Kevin Purdy over at Lifehacker.com recently published an interview with Emily Boyd. Emily is one of the co-founders of one of my favourite tools, Remember the Milk. AKA RTM. For more about the web app start reading here.
According to their site:
“We created Remember The Milk so that you no longer have to write your to-do lists on sticky notes, whiteboards, random scraps of paper, or the back of your hand. Remember The Milk makes managing tasks an enjoyable experience.
Sounds good, huh?
I use RTM to track my tasks and projects based on David Alan’s Getting Things Done (AKA GTD) methodology. A RTM user posted an excellent how-to article on using RTM and GTD a couple of months ago which I gratefully adopted. Since the application is web-based I have access to it from my work PC, my home Mac, my iPhone and of course any internet enable computer. This makes the ubiquitous capture technique that David Alan talks about in GTD a breeze and of course I always have my tasks and projects with me.
Back to the Lifehacker interview. Emily talks about a number of things, e.g. the origins of RTM, the niche they were trying to fill in the realm of to-do lists and task management with RT and winning a design award from Apple for RTM’s iPhone interface. Then she goes on to talk about the really interesting stuff, the future of the “Web as desktop” and the changes in technology that would make RTM more useful.
I think RTM is an excellent example of a product / service that could lead to The Productivity Paradox if not properly used. I know that it took me quite a while to get my head wrapped around how best to use it to complement GTD. However, that investment in time and effort was absolutely worth my while as I now have an online project management system which I carry around in my pocket.
We talk about this product in more detail in the E-mail Redux programme.
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