I need an app for which I can quickly make a note or add something to a To-Do list, and perhaps also get to keep track of dates and appointments and take small notes.
Bonus points, if you don't use an app, what's your method?
Thanks!
FUCK I ACCIDENTALLY HIT CMD-R INSTEAD OF CMD-T AND RELOADED AND LOST ALL OF MY TEXT AGHHHHHHHH Anyway. Google Calendar is the best!!! It's how I keep track of all of my appointments. I always have a browser window open with my calendar in addition to syncing with my phone. 20 minutes before an event, I get a notification to my phone and also a pop-up on my laptop. So it's pretty hard to ignore! And, if you add a location, Google will automatically calculate your transportation time to there from where you are using your preferred transportation method and will notify you 20 minutes before you should leave! It's amazing. Plus, you can create separate calendars and choose which ones to view at any given time. So I have a calendar set up for all of my meetings, but then I have a second calendar where I block out chunks of time to do different tasks. That way, I can easily toggle between viewing everything I need to do for the week, and various subsets of that stuff. Plus, you can color code!! For example, this is what my calendar looks like right now: Pink represents classes, green represents research-related meetings, light purple represents social activities (of course, usually social things are planned last minute so usually they don't make it into the calendar), orange represents talks, and dark purple represents chunks of time I've allotted to do particular tasks. I keep some time open because of course unforeseen tasks come up during the week! So I use it both as a calendar and as a task manager because I just add tasks I need to do as dark purple color-coded events. However, I also sometimes make use of to-do items and reminders, also through the Google Calendar interface. You can add to-do items and reminders that appear in the top portion of the calendar for a particular day (instead of having an assigned time to them). And it you use Inbox (the new Gmail interface, right now it's invite-only), you can have reminders emailed to you as well, or "snooze" them so they're sent at a later specified time. Then the next step is to convince all of your friends to use it and share their calendars with you so you can easily figure out when everyone is available to hang out instead of going through so much hassle to plan things... Edit: Also, I highly recommend keeping a spreadsheet where you track how much time you spend in various categories of work. That way you can figure out where you're spending too much time, or not enough, and then compensate. I just have a simple spreadsheet with various categories like each of my classes, each of my research projects, etc., and a couple times a day will update how much time I spent on each one that day. Then once you've been doing this for a few weeks you get a good feel of where you're spending your time and you can adjust accordingly. I've found that this really, really helps my productivity!!
This is a lot to work with– thank you! Dude, I've accidentally deleted huge posts so many times. thenewgreen, is Hubquarters aware of this issue? Namely, my fat stupid fingers pressing wrong stupid buttons and making a potentially intelligent comment or post I write go to shit. Maybe some kind of auto-saving draft but more along the lines of the way comments save themselves sometimes even though the comment window closes.
Looks pretty interesting.. I use leankit for work, so Trello is quite similar but with a more casual approach... I just tested the Trello app, too, and is there a way to see the calendar in there? Or a widget you can get to make the calendar a small tile on the phone? I really like the calendar feature (that would allow me to have everything centralized), but mobile there seems no way to access that :/
I have no idea. I only use it to compile a huge list of action items and then put them in buckets titled "to do this week", i"n process", "done" and "ongoing."
A Field Notes notebook. Alternately, a Muji notebook of similar size. I use roughly a page per day (sometimes just half a page), laying out appointments/meetings as well as things I have to do. When I don't have that on me, Google Keep.
I've got this old Decomposition Book which has become a log for drawings, lyrics, and my stupid teenage adventures. It's such a valuable thing to have and I keep it in my backpack always. Field notes looks awesome, I just might try it out! Would be cool if they had the different kinds of paper all in sections of one book, though that might just end up being super inconvenient.
Yeah, they're rad. I totally recommend them. The paper is nice, the covers are pretty durable and you don't look half bad pulling one out of your pocket. They're also expensive. You're in NYC, yes? The Muji notebooks of same size don't have cool colors but they're half as much.
On my phone, I've been using Wunderlist for the past couple weeks. It's pretty good. Folders for tasks, reminders, cross-platform integration. I used Any.do for a while, but for some unknown reason, there seems to be no way to mark a task as completed without setting a due date. It was amazing as a management app though, as it would also filter phone calls, and tasks could be linked to contactsor store purchases. I liked that aspect of it a ton, but I really needed to be able to cross things off, so I switched to Wunderlist. I also use a pocket notebook (often homemade ones). That is mostly for if I need to plan out a single day where I plan to do several things that have been on my plate for a while, or when I don't want the distraction of my phone (often for writing tasks). I just use a bullet list beneath the date, and then cross things off as they go.
Wunderlist is also good, but I like Todoist better. I didn't even know they hid their notifications behind the paywall until you mentioned it, because I do get a 'daily digest' notification every morning. As in, here's what you should do today. I haven't needed much more than that.
Yeah it depends on the tasks you put in it as well. I mostly put chores, uni stuff and errands in there. For every one of them I don't care when during the day it happens, as long as it eventually does. It's a vastly different scope than having todo's by the hour, for example.
I don't use a digital to-do list. I don't think they work as well as physical lists, that you can cross items off. I make and follow a handwritten list each day, that I cross out as I go. Anything that needs to happen in the future, gets put on my calendar with a concrete date and time. If it's important enough to get done, it's important enough to go on my schedule. This way, I won't find myself distracted by doing something less important, since that time is already committed. Whatever works for you, make a list and stick to it.
Right now I am using TaskPaper to put my ToDos down. It is simple text based To Do list with the ability to put notes etc. If you used an iPhone you could combine that with Listacular. Sync it over Dropbox and you got yourself a simple and efficient To Do list. If you don't want to use TaskPaper but know to syntax (very easy), just use nvAlt. It is a note taking app that can save files in .txt and just sync them up with dropbox to Listacular. I tried many many many to do lists. It depends on what your needs are. If you have additional questions, shoot :)