Six Free Online To Do List & Project Management Tools

Last month I shared my Six Strategies for Getting Your To Do List Done. This week I thought I'd point you to six online tools to help you take your task list strategizing even further. While I'm more of an old-fashioned pen and paper kinda gal, sometimes online lists can come in pretty handy. They can't get lost or destroyed by cat puke or spilled coffee, for one thing. And there are days when the built-in e-mail reminders that come with some of these programs are necessary for my survival.

Let's start with the three I sometimes use:

1. When you just need a basic To Do list, Google Calendar's built-in task list gets the job done. You can assign tasks to specific project lists, and set due dates that are automatically added to your calendar. If you need a reminder, however, you have to manually create an appointment on your calendar to send you a reminder.

2. Another simple list is Ta-da List by 37Signals. It has a super-simple interface that goes a couple of steps beyond the Google option with sharing options and RSS feeds. It doesn't have any reminders, so if you need help remembering to get stuff done, this might not be the one for you.

3. Remember the Milk, on the other hand, has about all of the options you could ask for. List organization can be as simple or as complex as you require, and it has apps to interface with your Google calendar, your iGoogle home page, your iPhone, Android or Blackberry, or even your offline desktop.

Here's three more that I haven't tried, but they look promising:

4. Todoist claims to be the best. Features include, but are not limited to, a built-in calendar, Gmail integration, hourly data backups and SSL encryption for sensitive data. The interface looks relatively simple and easy to organize.

5. ToodleDo promises ease of use, collaboration, reminders and customization, among other features. They even offer a handy chart to let you compare them to the competition.

6. ZoHo Planner appears to be a simple project management and collaboration package. One thing this one has that the others don't is the ability to add images and file attachments. If you're looking for a free and simple collaboration tool, this might be the one.

Altering My Natural Sleep Cycle (Without Losing Sleep Over It)

In my fantasy, I'm a morning person. I want to be the sort of person who gets up early and has super-productive mornings, freeing up the afternoons to work on whatever personal or home-related project I feel like working on and the evenings to just relax and chill with Matt, my day broken up into nice, orderly sections.

In reality, I sleep in late because I stay up late. It usually takes at least two cups of coffee and an hour poking around the internet before my brain can handle anything more strenuous than skimming Twitter and clicking links, and my work gets spread all throughout the day and evening, with occasional breaks to take care of other things that need my attention, or just recharge my batteries before diving back in, until I'm too worn out to keep going. There's nothing orderly about it.

This week, I've been making myself get up at nine AM. That sounds luxuriously late if you usually have to be at the office by eight, I know. But if you make your own schedule and have no particular reason to wake up by any certain time, trust me, it's early. Nine seems like a good compromise between my night-owlishness and my desire to give myself enough time to get things done earlier in the day and leave myself some chillaxin' time at the end of it.

Timely and relevant to this, yesterday Lifehacker ran an article on How to Reboot Your Sleep Cycle and Get the Rest You Deserve. It was full of good advice, albeit nothing really new to a sometimes-chronic insomniac who's already read all the advice there is about getting yourself to sleep.

Part of the advice was to experiment with earlier and earlier bed times until you start waking up before your alarm. Well, that's the problem, isn't it? I've always had problems with set bed times. As much as I love and need sleep, I hate going to bed early as much now as I did when I was a little kid. It's partly because going to bed before I'm truly sleepy tends to trigger my insomnia.

But a while back I read somewhere -- I'm pretty sure it was on Rules for Anchorites, but I can't find the post -- a discussion similar to this where someone suggested that night owls simply have a hard time relinquishing the day, and... yes. This. It's so hard to let go, to admit that I'm done with a day, that I've done all I can with it. It feels like defeat.

Even so, last night I thought I'd try Lifehacker's advice and make myself go to bed earlier. I've been averaging about seven hours of sleep all week, so I felt tired enough that I knew I could use the extra hour. But then I started reading a new book, and by the time I forced myself to put it down and go to bed it was already after one AM and I was facing another less-than-eight-hour night.

Then, this morning, I woke up before my alarm anyway. I lay there for a minute, not sure if I was truly awake and trying to will myself to get up, thinking how victorious it would feel to get up before my alarm went off. But I was still just on the cusp of wakefulness, and in the midst of my self-pep-talk I closed my eyes, and the next thing I knew my phone was vibrating (I use my phone's alarm on the silent setting, tucked into my pillow, so as not to wake Matt) and I was waking back up from a dream about a particularly odd episode of Castle involving an escaped killer baboon and a tornado (it was too much tornado and not enough Nathan Fillion for my liking; there was, however, just enough baboon to keep it weird).

