How to organise heavy workload – Part 2 – Organising your Tasks with Remember the Milk
Posted on März 4, 2009, under General.
In this stream of information there will always be some tasks. So usually before I start working on these, i will always organise them using a task manager of some sort. I used to du this with Outlook, but as I told you before, I have switched from Microsoft products and while doing this it was important for me to find a solution, through which I could access my data from anywhere.
Remember the Milk
At that stage Google did not have a task manager, so I started using Remember the Milk, which you can use with Google Mail and Google Calendar, through Firefox Extensions. [7.4.2009:] Apparently it is possible to e.g. Tag an email and it will automatically show up as Task in RTM. Unfortunately it only worked for a while and now not anymore, probably because of my extensive use of other plug-ins, scripts and gadgets 
It is working again, in the settings section of your GMail you will find a tab, where you can set wether you want to add a Task when starring and/or tagging an eMail with a specific tag. It now also has the information if your RTM is working with your Googlemail version. There is also an interface between RTM and Twitter.
Using Lists
There is one cool function you should use to show your task in an organised and structured way:
- In your Task List use the Search Options
- set e.g. the due date within 1 Day of Today
- This will give you all tasks, that are due Today
- On the right hand side of your list, click on the save-tab
- Give your “Smart List” a good name e.g. “01 Today” and save.
This Smart List now shows up as blue tab above your to-do-list, so in future you can access your “tasks of today” with one click. You can use the search options to set a lot of useful views of your tasks and save them as smart lists. If you can’t do something using the form, you can also use the advanced search function. To delete a smart list go to Settings -> Lists in your main menu.
Sharing Tasks
You can, if you are working in a team, share your tasks. The cool thing about that is that you are really sharing the job, it is not a copy that is sent to your work partners. The difference is, that when you complete a task, the task will not show up anymore in your team.
Does anyone have other tips and tricks for RTM? Let me know …
How to organise heavy workload – Part 1 – The Morning …
So far the recession has spared me. In the contrary, the goals I have set myself for this year are likely to be dwarfend if the pace of the first two months of this year continues. About a week ago, Gordon from eWrite wrote a post about “Learning the time management thing“. Joining this, I want to tell you about my approach to the same problem.
Beginning the day
My day usualy begins before dawn, as I like the peace and quite for reading my mails and news. No phone, no skype or icq and even twitter is kinda quite. Just me and my mug of sweet and strong caffee latte.
First thing of course are my mail. I use googlemail with some labs and greasemonkey extensions. I addition to the not-to-bad gmail spam filters, i also have some tight server filters, which keep my spam load pretty low at roughly 150-200 per day. About three or four spam show up in my inbox, while I have about the same amount of false positives in my junk folder, which i check and sweep regularely two to tree times a day.
I organise my mail by using the “Superstars” and “Custom Label Colours” from GMail Labs, every client has its own star/color. Importantly I only keep current mails i have to look after in my inbox, everything else is moved to the archive. To consequently do so, I use GMail Labs “Send & Archive”. I addition to that I use the Greasemonkey “Folders4Gmail” plugin and some Gmail Filters to label my mail corresponding to my customers, so I have easy access, even when archived. I also use the Gmail search function a lot.
Next, I read my rss-feed. I follow a lot of SEO related blog and even if the subjects seem to be similar or comming up again and again in regular intervalls, i still find some interesting posts in between. I have also set up some google alerts, to monitor my presence on the web. When I find a post I like and want to read it later, I usually grab it with Evernote. If its a new blog I find worth following, i use my google reader and when it’s just an URL with e.g. a tool of some sort, I bookmark it with delicious.com. I use the same procedure, when I look through the twits I get over night.
After having cought up with the over nights stream of information, I move on to organising my day …
