I’ve been using Nozbe for a while now to manage my tasks, and overall I’m quite happy with it.  It’s certainly got some quirks and minor issues, but it’s not bad.  However, I always feel like there must be something else out there that’s at least comparable to it.  I mean, there are literally hundreds of task management systems out there; can’t any of them get it right?

Here’s what I’m looking for:

1. Web-based
2. iPhone app (or at least an iPhone compatible version).
3. Project based. Call it something else (“queues” or whatever), but I need to be able to group things.
4. “Next Actions” or “Starred Items” or some kind of nice overview.  I don’t want to see everything at once; just the items I’ve selected.
5. Have items due today (or overdue) show up on that overview page.
6. Recurring events. Nothing fancy here.
7. Sharing. Just have shared projects show up along side my non-shared items, not tucked away in some special “sharing” section.

Here’s a short video where I explain those items a bit more:

So what do we have?  I’ve gone through a ton of different systems and they all fall short on at least one of the items above.  Am I asking for too much?  It doesn’t seem like it, but maybe I am…

Here are the 32 33 34 systems I’ve looked at, in alphabetical order.  Some are very good, but I’m not covering their good points today. With each one, I’ll explain what feature(s) it is missing:

• 5pm — Solid, but sharing is odd.  You share with your “team”, and they’re either an admin or they can only see what you give them.  I want others to be able to create their own private lists, and share with people other than me from time to time.  They over-thought it and it’s a mess.
• Action Method — No good “next actions” screen.  Sharing is there, but is kind of weird.
• Checkvist — No recurring tasks.
• do.Oh — Only a single list; no “projects”.
• Doris — No good “next actions” page.
• Enleiten — Weak sharing, and their blog hasn’t been updated in 18 months – dead project, I assume.
• Get It Done — Weird sharing setup.
• gQueues — Poor recurring event setup, weak sharing, no real “next actions” page (though “smart queues” are close).  This one is actually quite close, as it has all of the right features – they just need to be tweaked.
• GTD Agenda — No sharing.
• GTDify — Every task is required to have a context.  No sharing.
• Gubb — No good “next actions” page.
• HiTask — Can only share “tasks” with a normal account; need a “business” account to share projects.  Simplify!
• Hive Minder — Complex sharing, and no real projects.
• Listable — No good “next actions” page.
• Listigator — No good “next actions” page.
• Neptune — No sharing.
• Nirvana — No sharing or recurring tasks. Both features are “coming soon”, at which point this could be a contender.
• Online Task List — Missing all kinds of stuff.
• Producteev — No good “next actions” screen.  You can sort of do it with their “smart filters”, but it needs more control.
• Remember the Milk — No good “next actions” screen.
• Somethings — No recurring tasks, no sharing.
• Ta-da Lists — No due dates, recurring items or “next actions” page.
• Task2Gather — No good “next actions” page.  Sharing is kind of odd.
• Task Bin — Shared projects are shown in a different area, similar to Toodledo.
• Task Writer — No sharing, no good “next actions” screen.
• Thymer — No iPhone access, but that’s coming “soon”.  That might put them at the top…
• Todoist — No sharing.
• Toodledo — Very close, but it has a very bizarre and stupid collaboration setup.
• Tweeto — No sharing, no projects.
• Verb — No real “next actions” page, no recurring items.
• Vitalist — No easy way to view all “next actions” and “due today” on a single page.  Also, I didn’t understand how sharing works, and an email to them for clarification has gone unanswered for more than a week.
• Voo2do — No sharing.
• Wrike — Overly complex.  I guess “simple” isn’t technically a requirement, but this is a mess.
• Zenbe Lists — No stars, next actions, overview page, etc.

So there you go.  32 33 34 systems later and we’ve got nothing.  Nozbe is still the only one to handle those basic ideas.  I think Nirvana, gQueues, Thymer and Producteev have the best chance of getting things cleaned up. They’re all very close, but they’re all still missing some essential items.

I’ve looked at Google Tasks, but it’s missing so many features that it’s not worth even adding to the list — yet.

Is the answer out there?  Let me know what other systems should be added to the list.

