With life as busy as it is, and so much happening in the world (both at work and at home), it sometimes becomes difficult to manage everything, and things end up going undone, projects run over time, and tasks accumulate and accumulate until you can no longer handle the load and resort to dropping tasks and pulling your hair out.

To better organize and optimize your time and efficiency, I believe it is sometimes necessary to employ software tools to aid your efforts.  This is where to do lists and task management software comes in handy.

For anyone who just wants to know which software I’d recommend for these tasks, I recommend ReminderFox for to do lists, and Task Coach for task management.

TO DO LIST SOFTWARE

To do list software tends to be far less complex then task management software.  This makes sense, since most of the time things we want reminding of are simple things.  Usually its enough to have a short text describing what needs to be done, possibly as a list, or as a ‘reminder’ which will remind you what needs to be done at or before a certain time.

My requirements while looking for the perfect todo list are:

• East to use
• Non-obtrusive
• Repetitive tasks
• Free

Following are a few applications I tried, and the reason(s) why I did or did not like them.

Todoist

Todoist is a add-on for firefox, which is also available via their website, chrome, and mobile (possibly other methods as well).  This system is pretty cool in that you can access your tasks through the different methods, and is really easy to create tasks.  Its sort of a hybrid of what I expect from a todo list and a project/task management tool.

Todoist works with projects with corresponding tasks.  Tasks are hierarchical and include due dates.  You can also configure reminders for your tasks.  Another cool feature is making a current webpage a task, making it easy to mark pages to read at some time in the future.

Conclusion

I think todoist is pretty nifty, I would certainly recommend others to try it out.  I chose a different product because I liked a feature it offered, snoozing reminders.

Remember the Milk

Sounds pretty cool, but seemed to quickly violate my “un-obtrusive” requirement.  Sorry, I don’t want to go to a webpage to use it.

ReminderFox

ReminderFox is another add-on to Firefox.  This one ended up being my winner due to its ease of use, ability to have reminders that are successful in getting your attention, snooze capability, and ability to be non-obtrusive.  Since Firefox is a pivotal application on my computer (I have it open always, except when I’m playing a game, during which DO NOT DISTURB), having a to do list as an add on seems like a workable option for me.

With ReminderFox, you can add to dos with the right click context menu, or by opening the ReminderFox interface by clicking on the icon on the bottom right of your firefox screen.  You can configure default values for tasks, which helps make adding to dos quick and easy.

While there is no concept of subtasks, you can create different lists and organize the tasks by lists.  When a task reminder is scheduled to come up, a pop up window opens with all pending tasks, which you can easily mark as done, or snooze for any time in the future.  The snoozing feature is very powerful and useful in easily making sure you get things done.

When I first started using ReminderFox, I was almost scared away from it because of a feature it has of a little slider window annoyingly coming up for a few seconds, displaying coming up tasks, before sliding back away a few seconds.  Several times while playing a full screen game I accidentally clicked on this, making my game minimize, and causing me to lose!  Luckily, this is a feature that is configurable.

Conclusion

ReminderFox’s simplicity, powerful and extensive recurrence ability, snoozing ability, non-obtrusiveness, and ability to effectively remind me of tasks made this my winning option for simple reminders.

Microsoft Word

Sometimes a to do list is simple and specific enough where a Word document will suffice.  The advantage of this method is that it is wide spread, simple to use, and customizable.  Of course there are no reminders, and anything more complicated will quickly get out of hand and start looking like a presentation document.

Microsoft Excel

Excel is a powerful tool that is highly customizable and fairly easy to use.  For many to do lists, excel performs wonderfully.  Its power filtering and sorting capabilities and ability to add custom fields (rows or columns) makes it very useful in many cases.  Of course again there are no reminders (at least by default, that I know of), and anything more complicated will become less simple to use.

TASK MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

Task manage software, on the other hand, is often far more complex, and is more ideal for projects with start dates and due dates, sub tasks, detailed descriptions, and possibly more.  This can help you keep track of everything that needs to be done, help to plan how to execute each project, in what order, and help to more effectively communicate more real time requirements and measure work and efficiency.

My requirements while looking for the perfect task/project management software:

• Easy to use
• Assign tasks
• Hierarchical collapsible list
• Measure progress
• Start and due dates

Pivotal Tracker

Tried it out and was decent, but not free.   Enough said!

Task Coach

Since I did a lot of research and review reading, and less testing for project management software (since I was in a hurry to find one for work), I ended up liking this one, which was the second one I tried.  Of course its not perfect, but I think this type of thing will never be perfect, since each type of project has different requirements, aside from the basic common functionalities.

Task Coach’s interface is very intuitive.  It is easy to add tasks and sub tasks, organize them with categories, and manage start and due dates, and to even track time spent on projects.  Assigning tasks to different people isn’t exactly a feature, but I’ve found creating a category for each person and assigning tasks to those categories as acceptable work arounds.  There is no way of sharing live your tasks and assignments, but I use this mostly for my own projects and for planning subordinate projects and deciding which tasks to delegate.  Milestones can also be worked with tasks, and I’ve found this acceptable.

Task Coach also has a feature where you can track actual time spent on a task.  You simply click a button to start timing, and click to stop.  You can attach files, assign task prerequisites, calculate budget, add notes, assign priorities, search, configure the interface by changing which details are visible, use templates, print your tasks, import and export, and send via email.

Conclusion

Task coach is powerful, intuitive, simple to use, and non-obtrusive enough to improve my effectiveness with personal projects and for planning projects for other people.  I strongly recommend it to anyone.