Remember the Milk Gets a Total Overhaul

Posted by nathanb
Oct 29, 2018 at 09:56 PM

>I’ve come to the conclusion that task management is just very difficult,
>period! And increasingly feel that a central repository of tasks with
>notes accompanied by a personal side list of stuff you’ve got to get
>done NOW is probably the closest thing to an efficient task management
>system. Otherwise the whole thing just becomes overwhelming.
>

Same. I go through that cycle of my brain telling me I need more complexity to get a good handle on my tasks, then my habits prove otherwise as the complexity just becomes another unmanageable project. Looking back, it’s been the most simple tools that I’ve used more effectively for longer periods than the powerful ones. Wunderlist is probably the best example of that. I’ve been with ToDoist for over a year now but I keep abusing the nesting and struggle with keeping the right simple/complex balance.

Because of the desktop outlook integration, I’ve started using Microsoft To-Do for work tasks and I’m really digging that ‘my-day’ feature. In theory, it’s no different than just putting a date on a task to ear-mark it for today. But in practice it works much better for me. Manually dating tasks to force them to be on my ‘now’ list always created the extra task of re-scheduling the uncompleted ones at the end of the day. This was annoying to keep up with. I also generally have a separate ‘now’ list to dump all the random work stuff that comes up every. Stuff that’s generally too small and quick to bother with putting on a master list. Dumping into ‘my-day’ is a pretty solid fusion of combining these two flows.

So now I’m trying to decide if I want to use it for personal tasks too. Generally, I try to be on one platform to minimize the friction of the little interface differences. I’m starting to think that’s a bad reason since most tools these days so learning or forgetting an interface isn’t much of a thing anymore. I deal just fine with personal gmail and work Outlook. I don’t think I want the two worlds showing up in the same ‘today’ views anymore. So with To-Do, I think I’d have to switch between work/personal accounts to make that happen. That doesn’t work when wanting a ‘quick capture’ option for both worlds at all times. I’ll likely roll with To-Doist for personal, and To-Do for work and see how that goes.

The irony about that is because my home task situation is MUCH simpler than work. Work is a constant stream of new inputs (tens per day), home is a trickle (tens per week). Work projects are more numerous and complex. So if I try to flow work through a complex task system (like todoist can become), it quickly becomes just too much to manage. I can only manage fast and simple and can’t take the time to define and categorize every next step or I’ll just drive myself insane. This works out because I’m able to have longer times to focus on these projects. Personal tasks aren’t as numerous, but they are more disjointed where I have 15 minutes at a time a few times a week to deal with them instead of a whole day of work dedicated to that list. Like a medical bill where I keep asking for and forwarding dumb info over the course of a few weeks. That’s a good application for defining the next steps and putting in contexts because it’s not an overwhelming thing to manage and it’s actually an efficient workflow.

So yeah, feature-rich task managers for low frequency work, simple and dumb for an overwhelming task situation. Makes total sense. I’ll probably change my mind in six months.