Monday 2 January 2012

Tackling to-do's with Workflowy

In an on-going endeavour to manage and fine tune my to-do list I've made a few changes in the last year or so.

This is how I used to keep track of my to-do's. Each had it's own little post it note. Periodically I would go through it and re-arrange into order of importance and put priorities at the top.


It worked. I got things done. I just had to manage/juggle 100's of bits of paper and they would often end up scattered over my desk and made it look untidy. An untidy desk, and untidy mind!

Then I switched over my diary management to Google Calender (more on G Cal coming up) and I used the Tasks function there to keep track of things. Again, it worked, but I found it a bit clunky and a bit of a nuisance to prioritise my to-do's. It could be done, but there's just too many clicks and dragging for my liking. There is also the option to add further notes to tasks, which is useful, but again, I found it didn't work as smoothly as I would have liked.

And now....

I have discovered Workflowy! A new way to organise you brain.

I really like it. I've transferred my to-do's over there now. I love it's simplicity and how much easier it is to add notes to specific tasks, and break big tasks into smaller ones. You can also add tags and use them to search for specific tasks too.

Take a look at Workflowy's intro video.




Workflowy doesn't have an app yet, but it looks like they are working on it, and in the meantime you can access it through your browser.

Workflowy has been going for just over a year and has 100,000 registered users with 30,000 of them being active.

My only concern was 'What if Workflowy goes down or shuts up shop?". Luckily there's an Export option, so you can keep a back up of your latest lists. I'll probably do a save once a week.

Workflowy also have a blog and you can find them on twitter too.

So, happy to-do listing this year!

If you give Workflowy a go, let me know what you think! :)

Say hi on twitter: @karenstrunks 

1 comment:

Richard said...

Workflowy looks interesting! I think the key to getting stuff done is two-fold - have a "trusted" system you dump those To-Do's into (in your case Workflowy, in my case, Microsoft Outlook) and then "salami" those tasks, breaking them down into individual steps.

Wishing you a very productive 2012! :-)

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