What I want in a task management system is a post from: MickMel

This is the tenth in a series of posts in the Organize Your Digital Life series.

We’ve been at this for 10 days now, and you’ve got a problem; despite all of the tips on how to get things organized, you’ve still got a small pile of stuff to deal with — business cards, passwords, notes from meetings, etc.  What do you do with all of it?

Evernote is your answer.  Evernote’s goal is to become your “second brain”.  They want you to store everything in there, and they’ve got some slick tools to help.  Their software works on Windows, Mac, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Palm Pre, Windows Mobile and they have a normal web version to handle everything else.

The way it works is simple.  You save some content in there, and it’s synced to their servers.  From there, it’s synced to all of your other devices, kind of like DropBox.  Here’s where it gets awesome, though — their servers can read all of the stuff you upload, like names off of business cards, and words off of your notes.  All of that content is then easily searchable through any of their applications.

Some of what I upload to Evernote includes:

• Business cards. I save vital contact information in my phone, but keep a copy of the card in Evernote in case I need it again.
• Receipts. I’m considering moving to Outright instead, but Evernote does well enough for now and I really don’t have very many.
• Online receipts. They have plug-ins for most browsers, so when I get a page that says “save this confirmation number for your records”, I just click the Evernote icon and it saves the page for me.
• Manuals. If it’s a big manual, I just save the entire thing in my filing cabinet.  For single page instructions, like for a universal remote, I snap a picture of it, save it in Evernote, then throw the paper copy away.
• Deposit receipts. When I make a deposit at the bank, I snap a copy of the receipt and save it.  In the event something goes wrong, I’ll have a copy handy.
• Client notes. While on a phone call with a client, I take notes on paper.  When I’m done, I assign tasks into Nozbe as needed.  However, I’ll often have other “stuff” to remember; passwords, future ideas, etc.  I put those in Evernote so I can get to them in the future.
• Party/wedding Invitations. I usually keep a copy in my filing cabinet, but I take a picture and put it in Evernote too.  You never know when you might need it.
• Policy numbers. Insurance, etc.
• VIN numbers for our cars. I tucked those in there too.
• Photos of other things around the house. I took a copy of the paper roll in my labelmaker, print cartridges in my printer, etc.  When I’m out shopping and need to buy a replacement, I can look in there to see exactly what I need.
• Code snippets. If I write a bit of code that I find myself always hunting to re-use on another site, I’ll toss it in Evernote so it’s easy to access later.

The list could go on and on.  Their iPhone/Android app makes it very easy to just take a photo and upload it, which means I use it a LOT.  The fact that it syncs to all of your computers means you can access your information from anywhere and it’s always backed up.

Here’s a cute video they’ve produced to show how it works:

Here’s a more serious video that shows a step-by-step process of how to use it:

If you have a similar solution that you like better than Evernote, I’d love to hear it.  Or, if you already use Evernote, what other kinds of stuff do you store in there?

This is the tenth in a series of posts in the Organize Your Digital Life series.

Organize Your Digital Life 10 – Capture everything else in one place is a post from: MickMel

This is the fourth in a series of posts in the Organize Your Digital Life series.

If you’re like most people, you have files on your computer everywhere.  Programs, spreadsheets, documents, presentations, logos, ebooks, pdfs, and a variety of other stuff.  Even if you have it well-organized, you probably have two big problems:

1. You can’t access it away from home. Right now, you try to remember to put the important files on your thumb drive, but often forget.
2. It’s not backed up very well. I used to keep a copy of my files on an external hard drive as a backup.  Sometimes…

There are two tools I’m going to show you today that will help solve both of those problems very easily.  Google Docs and DropBox.

:: Google Docs

Google Docs is Google’s online version of Microsoft Office.  All of your files live on their servers, and you edit them through the web.  The programs aren’t quite as complex as the Microsoft versions (for better or worse), but they offer some huge advantages:

• Access them from any web-connected computer.
• They’re always backed up by Google
• You can share documents with friends/family/co-workers so they can view/edit them.
• You can share documents publicly if you want to show them to a wider audience.
• They’re fully compatible with Office documents.  Upload from Office, or save the files in Office format to send to your less-connected friends.

