I almost feel like I’ve been cheating for the past week. After a long time pimping MonkeyGTD, I’ve switched to Remember The Milk. I don’t think I am going to be switching back anytime soon either. After I wrote the post last week about staying organized away from the computer I started to look into applications that would work on my Blackberry.
Remember The Milk got some serious love on Lifehacker’s Best GTD applications and I though I would give it a try. I was pretty much immediately blown away. RTM had everything I was looking for and more.
First off, it is web based and free (for the non-pro version). It easily manages my tasks and has a mobile interface (this was the killer for MonkeyGTD in my book). It integrates with Google calendar and can send me messages when tasks are due.
One of my killer apps was to be able to jot down books I wanted to read and then have access to that list at the library. I simply created a list called Books, and started keeping track of books I wanted to read whenever I came across them. Then when I made a trip to the library, i just logged on top the mobile interface, pulled up my book list and grabbed several of them. I added a couple books on the fly at the library that I didn’t want to take out yet, but wanted to read in the future.
When I got home, I put in a task to return the library books due on the books due dates.
The Pro version has tools that will actually sync with the native Blackberry applications, but right now I don’t need that level of integration.
MonkeyGTD is a great tool, but I am going to be sticking with Remember The Milk. Give it a try. It rocks my geeky world.
Here’s why I think RTM sucks: it’s unreliable. After deciding I needed a weekly reminder, I decided to compare RTM and PingMe around 6 months ago. I set up 2 repeating tasks on each, my regular Thursday task and a daily reminder that would indicate to me whether the services were reliable and trustworthy. PingMe has worked flawlessly. RTM stopped sending me the daily reminder after 4 days. Their weekly reminder continued to work, though, until a couple weeks ago when it suddenly stopped. When I tried to get help from RTM, all I got was a BS automated response, no actual help or acknowledgment of a problem. When I had a problem with PingMe’s interface, they responded to my query with help, an apology, and thanks for pointing out their instructions had been unclear.
I’ve never had a problem with RTM’s reminder service, but I don’t run a lot of repeating tasks.
Thanks for the info and it is always good to have some comparisons done. I will keep my eyes on it a little closer to see if it does miss anything.