As I said, I don’t use ToDo just because it’s the most supported solution for me – although that certainly helps. Why I use Microsoft To-Do
To-Do has a few really useful functions: importing flagged emails, list and area support, tagging support, and Siri integration.
Flagged emails:
This is the big one for me – when I flag an email in Microsoft outlook, it automatically pulls it into a “Flagged Email” list. That item then has the subject of the email as the task note, and about 200 characters of the email – and then a link to the rest of the email. On a desktop or on the web, that link opens to Office 365 on the web – on an iPad or iPhone, it opens directly in outlook, using the url callbacks on the device. It’s easy to then go in and change the action to be a verb, to add tags etc. Seperating these two things also helps me quickly sweep my mailbox, finding what I need to take action on, flagging it and then archiving it, and then letting me assign the full action and tag out of that inbox as part of my end of day ritual.
List and area support:
I use a lightweight implementation of Tiago Forte’s P.A.R.A. system – so I have areas for Projects, Actions and Resources in my task manager – I don’t need archives there. I also very much rely on the use of life roles, like Husband, Father, Lifelong Learner, Jeffersonian Citizen, Marketing Leader, Team Leader etc. I picked up that focus from Shawn Blanc – David Sparks has also talked about it (we were in the same beta class of Shawn’s.) Before I used Para, I was using those as my areas – now I will list each as an area, and start associated project lists with the area
An an example, a project to launch a campaign in the second half of 2022 might be ML: Launch 2H22 Campaign. Down in my areas lists, I have a ML: Marketing Leader list that both reminds me of the role and catches any single actions I have – unlike Cultured Code’s Things, Microsoft Todo doesn’t support actions in areas themselves, only in lists. This is one of the reasons the Areas idea from P.A.R.A. works better – before, I’d have an area for a role, and need to put a single action list in each one.
These areas also help with a weekly review – if a project doesn’t have any actions or #WaitingOn or #WaitingFor actions, I have to answer a few questions. Am I still doing this? Did I miss a next step? Is this complete? In some cases, the project has either completed or I’ve realized I’m not actually going to do what I planned to, and I go ahead and delete the project.
Don’t Cross the Streams:
I don’t keep everything in one app – the same security around work items that makes To-Do so appealing for work tasks makes it an odd place for “get paint samples for the front door.”
For work, it’s Microsoft To-Do
For everything else: Apple Reminders
Leveraged Intention 