Getting Things Done - Part 5 - Things
A colleague of mine suggested Things by Cultured Code when the discussion about enhanced To Do lists and Getting Things Done came up on the internal Sun Mac alias. He said he'd been using it for over a year and was very pleased with how it worked for him. So I decided to take a look at it and include it in the reviews.\
Overall Things has a nice, clean and simple interface as you can see above. Better in my opinion that iGTD or OmniFocus for someone who is just starting down the GTD pathway (eg. novice).
Entering a task is easy. There's only one thing that is required and that is the task name. All other fields are option and there aren't that many fields - title, tags, notes, due date and reminder. Simple. A nice feature for entering tasks, is a system-wide hotkey allowing you to make an entry into your Inbox no matter which application you're in. The pop-up looks vaguely Dashboard like and works nicely.
The notes field for each item supports dragging and dropping of links and files correctly, though every appears as a URL and there are no icons. Direct entry of a URL does not convert it to a clickable link however, nor does the field support any formatting of the text at all. Again very simple, there are no options here.
Everything is organized by tags in Things. Whether it's a tag for priority such as "Urgent" or where that particular task might have to be done such as "Work", everything is managed by tags. That said, it's not hard to do except for one little thing -- it's largely a blank slate when you initially launch the program. You have to define the majority of the tags yourself. That, in of itself sometimes, is a chore and where I rely heavily upon other programs to assist me by providing the framework. Luckily I came across Ian Beck's post on the Things Wiki regarding tagging examples. So with about 5 mins of effort I was able to get things ready for tagging.
Following the "GTD" methodology of collecting, processing, organizing, reviewing and doing, Things offers a simple structure for organizing your tasks, four buckets - today, tomorrow, someday and postponed. I really like the "someday" bucket because I often have ideas and projects that really have no particular due date, or start date for that matter. Things handles these "someday" tasks and projects better than the other programs I've reviewed to-date. These four buckets can handle non-project related tasks that just need to be done and that aren't really related to each other.
For things that are grouped together, Things offers projects and areas. Projects are groups of tasks that related and once completed, complete the project. Areas are a collection of projects or tasks related to something that as a whole cannot be completed. For me this was a macro grouping of Work, Home and Life.
Completed projects and tasks are archived in the Logbook for future reference. This takes place either manually or automatically on a regular basis -- immediately upon completion, daily, weekly or monthly.
Things also has the ability to have tasks assigned to Teammates. Teammates is integrated with the Apple AddressBook. The teammate must, in fact, be in your address book. Right now the only thing the Teammate function does is allow you to assign a task to a teammate. It does not email them the task nor is there any collaboration on the task (eg. they can't mark it complete, you still have to do that. This is one area that needs a little sharpening but it's a good start.
There is no integration with iCal, or most anything for that matter, at this point but it's early on in the overall life cycle of the product and quite frankly sometimes little integration is absolutely necessary. Simpler is sometimes just better.
Yes it does support clinking on the links to files and webpages as mentioned in the paragraph above on Notes. It also does lookups as mentioned in AddressBook for team mates. Ok, so there's some very basic integration that is expected when working on a Mac.
Things is not released as of yet, but for pre-release code I found it very stable and usable. Pre-release pricing of $39.95 can be locked in simply by signing up for the mailing list through January 31, 2008. Estimated release date is Spring 2008 sometime.
Help right now is rather thin because this is a pre-release application. Help consists mostly of re-direction to the Things Wiki page which is not complete but fairly well populated and useful. There is a nice screen cast by Ian Beck of Tagamac.com and it does a wonderful job of walking you through most of the features in the alpha release. Hopefully it will be updated when Things is finally released.
Things is simple and was very easy to start using to get things done. For those that don't need or require integration with Apple Mail or iCal, a like clean and simple, Things is it.
