Tiger. The only advantage I have found over the Tiger version for the way I work is multiple alarms. Meanwhile there are several changes to it that drive me nuts. Address Book hasn’t really changed in any noticeable way that would make it “better”.
They’re not and you won’t. I was excited about Notes in Mail… until I actually tried to use it. I gave up on it very quickly because the way it functions does not really lend itself well to any kind of workflow. I’m still using Sidenote for note-keeping at the moment, but will probably move those into something web-based soon so I can get to them from other machines… which is becoming more important to me now that I have used and hated Leopard. The silly notebook paper background only adds insult to injury. It’s as if I can hear those ugly little pages mocking, “You know you WANT to use us, but you can’t. Ha ha, we’re designed for teenagers, not work.” Okay, so I’m sounding bitter… and I am. I’ve been a Apple fanboy for years, but Leopard shows me they are going a direction I’m not sure I can stomach. The iPhone is probably the only thing keeping me around at this point. Had I not bought the iPhone, I may have already migrated to Linux to do my day-to-day work and just keep Tiger around for media creation. Peace, Todd Russell »
todo alarmsSubmitted by stripes on November 29, 2007 - 12:45pm.
I use to use iCal’s todo alarms. Mostly they would pop up and I would go “I’m in the middle of something else, I’ll get back to that” and then forget. So I’m giving OmniFocus and “check OmniFocus every time I finish something to see what I should do next”. It’s working great. Well, for the first 3 days at least. Not much of a test. OmniFocus does let you sync things to iCal, and assign due dates, if it puts alarms on them then you are there. If not, you are half way there as you could write a little AppleScript bit to take anything with a due date in a specific calendar and add an alarm… I haven’t tried the iCal sync yet, since I’m attempting to give a more polling oriented approach a try since interrupt driven hasn’t been as successful as I had hoped. »
Default ToDo AlarmsSubmitted by modsquad1978 on March 16, 2008 - 10:28am.
Hi, You mentioned AppleScript to create an alarm for new ToDo’s with a due date. How would this be done? »
Flow I am working on.Submitted by AdamT on November 29, 2007 - 1:02pm.
I just started using OmniFocus and am trying to think of ways to integrate it with Ask Sandy because I have really enjoyed using her for the past few weeks. »
 confusion?Submitted by monomyth on November 29, 2007 - 1:07pm.
I am getting a little confused. I think by to-dos you are actually mean reminders(?). In OmniFocus you can set the start-date/time, so action will not be visible (in the Context view) until the chosen time. My OmniFocus <-> iCal sync is seems to be awry so I can’t tell you if it appears there before or not. »
NotebookSubmitted by justgeorge on November 29, 2007 - 3:11pm.
CircusPonies Notebook works extremely well for me. I don’t need “reminders” (or, at least, I don’t use them), but I can set due dates and then sort or scan my various lists for nearly due and overdue items. You can integrate it with iCal, but I find that pretty annoying, actually. I’m able to link my to dos with other pages (in other notebooks) containing the substance of the work. And their clipping services allow me to clip decent amounts of text from the web or from email into my to do lists. It’s very flexible—and even if it wasn’t designed as a GTD program, it suits my GTD needs very well. George »
About braintoniq Bio Scott is based out of Boulder, CO, and is the owner of Brain Toniq, an effective non-caffeinated nootropic think drink. |
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Inbox ZeroThe original 43 Folders series looking at the skills, tools, and attitude needed to empty your email inbox — and then keep it that way. Don’t miss the free video of Merlin’s Inbox Zero presentation. Making Time3-part series on attention management for artists and makers. Read Bad Correspondence, The Job You Think You Have, and One Clear Line. |
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