So much for that.

But I refuse to give up just yet. Maybe if I keep forcing myself awake at nine, eventually the not-quite-enough sleep I've been getting will catch up with me, and my body will want to go to bed earlier. That's the theory, anyway. Of course, I can't recall any other time in my 37 years that it's ever worked out that way, but that's probably because after a week I'd usually give up and stop setting the alarm; or, when that wasn't an option, I'd always use the weekends to catch up on sleep and then have to start all over again on Mondays. This time, I'm going to do my best to stick with it. After all, I figure it's getting to be now or never, and I'm not ready to let go of that productive-morning-person fantasy just yet.

Six Strategies For Getting Your To Do List Done

It's the end of a long and satisfying day. I got everything done that I wanted to, within reason, and I didn't even have a To Do list for the day, which is sort of the antithesis of this post; but even so, today was productive and satisfyingly balanced: I made headway on two separate client projects, spent some quality time with my mom-in-law, worked on cleaning up storm debris, and helped Matt grill some burgers on the back patio (and then ate them - mmm, chargrilled meat!), and now I'm capping the day off by spending some quality time with the blog (which also happens to kill the writing bird, so yay for that). All of that, despite taking time out to watch American Idol and Glee (Lee DeWyze was awesome! But not as awesome as NPH! Who was in turn not as awesome as the Idina/Lea duet! What can I say? It was a great night to be a fangirl).

As great as today was, the unstructured-yet-productive days are pretty rare for me. Even on structured days I tend to run into problems and don't get as much done as I'd like (as discussed last week, I owe a lot of that to my TV habit). With ADD, I find it difficult to focus and stay on task under the best circumstances. Add to that chronic hay fever clouding my brain and a wonky thyroid and sleep apnea conspiring to sap all of my energy, and keeping my butt in my office chair long enough to get work done without falling asleep (or falling prey to about a zillion different distractions) is just plain hard.

One thing that's (usually - today being a rare exception) essential to getting past all of this and keeping my day on track is the ubiquitous To Do list. But it doesn't really help me to simply write down the things I need (or hope) to get done each day. I've come to realize that there's a strategy to creating a really effective To Do list, one that has every item checked off at the end of the day and leaves you with a smugly satisfying sense of accomplishment and done-ness. Here are some tips to strategizing YOUR To Do list to achieve the best results.

1. Make a "priority list" for the whole week. Be selective and ruthless in your prioritization, leading with firm deadlines, things that MUST get done that week. Follow that with things that it would simply make your life easier to get done that week, and round it out with some personal projects. Then when you make each day's To Do list, you can refer to this list to help ensure that you're not forgetting to take care of the important stuff. Additionally, I also keep ongoing "Must Do" and "Wanna Do" lists to help keep track of both client obligations and personal projects, and I try to pull from both columns when making up my weekly list.

2. Only list the things you need help remembering to do. I used to have a bad habit (which I still haven't entirely broken) of padding my list with the routine things I do every day, bunching them all at the beginning to give myself a "head start" on crossing things off and get that boost from feeling accomplished at the sight of all those check marks. The problem with this is, as the day stretches on and my brain gets tired and starts looking for excuses to quit, seeing all those check marks gives it a false sense that it's worked really hard and deserves to be done for the day - no matter that the only things checked off are "eat breakfast", "get dressed", "brush teeth" and "feed the cats".

3. Keep it short. I read somewhere that seven is the maximum number of items you should have on your To Do list. The reason had something to do with seven being the maximum number of things that the human brain can process or remember without getting overwhelmed (which is why phone numbers are seven digits). I usually do pretty well by sticking to this rule. On days I attend church or am otherwise pressed for time, I'll even cut it down to five.

4. Be selective, and be realistic. Keeping a short list means hitting the priorities and sometimes letting go of the things that aren't as important. This is very important if you have ADD or suffer from "too many irons in the fire" syndrome and have a difficult time deciding what you should be working on at any given time. I have a tendency sometimes to fill up a whole page with things I hope to get done, but there's never enough time in the day to complete those lists. I've found it's better to keep it pared down to the things I actually have a reasonable shot at accomplishing in the time allotted.