To go with that, though, there are a few disadvantages:

• No internet = no files.  They offer “offline” access to your files, but it’s something you need to set up ahead of time and you need to do it on every computer where you use docs.  Of course, most of us have our computers connected 24/7, so offline access isn’t a big problem very often.
• Lose your account, lose your files.  In the event your account gets hacked or otherwise terminated, your files go with it.  With this in mind, I keep my Google password really long and complex, and I’m very careful about where I use it.

All in all, Google Docs is a great answer for your basic documents.  I keep the majority of mine in there, and it’s very handy.  I can work on them from my desktop, but have all of them at my fingertips when I’m on my laptop.  Or my network.  Or my wife’s computer.  Or anywhere else.

:: Dropbox

DropBox is one of the most innovative tools I’ve seen in a long time, and it’s dead simple.  When you install the program, it creates a folder called “My DropBox” in your documents folder (similar on the Mac).  Anything you put in there gets synced to their servers, and then over to any other computer where you have Dropbox installed.  In my case, I have it installed on my desktop, my laptop and my netbook.  If someone sends me a file that I need to keep, I simply toss it in Dropbox so I’ll have easy access to it.  Once it’s in there, I can access it from any of my computers, my iPhone, or the Dropbox website.

Here’s a short video that explains it better than I can:

The neat thing about this is that it actually copies the files to your computer.  Even if you don’t have internet access for a little while, the files physically live on every machine so you have direct access to them.  If you make a change, the updated file is sent as soon as your internet connection comes back.  The one downside to this is that it consumes space on every computer to hold the files.  In my case, I have about 6GB worth of stuff in Dropbox, so that folder is taking up 6GB of space on all of my computers.  6 gigs isn’t much anymore, but I wouldn’t be able to store my wife’s 40GB of photos in there — I’ll talk about options for those tomorrow.

They also have a killer sharing feature. You can set a folder to be shared by others, and it’ll appear in their Dropbox.  I name my shared folders things like “Mickey and Steve shared” so I can be clear about what goes in there.  If Steve adds a file to that folder, it syncs to all of his computers and all of mine.

You can also check out this post I wrote a few months back on how I integrate Dropbox with GTD.

So there you have it.  Check out Google Docs and Dropbox and see what they can do for you.

Do you already use them? Leave a comment and let us know of other techniques you’ve discovered to make them even more useful.

This is the fourth in a series of posts in the Organize Your Digital Life series.

Organize Your Digital Life 4 – Organize Your Files is a post from: MickMel

This is the third in a series of posts in the Organize Your Digital Life series.

Calendars are one of the areas that most people seem to have pretty well under control.  Your inbox might be a mess, your task list consists of 27 post-it notes, and you have no idea where the photos from last year’s vacation ended up, but your calendar is up to date.  Even with that in mind, there are almost certainly ways to streamline your process.

As with most things, I’ll be recommending a free solution that Google provides — Google Calendar.  Living completely online, it has many of the same benefits as Gmail, such as not tying you to a particular computer and saving you from the worry of “what if my computer crashes?”.  It offers a few other advantages as well:

• Shared Calendars: Our family has four calendars, one for each of us.  They’re all merged into a single Google Calendar, and color-coded to tell them apart.
• Public Calendars: You can access useful public calendars to merge with your own.  Some of mine include “US Holidays” and the schedule for the Atlanta Falcons football team
• Mobile Access: You can have it sync with your iPhone, it works natively with Android phones (like the hot new Droid), and their mobile version works with almost any phone.

Here’s a quick look at how I use Google Calendar:

Google Calendar certainly isn’t the only game in town.  30 Boxes and Zoho Calendar are fine choices, and there are many others out there.  If you use something else (and love it), leave a comment and tell us about it.

As you can see, my calendar tends to stay pretty light.  My days are jam-packed, but it’s mostly doing work — building sites, writing blog posts, etc.  All of that stuff stays in my task list, which I covered in my “Organize your Tasks” post.  Finding the right balance between “what is a task” and “what goes on my calendar” can be tricky, so I’ll be sure to cover that next week.

For those of you with busier calendars, what other tips do you have?