Things
At first glance you wonder if this application will actually help you get things done. The answer is yes it will. Things by Cultured Code is much simpler in mosts ways that either iGTD or OmniFocus. That does not mean it doesn't help you get things done though. In fact, I pretty much found that it helps you get started down the path of getting organized more quickly than either iGTD or OmniFocus because of this simplicity.Overall Things has a nice, clean and simple interface as you can see above. Better in my opinion that iGTD or OmniFocus for someone who is just starting down the GTD pathway (eg. novice).
Entering a task is easy. There's only one thing that is required and that is the task name. All other fields are option and there aren't that many fields - title, tags, notes, due date and reminder. Simple. A nice feature for entering tasks, is a system-wide hotkey allowing you to make an entry into your Inbox no matter which application you're in. The pop-up looks vaguely Dashboard like and works nicely.
The notes field for each item supports dragging and dropping of links and files correctly, though every appears as a URL and there are no icons. Direct entry of a URL does not convert it to a clickable link however, nor does the field support any formatting of the text at all. Again very simple, there are no options here.
Everything is organized by tags in Things. Whether it's a tag for priority such as "Urgent" or where that particular task might have to be done such as "Work", everything is managed by tags. That said, it's not hard to do except for one little thing -- it's largely a blank slate when you initially launch the program. You have to define the majority of the tags yourself. That, in of itself sometimes, is a chore and where I rely heavily upon other programs to assist me by providing the framework. Luckily I came across Ian Beck's post on the Things Wiki regarding tagging examples. So with about 5 mins of effort I was able to get things ready for tagging.
Following the "GTD" methodology of collecting, processing, organizing, reviewing and doing, Things offers a simple structure for organizing your tasks, four buckets - today, tomorrow, someday and postponed. I really like the "someday" bucket because I often have ideas and projects that really have no particular due date, or start date for that matter. Things handles these "someday" tasks and projects better than the other programs I've reviewed to-date. These four buckets can handle non-project related tasks that just need to be done and that aren't really related to each other.
For things that are grouped together, Things offers projects and areas. Projects are groups of tasks that related and once completed, complete the project. Areas are a collection of projects or tasks related to something that as a whole cannot be completed. For me this was a macro grouping of Work, Home and Life.
Completed projects and tasks are archived in the Logbook for future reference. This takes place either manually or automatically on a regular basis -- immediately upon completion, daily, weekly or monthly.
Things also has the ability to have tasks assigned to Teammates. Teammates is integrated with the Apple AddressBook. The teammate must, in fact, be in your address book. Right now the only thing the Teammate function does is allow you to assign a task to a teammate. It does not email them the task nor is there any collaboration on the task (eg. they can't mark it complete, you still have to do that. This is one area that needs a little sharpening but it's a good start.
There is no integration with iCal, or most anything for that matter, at this point but it's early on in the overall life cycle of the product and quite frankly sometimes little integration is absolutely necessary. Simpler is sometimes just better.
Yes it does support clinking on the links to files and webpages as mentioned in the paragraph above on Notes. It also does lookups as mentioned in AddressBook for team mates. Ok, so there's some very basic integration that is expected when working on a Mac.
Things is not released as of yet, but for pre-release code I found it very stable and usable. Pre-release pricing of $39.95 can be locked in simply by signing up for the mailing list through January 31, 2008. Estimated release date is Spring 2008 sometime.
Help right now is rather thin because this is a pre-release application. Help consists mostly of re-direction to the Things Wiki page which is not complete but fairly well populated and useful. There is a nice screen cast by Ian Beck of Tagamac.com and it does a wonderful job of walking you through most of the features in the alpha release. Hopefully it will be updated when Things is finally released.
Things is simple and was very easy to start using to get things done. For those that don't need or require integration with Apple Mail or iCal, a like clean and simple, Things is it.
Great post! This series has been great and "Things" has been high on my "to try" list. Thanks for sharing your experiences with it!
benr.
Posted by benr on January 15, 2008 at 12:28 AM EST #
No problem Ben!
You're welcome.
Dave
Posted by Dave on January 15, 2008 at 08:54 AM EST #