Remember the Milk … Task management in 2008

Over the past year I have read numerous articles and posts about a great website/web application to help track your tasks. Rememberthemilk.com has been praised as a new way of handling To-Do Lists. Being an avid Outlook fanatic, I never felt the need to stray from my existing system. Outlook has everything in one nice neat package: Email, Calendar, Contacts, Tasks & Notes. And it all syncs with my phone. rem
Recently with my new purchase of an IPhone, I realized that the Tasks & Notes did not synchronize. While I had to find a new way to track my shopping lists and other miscellaneous notes, it came to my attention that I never really did use the Task feature in Outlook. Maybe because it just doesn’t work well. I did use the Notes feature to track shopping lists and other misc notes that I may need from time to time such as an IP address, CPR reminder, store shopping prices (which has been replaced with my camera phone) and others. Since my IPhone purchase several months ago, all of this has abruptly ended.

Remember the milk logo Enter RTM (remember the milk). This great (Free) web service offers the ability to create tasks and list, organize them, share them with friends or colleagues, synchronize to multiple sources (IPhone, twitter, email, etc…) and be reminded when tasks are due, just to name a few functions. Having just installed this a few days ago, I am already finding myself utilizing the service to create reminders of all kinds, personal, work related and even organized specific job related tasks. I have accessed their service from several computers, my phone and even emailed a task via someone else’s phone.

Without even knowing it, I now realize what I was missing in Outlook. Since I wasn’t using the Tasks, I was just using the calendar to track tasks. I was creating a calendar meeting for every single item I had to do. Reminders to make followup phone calls or bring home a backup HDD were all created as scheduled meetings. While I was reminded and everything worked. It did skew my schedule and sometimes it looked like my day was full when all I had were little reminders (like post-it notes) throughout my whole calendar. RTM is a much better way to go. And the best task management system I have used to date. Easy to use, lots of options and so many accessible options. We are even collaborating with clients through the system. Why cant more applications work as easy and seamless as this?

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Published On: Nov 22, 2008