This is the third in a series of posts in the Organize Your Digital Life series.

Organize Your Digital Life 3 – Calendar management is a post from: MickMel

This is the second in a series of posts in the Organize Your Digital Life series.

If you’re like most folks, you have a lot of websites to keep up with.  For example, here are some of the sites that I try to stay updated with:

• My first grade daughter’s teacher’s blog
• My wife’s blog
• My favorite sports team news
• Google Earth Blog
• Local News
• Humor (Dilbert, etc)
• Blog from our church
• Various tech blogs (TechCrunch, Lifehacker, etc)

There are probably a lot of sites that you regularly check right now, but you do it by visiting each one to see what’s new.  That leads to two problems:

1. There’s nothing new and you wasted your time.
2. They had something new last week, but you missed it.

The solution is to start using a feed reader, like Google Reader.  You can tell it which sites you want to “subscribe” to, and they all show up in Reader.  Because it’s web-based, you can check Reader from any web browser and from most mobile phones.  Here’s a quick look at how it works:

Reader is a wonderful solution to help you keep with up a lot of sites.  However, that only tackles half the problem.  You probably also have accounts on Facebook, Twitter and/or LinkedIn and you try your best to keep up with them. Google Reader doesn’t handle those, but there are some great options.  A variety of companies have created software that allows you to easily keep up with your Twitter, Faceook and LinkedIn friends.

The options I’ll show below are all very similar.  They allow you to group your items into columns, and new updates appear automatically.  If you have an extra monitor (or an old laptop), it’s great to leave one of these running off to the side so you can see what’s new.

The columns can be almost anything you want.  You could have one to show Facebook updates, one to show Twitter updates, one to show Direct Messages on Twitter, one to show LinkedIn updates, etc.  Rather than visiting all of those sites, you can have the latest updates come to you.

Here’s some of the best programs for that right now:

• TweetDeck is the most popular right now.  It runs on both Windows and Mac and is free of charge.
• Seesmic has a variety of products and they’re innovating very quickly.  They have software for Windows and Mac, and they also have a web-based version you can use.
• Sobees is similar, in that they have a Windows version and a web version.  No Mac client yet, though.  This is currently my favorite application, but the others are close behind and it’s got a few bugs.
• Tweetie is a very popular client that is Mac-only.  It’s a simpler design (single column) and works very well.
• HootSuite a powerful web-based client that is growing in popularity.

I know that might be a lot to digest.  If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed, here’s the simple answer: Go download TweetDeck and start playing with it.  It has a great mix of features and you’ll be up and running quickly.

Here’s a quick look at how to get started:

If you have any questions about any of this stuff, leave a comment and I’ll be happy to help you out.

This is the second in a series of posts in the Organize Your Digital Life series.

Organize Your Digital Life 2 – Keep up with the sites you care about is a post from: MickMel

This is the first in a series of posts in the Organize Your Digital Life series.

Email is becoming an overwhelming problem for a lot of people.  Many clients I visit have thousands of emails in their inbox, and getting a grip on it seems completely hopeless.  There are two things that you can do to help tame your inbox: Change your methods and change your tools.

:: Change your methods

We’ll start with how to change your methods.  Many of you may be tied into specific tools (email at work, for example), but anyone can tweak their methods.

The biggest thing you can do is treat your inbox the way it was intended — for INcoming messages.  Don’t store them there.  Let them come in, deal with them, and move on.  So how do you do that?

Stop “checking” your email – “process” it instead.  When you read an email, do something with it immediately.  A popular list of what can be done to any message is:

• Delete/Archive: So many messages can just be trashed.  Be liberal with the delete button.
• Do: If the email can be dealt with quickly, do it.  I get an email every morning with a report from another site I manage. I open it up, grab the data I need, toss it in the spreadsheet, then get rid of the message.  Takes about 30 seconds.  Another example is when clients send me FTP info for a site I’ll be working on in a few weeks.  I grab the info, store it in that client’s file and then move on.
• Delegate: If a message needs to be processed by someone else, get it off your plate and onto theirs.
• Respond: If someone sends me an email that is missing a key piece of information, I reply with a request for the info and move on. By the same note, many emails just need a simple response — “where do you want to have dinner?”, “how do I access Analytics?”, etc.  Answer the question, get rid of the email, and move on.
• Defer: This is a tricky one for a lot of folks.  If you get an email that you need to deal with, but you don’t have time for it right now, what do you do?  If you’re like most folks, you leave it in your inbox.  Since our goal is to keep the inbox clean, you need to get it out of there.  If it’s a file you’ll need later, save it (see my “Organize Your Files” post).  If it’s a big task you need to do, then add it to your do-do list (see my “Organize your tasks” post).

