Remember the Milk
I’m one of those people who seems to spend an awful lot of time trying to work out a decent system to become organised, only to find out that everything is running late because of the time wasted organising. I’ve tried a lot of different methods in the past, both online and offline, simple and complicated and have had varying amounts of success, but haven’t really stuck to any one system.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, I started using Remember the Milk. RTM is an online task manager that looks fairly simple at first glance - it’s basically a todo list. However, where RTM really shines is in its integration with other services and the various ways to access it.
The web interface is good, perhaps a little confusing at first, but there are a lot of options available. The mobile interface is clean and simple, perfect for checking lists or marking completed tasks while on the go. Emailing a task to add to a list is dead easy. The modules for iGoogle and Netvibes are similar to the mobile version and are convenient to have on a homepage (although the Netvibes module is coded white, which looks a bit odd on a black-themed page). Using the Gmail and Gcal addins also help integrate RTM into the daily workflow and have some handy ways of making the different services work together.
There are other ways of using RTM; you can, for example, use Jott to leave voice messages that are translated into tasks. Paying for the upgrade also enables syncing with Windows Mobile and the iPhone, but as Jott doesn’t cover Australia and I’m using (and prefer) an S60 Nokia phone, I haven’t had the chance to try these. RTM also uses Google Gears to remain available offline, but again, this doesn’t really fit with how I work and I haven’t been able to test this.
In my opinion, the best way of using RTM is definitely the Twitter integration and, by extension, Twitter’s mobile phone integration. By using SMS to send a message to Twitter, you can add and complete tasks on RTM. Reversing this, RTM can use Twitter to send an SMS reminder. What this means is that you can set a task, be reminded and complete it all via SMS. If you don’t complete the task, or it is a longer-term task, then it is waiting on the list when you check back in online.
One central location for all your tasks, many ways of checking the list and many ways of interacting with it, all without being too obtrusive. This makes Remember the Milk an increasingly important part of how I manage to stay on top of things both at work and at home.
I’d love to hear of any other ways to use Remember the Milk effectively, so please leave a comment or link if you have any great ideas!
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