Listing saves us. It is a way of exporting intelligence into the environment. Every datum the environment remembers for you is one datum you don’t have to remember. I am absolutely in favor of this, but it gets me into trouble when the systems I use don’t work well together. The smartphone and web services have been a godsend for me. I use Remember the Milk to keep track of grocery lists. I have bought into the Google keiretsu and use multiple calendars to coordinate events and appointments with various family members. I use Dropbox to store files and share data with my trusted associates. I use Neat to keep my records tidy and searchable. And because these services are out there in the nebulous Internet, I can get at them from any computer and even from my phone. But none of these services works well for me as a to-do list. My tool of choice for keeping track of workflow is a bug tracker.
I’ve started using Sifter to keep track of what I’ve gotta do and when. It’s a web service, which is great, and it’s even got an API so client apps can be written for it, which is also great. There’s even an Android app so I can use my phone (because the web pages are way too tiny to be usable on the phone). But there are bugs. Kind of a lot, really. On the plus side, it’s been opened up and it’s on GitHub so now I’ve been working on making the app do what I want it to do.