Please note that when I say to remove it from your inbox, I don’t necessarily mean to delete it.  Gmail has a killer “archive” feature, and Outlook allows you to create folders to store them in (but don’t use too many).  Use those features to keep your inbox clean, but with a copy of the email safely tucked away in case you ever need it again.

Merlin Mann covers “Inbox Zero” in this excellent video from a few years back.  It’s quite long (nearly an hour), but rather entertaining and very informative.  If you haven’t watched it before, I highly recommend it:

:: Change your tools

If you are stuck in Outlook in a work environment, I feel for you.    Some of these tips can still be applied, though. If you have the ability to change things up, though, here’s what I’d recommend:

• Combine your accounts into a single system. This doesn’t need to be a single address, but it needs to be a single program from which to access it.  Most systems support this (Outlook, Thunderbird, Gmail, etc), so figure out how it’s done and make it happen.
• Switch to web-based mail, probably Gmail. Here’s why:
  • You’re not tied to a particular computer. All of your email is available on any computer.
  • It’s all backed up. If your computer crashes, you lose zero email.
  • It’s all synced. I talk to people that check their email through the web (or on their phone), but then it still pulls it into Outlook when they get home.  This means they have to deal with every message twice.  Do you really want to double your email workload?
  • Your computer will probably run faster. Outlook is a huge resource hog, and being able to simply open one extra website in a lightweight browser (like Firefox or Chrome) will be far easier on your system.
• Make sure you can access it from your phone. Being able to deal with email on the road is huge.  I can’t do everything from my phone, but I can delete, delegate and respond pretty easily.  If I get 25 emails while I’m out, it’s nice to come home and only have four sitting in my inbox.
  • You can’t afford an email capable phone? You can’t afford not to.  Let’s assume that having email access on your phone would save you 30 minutes/day.  Figure out what your time is worth per hour, then multiply by 180 (hours saved per year).  If you’re worth $20/hour, then a phone with email will save $3600 worth of your time each year.  And $99 is too much to spend?

If you switch to Gmail (or if you use it already), be sure to spend some time looking at the options they have in the “Labs” section.  I personally think “Send & Archive” is the best thing ever created, but there are plenty of others that may help as well.

Matt Cutts (a well-known Google employee) created a few videos that are worth watching if you use Gmail: Gmail Power Tips and his favorite items in Gmail Labs.

What other email tips do you have?

This is the first in a series of posts in the Organize Your Digital Life series.

Organize Your Digital Life 1 – Get Control of Your Email is a post from: MickMel

Another great “Whiteboard Friday” video from Rand at SEOmoz.  This one talks about over-optimization and it covers it very well.  Check it out:

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – On-Site Over Optimization from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Is this natural? Used cars, used cars for sale, buy used cars… is a post from: MickMel

The short answer is yes.  And no.

Matt Cutts explains in the video below.  In a nutshell, he says they haven’t specifically changed the way social media links count toward your site, but they’re always changing the algorithm and some of the changes certainly could have had an impact.  They’ve made about 300-400 changes in the last year, and some of those may have had an effect on the weight of social media links that point to your site.

Anyhow, watch the short video below for Matt’s full answer:

Has Google changed the way they handle social media links? is a post from: MickMel

I’ve always shied away from using more than H1 tag on a single page.  I’ve assumed that Google would frown upon multiple H1s on a single page.  I was wrong.

The video below from Matt Cutts explains Google’s position on it.  I may re-look at a few sites where I used an H2 when I really could have used another H1 instead.  Good stuff.

Multiple H1s on a page — not a problem. is a post from: MickMel