Some task management apps seem inspired by steampunk: bells and whistles, lots of brass, faux leather, wood veneer and plenty of levers to throw. Others are light and fluid, almost zen–like in their barely there simplicity. Do not underestimate these ethereal apps, dear reader, for they may have a lot of potential bubbling away under the hood, ready for you to unleash.
Okay, that was fun. Down to business now: today I’ll be comparing two slender high flyers: Asana and Todoist.
In October 2012 I first wrote about asana, praising the browser–based task management app for coming close to delivering on the developers’ vision of frictionless productivity. Since that first review, asana has gone from strength to strength, refining its user interface and adding tons of new functionality.
If you want a walkthrough of asana basics, you may want to read my earlier post first. If you are ready to explore what is new, just keep reading. Continue reading
Wikipedia tells me that asana is a Sanskrit word referring to a body position in Yoga. Six months ago, googling asana would bring up a plethora of websites about Yoga. Try it now, and the first item on the list of search results is likely to be asana, the task management app for teams. Use asana, and you will understand why this app has become so popular.
Asana is a flexible, browser-based productivity app designed to support team collaboration. However, it can be used just as easily for individual task or project management; and its features enable you to set up a workflow compatible with David Allen’s Getting Things Done® (GTD®) approach. Asana is free for individuals and teams of up to 30 users and there is a free mobile app for the iPhone/iPad.
As I have not used asana in a team context, this review focuses primarily on its utility as a task management app for individual use. Continue reading
Fools rush in, they say, where angels fear to tread. I thought I would create a diagram, using XMind, a free mind-mapping program, to ‘shortlist’ selected task management programs from a couple of user perspectives.
There are no winners: most of the listed apps have the capacity to boost your productivity enormously. Choosing a productivity app is largely a matter of personal preference – you have to feel comfortable with how data are entered, with the views on offer, with the workflow and the colour scheme. Some of that takes time; an app that dazzles you in the first week may feel suffocating and uninformative once it needs to handle a couple of hundred tasks.
You can question many aspects of my diagram. For example, most of the listed apps support various degrees of customisation; I have only listed omnifocus, gqueues and toodledo as being extraordinarily versatile in that area. For ‘bug free’ I have set the bar equally high.
There are also gaps in my diagram. I have not included apps that I have never explored (call me traditional), nor apps that are primarily geared towards note taking (such as evernote, that swiss army knife of productivity) or team collaboration (such as basecamp or flow). I have not included other parameters, such as whether file attachments are supported. There is only so much that will fit on a page.
My aim in posting this is not to provide complete or authoritative advice, but to provide a couple of pointers for people who are trying to find a task management app that may work for them. I would appreciate constructive feedback!
purplezengoat 