Toodledo does more than Remember The Milk

You can't risk forgetting tasks. Maybe you’re a student back in school or a business wrapping up your fiscal year. Either way, you need a system to remember.

Last year, I looked at web-based task managers and picked Remember The Milk (see The Friendly Way: Remember The Milk and Everything Else). This year, I didn’t renew. What happened?

I switched to Toodledo instead. Here’s why.

Remember The Milk (RTM)

RTM feels friendly. You almost feel like organizing. The clean interface deceives you with its hidden power but never feels intimidating. You can even use RTM offline with Google Gears and synchronize when you’re back online. You can add tasks by email, voice (using Jott or Dial2Do), or your iGoogle homepage. You have access via your mobile phone. Some features are available only in the Pro version which costs a modest $25 US/year --- peanuts for you but bananas for mascot Bob T Monkey.

So why switch?

Subtasks
In real life, a task may have several steps or subtasks.

Say you want to brush your teeth but can't. You ran out of toothpaste because you didn't use an organizer before. You first need to buy toothpaste. Maybe you floss before brushing. Here's your task list

Brush teeth

a. buy toothpaste

b. floss

Get the idea? A simple sequential hierarchy helps.

RTM users have asked for subtasks since 2005. Nothing has been done and there's no workaround. Other organizers have subtasks, which puts RTM at a competitive disadvantage, but nothing was done last year.

If you’ve ever managed a project, you know there are tasks within tasks within tasks. For a big project, you might use Microsoft Project, but that’s excessive for most of us.

Enter Toodledo
What a weird name. It’s easy to say but hard to read and type toodledo.com. Your eye sees “too”, “led” and “do” but tooledo isn’t the name. Maybe the creators were being clever and converted “to do” into “toodle do”?

Get past the name and you’re confronted with a cluttered, ugly interface. It looks like the work of engineers rather than designers. Yet there isn’t a handy search box to help you find tasks easily. Functionality over elegance.

But what functionality! Toodledo has subtasks if you upgrade to Pro for just $14.95 US/year. Here's their comparison of To Do lists.

Toodledo has a timer which helps you track time painlessly. You may have allocated 30 minutes for something and find that your estimate was grossly off. This sytem lets you see how much time you really spent. You can't access tasks offline, but there's a workaround: you can print your tasks as a booklet by folding a normal page in a clever way. You can create goal chains, a technique Jerry Seinfield uses to keep writing jokes.

Which Suits You?

You can use most features of web-based task managers for free. This helps you pick the right one for you. Do you prefer Remember The Milk, Toodledo or something else?

Links

• The Friendly Way: Remember The Milk and Everything Else
• Comparison of online organizers (Toodledo.com)
• Jerry Seinfield's productivity secret (lifehacker.com)
• Getting Things Done (GTD): Three Big Lessons
• Faster: How to deal with the rat race

Podcast (4:57)

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