Valhalla Island

The software, not stuff. I started using Things around a month ago when soon after signing up for a preview I got an email to say it was ready. This was the beginning of a good relationship, other software I’ve signed up to see a preview have taken over six months with still no application in hand. If you don’t want to read a long review — in short I enjoy using Things and it genuinely helps me get things done.

I think it’s important to note that I have no experience with other to-do or GTD applications and that Things is basically being compared to a piece of paper and pen or nothing. I’m not going to talk too much about how to actually use the app, that’s covered in this screencast if you can stomach the way he constantly says “get things done” and the sickening “have a nice day” at the end.

So yeah, I’ve never tried what might be considered the flagship to-do/GTD application, OmniFocus, which released a 1.0 today.

Since beginning my use of Things it’s been constantly open and active more often than any other app besides Safari. Things is great because I love both adding to-dos — like Twitter, it’s clearing your mind of junk and the burden to remember — and ticking them off as completed — the feeling of accomplishment.

It’s gotten to the point where, while there’s to-dos inside of Things I won’t do anything that’s not on the list, sometimes this involves adding a task, completing it, then immediately ticking it off. If I do get distracted and complete a task that wasn’t recorded within Things, I’ll add it before immediately ticking it off as complete — retrospective to-do lists! If my time is unoccupied for the smallest period my attention goes to Things looking for the next task to complete. This is good and it’s created productivity like I’ve never had before.

Leaving tasks in the list after being checked as completed while logging after each day or on command is important. This is very similar to my method when using pen and paper — there’s time to reflect and revel in your accomplishment. The logbook itself is a great feature, a quick look at a month’s worth of logged tasks and it feels like you’ve really done something.

This is a distinct advantage over the paper system, sometimes I’ll have thoughts along the lines of “wouldn’t it be cool if I kept every one of my completed to-do lists and filed them away” but recently I’ve developed a system for dealing with this hoarding mentality — I imagine myself digging up what I’m contemplating keeping years later and enjoying their continued presence in my life. Obviously, finding and reading years of completed to-do lists would not be fun. While this has resulted in me throwing out just about everything physical I don’t regularly use, when Things automatically logs tasks into a single group there’s no reason to throw them out.

The Things UI.

I do have a few gripes though. They’re all to do with over complication and too much abstraction.

There are four focus views within Things — Today, Next, Someday and Postponed. I have found myself using just a single view, Next, after all GTD is all about what to do next. My schedule doesn’t revolve around days, I’d much rather work with maybe a week’s worth of tasks and just complete them as quickly as I can with work transcending the separation of days. I also see the process of choosing tasks to be completed today too much work, as I do with other features, more in a bit.

The other two focus categories — Someday and Postponed — may as well be labeled “tasks that I am never going to look at again”. These categories shouldn’t be listed under Focus because the way I see it moving tasks to them is putting them completely out of focus, likely to never be seen again.

When I first saw the Inbox I thought it was a great idea. Dump all your tasks into the Inbox with the global key equivalent for Quick Entry and sort them out later. Turns out I was filing everything into the Next category anyway and using Quick Entry followed by sorting was an extra, unnecessary step. It’s possible to sort straight into Next from Quick Entry but it requires selecting Next from the drop down, making it take that much longer and negating the advantage of using Quick Entry. Now I just hit command + n with Things active, easy.

Underneath Focus in the sidebar is Organise separated between Projects and Areas. After first seeing this in the screencast I thought areas was a great idea, there was definitely a gap that projects didn’t cover. Projects don’t necessarily have to be large, just multiple tasks that contribute to a single means.

I see a problem with the way Projects and Areas are displayed in the Next view, they’re always listed in groups below the set of uncategorised tasks, which there’s often many of and which have a high turnover, i.e., they take the majority of my focus. Depending on how many uncategorised tasks I have, tasks within a project may be below the fold and completely out of view, therefore out of mind. Tasks inside projects may have just as high priority as loose tasks but they’re always listed below anything else. I also don’t like how, by default only the top three tasks from a project are visible. To remedy this I suggest grouping the Project’s tasks together but displaying them inline with the other loose tasks.

One of the big things Ian Beck touts in his screencast is tags and how “powerful” they make Things. I don’t use them and don’t see the advantage of them. The time it takes to accurately tag all your tasks creates no real value. I’d much rather spend my time completing tasks than meticulously organising them. When organising your to-do list becomes an item for your to-do, it’s gone too far. For example, where’s the benefit to applying four or five tags to “Book hair cut appointment” — a task 4 words long that’ll take 20 seconds to complete?

Now, what’s great about Things is that even though there seems to be plenty of features I don’t entirely like in general they can be completely ignored or worked around with no fuss at all. This is what a good to-do or GTD app should be — flexible. I definitely don’t use Things entirely in the way it was intended, I find that way too cumbersome but I can use it my way and really enjoy using it all day.

Things is now available as a free public preview.