5. Work in order. This is also related to the last two items. Only you can decide which order is best, but write down the tasks in the order that you plan to do them, and then stick to that order. This might mean putting the biggest or most tedious chores first to make yourself do them before rewarding yourself with the more enjoyable tasks. For me, since it's a lot easier to force myself to work on something for someone else than for myself, this means putting first the personal projects, like editing my novel or writing this blog, that I would otherwise most likely let slide after I got done with my client projects for the day. Speaking of which...

6. Make a balanced list. Try not to fill it up completely with obligations to others, but to leave a slot or two open for things you want to do for yourself. This is a good way to make sure you nurture yourself, whether it's by spending time doing personal projects, making exercise a daily obligation, or simply keeping your life in order by doing mundane chores around the house.

For me, a daily To Do list usually includes two or three client projects (or one big project broken down into a few manageable tasks if I'm under deadline), a household chore or two, a writing task, a personal or business development task, and some form of exercise. This usually makes for a pretty well-rounded day and leaves me with the feeling that I'm moving forward in every area instead of focusing on just one dimension of my life while the others stagnate. If I'm under tight deadlines, that changes, but I try not to let it become a rut that I get stuck in for very long.

Need more help? Here are Six Free online To Do List and Project Management Tools.

Do you have any strategies to add? What's your biggest obstacle to overcoming distraction and procrastination? Share your insights in the comments.

Scientific Proof That TV Is a Productivity Killer (And Yet I Watch Anyway)

A couple of weeks ago I had a spectacularly productive week that included three straight days wherein I managed to cross off every item on my To Do list. So rarely does this thing happen, and so proud was I that I tweeted about it at the end of each day, prompting friend-of-the-blog Douglas Cootey to ask via direct message:

I promised to answer the question in a blog post, and put that on the next day's To Do list. As you can see from the time stamp, that was almost two whole weeks ago, which shows you just how successfully I've been checking off items ever since. This is partly because we've entered that time of year when I feel cruddy 80% of the time thanks to allergies (and thanks also to the meth-heads that have made Sudafed such a PITA to get), and the resulting perpetual brain fog is making it difficult to find my focus.

But the main culprit behind procrastinating so long on this post in particular is that all of the tips and tricks that I thought must make up my productivity "secret" kind of fell apart when I realized that the only real common denominator between those three super-productive days is this: I didn't watch TV.

Well, that's not entirely true. It would be more accurate to say that I didn't watch my shows when they aired but instead waited to catch them online at a more convenient time, after all of my work was done. I don't really remember what prompted the decision, although it probably had something to do with not being able to bring myself to care whether I missed Shania Twain week on American Idol (the only show that I have to watch live if I'm going to watch it at all, since it doesn't get re-broadcast online later). That, and I'd mistakenly thought Chuck had another week of re-runs to go.

Anyway, it just worked out so that I didn't interrupt my work flow to watch TV most of that week, which resulted in a lot of productivity. This might suggest that my TV habits are coming between me and massive success, but mostly I see it as a preview of how awesomely productive my summer should be once all of my shows are on hiatus.

Nevertheless, there are a few other things I did to help get those To Do lists crossed off. I'm going to test them further to see both how ADD-proof they are and how well they stand up to the test of time. Next week I'll compile the winning tips into another post. Meanwhile, I've got lists that need conquering (and shows that need watching ;).

Productive Daydreaming

You might have guessed from the title of this blog that I do a lot of daydreaming. Or not--I guess you might have just thought I was a Monkees fan. Or a Neil Diamond fan. Or just a fan of that one song. I do quite like the song, actually. Not only is it probably the most widely-known of the very small handful of songs with my name in them, but I identify even more with it because I do tend to be sleepy quite often, and to need cheering up on occasion. The part about the homecoming queen, however, couldn't be LESS about me. I mean, I was once crowned the 8th grade Autumn Carnival Queen for selling the most prize drawing chances, but that was more about nerd achievement than popularity. Digression, you are an unwieldy muse.

Back to the topic of day dreaming: I do a lot of it, as already stated. I also tend to feel a lot of guilt about it. This guilt was ingrained early and deeply by well-meaning teachers who thought I was staring out the window due to sheer laziness, wishing I could go outside and play instead of paying attention and doing my schoolwork. They had no idea that I was secretly Making Plans, or telling myself stories. They never did manage to break me of the habit; to this day, if there is a window, I will stare out of it and think, and plan, and make up stories. All they succeeded in doing was giving me a major guilt complex about it.

