My task management system with Things, iCal, Mail, and a little magic
09/19/2008I have been using Cultured Code’s Things application for a while now. It is still in beta, but it is shaping up to be a wonderful task management app. What is “task management” you might ask? Think “to do lists.” But Things is more than just some lists with check boxes. Things has a wonderful tagging system, projects, “areas,” a Today list, a Next list, repeat tasks, and a bunch of other features that I’m just going to tease you with here. If you want to learn more about Things you should watch this video because this post isn’t about how great Things is, it’s about how I incorporate Things into my workflow.
As I said above, I use Things to handle my task management. I use Apple’s Mail application to handle my e-mail and I use iCal to keep up with my appointments. One of the big features in Apple’s Leopard operating system is “system-wide calendar.” This means that anything in iCal is available for other applications to read and manipulate. This also means that other applications can create things “in iCal” like events or tasks. I know, at first that doesn’t sound very interesting, but let me explain why that is a good thing. Things allows me to sync some of its “lists” with iCal calendars. This means that I can now create a new task in one application that syncs with iCal, and it will automagically appear in my Things list. If that doesn’t sound exciting let me demonstrate with a real world example… after the break.