Getting It Done

Anyone who knows me understands that my mind is mush of things I haven’t done, things that I’m about to do, and things that I’m just not gonna do. Somewhere in there, somehow, I manage to get some stuff done. I know, it’s a mystery to me, too.

That being said, there are a ton of apps out there that are designed to help keep your life on track and relatively ordered (not that anything can order the desolate wasteland that is my mind, but it’s always worth a shot). Some of these apps are stellar, and some aren’t. I’ve used a couple of these apps in the past, but they’ve always fallen just a little short of my expectations and/or usage case because they’re all lacking some specific feature or service integration and just don’t measure up to my expectations. Again, because my mind seems to take all incoming information and immediately smash into a million tiny fragments, I have to intercept stuff and put it in some form that is manageable and understandable later on before I lose it. For instance: If I need to write a letter to someone, I cannot simply create a “To-do” item or task labeled “Write a letter to Bob.” Later that day, or even five minutes later, I might look at that to-do and wonder why I’m writing a letter to Bob. I’ll see no clear purpose for writing the letter, so I’ll just delete the “to-do” or task and move on with my day (which usually involves looking up pictures of koalas or pandas or pallas cats.

You see the dilemma.

I need to spell everything out for my future koala/panda/pallas cat-drunk self, or else I’ll forget it lickety-split. I also need all this information to be ubiquitous so that I can’t possibly miss it, meaning that it has to sync with everything I could possibly need it to sync with. If it could sync with my coffee mug or shaving soap dish, believe me I’d be in 100%.

There were two main candidates to this process that I found and have been using for a little while. The first was an app called BusyToDo, made by the guys who make BusyCal. The latter has received high marks for its integration with iCal on the Mac. I never use iCal on my Mac, so I wouldn’t care about that. I mean, it’s there, but it’s not important to me, because it’s basically just a way to get stuff into the cloud. The BusyToDo app, however, is for iOS, which I use only all the time constantly always, so that’s gotta be stellar. Sadly, it’s good, but it’s not super awesome. The killer feature of this guy is that it syncs as you make changes, which means that startup and shutdown times for the app are essentially nonexistent. They make the whole thing really fast, but the app itself is really simple. Make a task, maybe add a note to it, but that’s about it. I haven’t yet discovered a way to make this app work for me. Sure, you can schedule repeating tasks, but I’ve never been one for these “repeating” tasks, because if it’s something I do every day, I’m not gonna friggin’ take time out of my day to check a box, AMIRIGHT? Don’t care about that. I had high hopes for this app when it was only for iPhone, since I thought that an iPad version would be awesome. It’s sorta meh. Not bad, not great. Gets the job done for ten bucks, if you wanna drop that on a so-so app.

I dropped a fiver back when it cost a penny less than that, so I’m not too disappointed, and I got good use out of it. Maybe I’ve got a healthy dose of OCD or some other crazy disorder, or maybe I’m a little bit autistic (everyone seems to be somewhere on that spectrum, these days), but I have this crazy obsession with tagging just about everything I do to give it some sort of context. As such, I’ve found that there’s another stellar app out there that needs mentioning: 2do.

Oh man. Awesome. I’m expecting to drop $15 on this bad boy, but no, the app itself was $7, with another $3 for the ability to sync with MobileMe, for all of $10. Lemme tell you folks, this is the real deal. I can create lists, projects, tag each to-do I create with places, people, things, add notes, audio, pictures…this thing does it all. For people with dysfunctional short-term memories (uh…guilty), this app is a life-saver. I know I have stuff going on, and this app pulls it all together beautifully in an interface that feels really great to use. It’s a top-shelf app with top-shelf features and at a middle-shelf price. If you’re looking for a rawsome to-do app that syncs with the cloud, you need to get this app NOW.

Although it syncs across devices through the MobileMe service (which is awesome), there are limitations. Sure, there are notifications that pop up, but they’re local notifications, not technically push. So yeah, you’re getting popups on your li’l screen there, but they’re coming from 2do. Normally, not an issue, but since this is a universal app, it means that if I add a notification on my iPad, I have to make sure I open 2do on my iPhone so it picks up all the changes (and vice versa), otherwise I may not get the memo I left for myself. This is also partly Apple’s fault. They have notifications enabled for calendar events that push to your iOS devices, but not for tasks (yet). I’ve been hoping that they add native support for tasks for a long time, so maybe iOS 5 will surprise me nicely with that.

That being said, I still love the app. I think Apple will get their act together and update MobileMe to support task notifications, which will add even more to the functionality of this app. Even if Apple does work their magic and updates MobileMe, it will be really, really hard to compete with 2do. It’s just that good. I highly recommend it, and I think you should give it a try to see how much it’ll do for your life.