Your top 3 tools?

Posted by Dr Andus
Mar 11, 2013 at 11:23 PM

MadaboutDana wrote:
Funnily enough, I’ve been reaching the same conclusion re: task
>management. Currently, I’ve gone back to Carbonfin Outliner (and its web
>equivalent) for managing all my work - the information density is
>perfect. On the downside, it doesn’t hoist, and tags are confined to
>lists, not to list items!

Bill - in that case do check out Workflowy, as it addresses both the hoisting and the tags problem. The iOS app also syncs more or less automatically every few seconds after changes, as opposed to Carbonfin’s manual sync.

In theory I’ve been a long-time Carbonfin user, but in reality I’ve been using it only here and there, partly because the syncing between multiple devices is inconvenient. The thing about Workflowy is that chances are when you log on to your PC’s browser, the changes you’ve made on your iOS device will be already there.

But I’m only talking about task management. For actual mobile outlining (for writing) I’d still use Carbonfin.

I’m starting to think that Workflowy is a killer app, in the sense that they’ve solved 3 long-standing problems of task management apps:
1) how to deal with the fact that a growing flat or hierarchical list pushes older tasks deep down, until they get moved out of sight;
2) how to focus on just one part of the list, especially if the list is very large (100s or 1000s of tasks);
3) how to find specific tasks that share a common characteristic (e.g. equally urgent, due on a certain day).

The solution:
1) ability to create hierarchies of unlimited depth;
2) ability to zoom into a hierarchy level with a single click/tap;
3) ability to use tags, which, when pulled up in a search, show their entire breadcrumb trail;
4) ability to search for entire database or per hierarchy level, and shows breadcrumb trail;
5) do all of the above very fast and sync with server almost immediately.
6) it is free-form, in the sense that you decide what a project, a context, a task, a tag, and the overall architecture of the whole thing is. And can be easily restructured, as it grows.

This is why it reminds me of a particular desktop wiki solution ;)