I HATE to-do lists. Things inspires me to get s#!t done

I hate making lists. I am NOT a ‘list person’. So why would I need to spend an arm and a leg for Things? read on...

I used Things 10 years ago when it was free. It was one of the most productive times in my life. Then they started to charge for it. All these apps are the same right? Well I spent years trying all the free/cheaper ones. They all quickly becomed abandoned. Finally I came back crawling to Things. I demo’ed it, and I was surprised to find that nothing has really changed with the app. I love the workflow. I highly suggest the 14 day demo, and reading their ‘Getting started with Things’ guide. What seperates it from the others:

Inbox: A landing spot for all of your to-do’s. From here you can move them to a project, area of responsibility, today, and other parts of the app. You can also create to-do’s anywhere in the app (example- If I’m in a project and click ‘+ New’ it’ll create a to-do in that project).
Projects: Have a complex task? Create a project with multiple to-do’s within. Finish a project? check it off and it’s done. More satisfying then deleting a list.
Areas of responsibility: I have areas for ‘Personal’, ‘Company A’, ‘Company B’, ‘Hobbies. If I drop a to-do or project into ‘Company A’ it’ll stay in there as a group. The bonus is itll automatically get tagged “work” and “company A” (more on this later).
Today: You can schedule due dates for all your tasks but Things actually recomends not relying on due dates for good reason: When you fall behind there is nothing more daunting than opening your to-do app and getting hit with a wall of overdue tasks. Instead spend time at the start of your day picking your tasks in the…
‘Next’ section: Here you’ll find all your to-do’s. If I’m at work I’ll filter quickly by selecting the ‘work’ tag and it’ll only show all to-do’s/projects tagged ‘company A’ or ‘company B’. If I want to only see my errands I’ll select the ‘personal’ tag. This makes it very easy to narrow down and select the to-do’s that I want to complete today (by dragging them to Today).
Scheduled: simple, for scheduled or scheduling to-do’s.
Someday: throw projects, to-dos, or even dreams in here!

It’s flexible. Not going to finish it today? Move it out of the today section. It’s a simple system that accomodates different needs and styles of workflow. It’s the only one that works for me. It has this magical touch that inspires me. I actually spend free time at home or on the weekends creating and planning “things”!

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