I've been working to shed that complex most of my adult life, ever since I decided that Making Things Up And Writing Them Down was what I wanted to do for a living. I've pretty well succeeded at that when it comes to writing. I had to. For a writer, daydreaming is pretty much a job requirement. I've been marginally less successful in other creative areas, but I do keep a creative journal and give myself occasional "sanctioned daydreaming" periods in which I write down my ideas.

It never even occurred to me to apply that same principle to my virtual assistant business. Yesterday, I sat here for I don't know how long, daydreaming about The Task Wrangler and thinking about how I can build and market it. I came up with several ideas, but I didn't write a single one of them down. Instead, when I was done, I just felt guilty over "wasted time" that could have been spent doing instead of thinking.

I've been following this new blog, The Creative Life, where the other day I read this (emphasis mine):

I have a need to barf out stuff that’s on my mind, though, which might lead you to the impression I get a lot done. Mostly I think a lot about getting things done, and about things in general. I’m actually working on allowing myself to recognize all that pondering as productive, but it’s a good week when I get actual things done on more than one project. (Link to the post)

And that is me. Every single word of it, except for the bolded part about allowing myself to recognize thinking as a productive activity. I can do it for the creative parts of my life--why not for the working part?

We pretend to have a lot of regard for Thinkers in our culture, but really, what we respect most are the Doers, the Action People, the ones who Get Stuff Done, and that's what we all aspire to be. But action without thought tends to be pointless at best, and can be potentially disastrous. Thinking is a necessary precursor to acting. But the problem with thinking is that to an outside observer, it looks just like sitting around and doing a whole lot of nothing. It looks lazy.

I need to get over that. For one thing, I'm no longer sitting in a cubicle where my boss passes by twenty times a day. I'm my own boss, in my own home, and nobody's around to catch me sitting here thinking and leap to the conclusion that I'm being unproductive. For another, I know that I'm not. I'm actually doing something, and when I'm done it's okay if I don't have anything to show for it except a list of ideas and notes on how to implement them. I just need to stop relying on my brain to store that list, take a cue from my creative endeavors, and start writing them down.

From now on, I'm going to keep a third notebook handy. I already have one for writing ideas, and one for home, craft and web design stuff. The new one will be for my business, and when I catch myself daydreaming about that topic, out it will come, and that daydreaming will be a productive, guilt-free action.

Now if my thoughts drift to winning the lottery and spending the rest of my life as a care-free ex-pat sipping fruity cocktails on a Caribbean beach... zuh, what? Oh, right. Sorry. So yes, I recognize that there's a limit to how much daydreaming is actually useful. But I hereby grant myself permission to stop being afraid to take time out to ponder. And if it helps, dear reader, I hereby grant you the same permission.

Writing and Creativity Links - 7.27.2009

Some of these tabs have been open in my browser for more than a week. Time to put them to rest.

Footsteps To a Novel - A great breakdown from author Margaret McGaffey Fisk on how to get started turning your basic idea into a full-blown novel. Even after I've written a few, I still found this helpful as I start thinking about what I want to do for NaNoWriMo this year.

From there I found Fisk's list of writing tools, which includes useful things like a scene plotting spreadsheet and several different word count trackers.

The list also included a link to Holly Lisle's Index Card Plotting Method, which I have a feeling is going to change my writing life once I get around to trying it out for myself.

Not strictly related to writing, but to creativity in general, Tyler Durden's 8 Rules for Innovation is the article that inspired me to stop putting off the "Bully Bait" column I wrote about in the previous post (I've been kicking that idea around for almost a year now), make like a Nike spokesperson, and Just Do It. It's inspiring me to Just Do a lot of things, actually. Here's hoping that inspiration doesn't wane.

Coffee break

Yes, I'm having a third cup again. I'll try not to let this become a habit, but really, I can't be this busy without caffeine to propel me.

While I'm sipping I'm reading Lifehack.org, and they have an interesting collection of Ten Productivity and Organization Myths that, if subscribed to, are a good way to shoot yourself in the foot.

Also of interest is this list of ten negative misapprehensions about introverts and ways to correct them. As a textbook INFP, I gotta say, this list addresses a few peeves of mine.

Back to work.