While I deal with the first week of classes and my 230 Astro 101 students, 2 lab instructors, 4 undergrad researchers, and 2 grad students, take a look at this classic post on the to-do app Things (Mac only): Better To-Do Lists with Things. It’s been over a year since I wrote this post and my workflow remains the same. Be sure to check out the recent comments by Maryam about getting the educational discount.
I’ve also described how I use DropBox to keep my Things in sync across multiple computers. The developers are working on cloud sync, but don’t hold your breath for that coming any time soon.
I have recently begun using Things, along with Papers and Aquaminds’ NoteTaker, to manage my time and manage information. See my post at http://astrocompute.wordpress.com/2011/02/12/how-i-manage-my-time/ if you are interested in the details.
Things works well for me too, I like being able to drag email and file links into the to-dos. I recently found that folder and file links remain intact even after a folder is moved, can anyone tell me how that works? The path is changed so I expected the links to break. Does mac somehow keep track of where I’ve moved folders, or is there an ‘identifier’ system of some kind?
NoteTaker and NoteBook also seem to keep track of file links, but I wonder what would happen to such ‘webs’ of information when I need to change to a new machine.
Mark:
In Note Taker, you can create a self-contained, compressed notebook with the “Save To” feature. Then you can retain all the info on a new machine.
Kelle & Bruce, thank you both for your posts on Things. I just bought it and am really enjoying it. It’s especially helpful for squeezing productivity out of broken-up days: “I have 30 minutes before my next meeting — what should I do?”
Glad you find it useful!