The Search for the “To Do List”

I’ve kind just always used my email inbox as my “to do list”. Whoever emailed me something that I hadn’t gotten to that day would become something I had to do tomorrow, or, in the case of Fridays, then I’d take care of it on the following Monday. This has kind of worked, and I’ve been doing it like this for years but I’ve always wanted something better, and more organized.

So I began my hunt for MY perfect to do list manager. My findings, pros, and cons might not match what you’re looking for in a to do list, but this is my opinion on three of the large to do list managers.

I’ve heard SO much about Remember the Milk, or RTM for short that I finally decided to give it a shot. I used it for a few hours, and thought the site was a bit plain, yet extremely functional. I actually grew to really love everything about it in a few short hours… It was great, or so I thought. Next up was to install the iPhone application, and even then things were going great until I tried to sync my lists twice. It greeted me with a small popup that told me I can’t sync more than one in 24 hours. That clearly wasn’t going to cut it, and the only way to get around that limit was to subscribe to RTM for $25/year. I’m an extremely frugal guy, so I couldn’t let that happen. I’m actually really glad I dropped this before I got too far into it and felt like I “needed” a pro account to continue to use it.

I moved onto TeuxDeux, which is a kind of flashy, very Web 2.0 style website. I thought it was great for a few minutes before I realized there is NO way at ALL to create a category, tag, folder, or any real soft of way to organize the list. An unorganized to do list just isn’t a to do list in my eyes… so I dropped that idea.

I moved onto Toodledo, which I’ve seen some people use in the past. It’s known for being an extremely ugly website, yet with a very open API and active developer community. After I used Toodledo for about an hour I still didn’t really like it, there was a bit too much going on for me with such an ugly interface to work with, but I didn’t want to give up on it since I heard such positive remarks about it’s workflow, and “Getting Things Done” support. I kept poking around on the site until I realized that there’s a setting for nearly every aspect of the site, and I was able to set up sorting and folders EXACTLY how I wanted. Next up was for me to install the iPhone app. Now this is exactly the kind of app I was looking for. It syncs every time I edit an item, as well as every time I close and open the app. So far so good. The one gripe I have w/ the iPhone app is sometimes it will still show my completed tasks under certain views, but I can get passed that since they have the check mark next to them.

I obviously settled on Toodledo in the end, even though it’s interface is dire need of a huge overhaul, it’s still the most functional site I was able to find, and it’s iPhone app is great. Not to mention the endless supply of ways to interconnect your Toodledo list with other applications and programs. If you’re looking for a to do list manager I’d highly suggest you try out Toodledo for a few days and see if it has everything you need.