It’s been like what, a little over a year now? From the day Things was released for public consumption as a beta, I’ve been hooked. Cultured Code set out to make a getting things done platform that actually gets you. A year later, I think they did. Read on for what might be less of a review, and more of an encomium.
Your Tasks
Things provides a simple structure for getting yourself organised. At the core of this, is events. These are free floating objects that contain the name, tags, notes and a due date of any task at hand. These events can be dragged around to create any structure you want. Of course, Things provides the very structure that will organise these events for you: Projects and Areas.
Projects are finite, with a distinct end in sight. Projects can be organising everything for your school paper, or designing a client’s website. Once all the tasks in the project are done, it can be considered completed. For instance, while designing the SA magazine, my project involved events for ‘base structure’, ‘colour scheme’, ‘font characteristics’, and so on. Once these items were checked off, the magazine was complete.
Areas of Responsibility on the other hand are continuing, infinite with no real end in sight. It could be your house work, car maintenance, or considering the apps for review on SA. Once a task is completed, it goes out, but the Area itself cannot be completed. For instance, while a project was required for designing the magazine, an Area is required for continuously organising what content goes into the next issue.
Free form organisational structure
I mentioned that Things provides a free form way of organising your events. Tags helps keep that notion going. Every post can be tagged with whatever you wish. Things maintains a tag database and auto completes them as you type. To quickly add tags, just open up the tag viewer from where you can drag and drop them onto events. With events tagged you can at once you can see all your high priority tasks, or look at all those events that relate to your personal tasks. CulturedCode has taken a lot of time to think about how best to implement tags, and they have done a very good job. In any space, you can immediately tell what tags are in use, and sort that space to show only those events.
Execution
Well that’s all great, but how do we actually get these things done? Today, and Next are what’s going to help you. Today will show you all events that are due for that date (by means of a due date on the event), or events that you have manually dragged into that field. Events that are past their due date will also show up in Today with a red tab showing an urgency.
Next will show you a brief look at the top 5 tasks of every Project and Area, those events that are manually dragged in. If you need to see more of a project, Things can also show you all of the events in that Project or Area. In my opinion this is the most important space that you need to keep an eye on, as it shows you a good overview of all your tasks in a single window.
Things also has spaces for Scheduled and Someday. Scheduled is for tasks that you can on doing at a later date, while Someday is for tasks that you were supposed to do right now, but want to postpone them. Say you have an event that you promised yourself you would do today, but now that the day presents itself you know you can’t. Just drag the event to someday and the event won’t bother you for a while.
Quick Entry
The best part of Things, is that you don’t need the main window open to add tasks. You’re surfing the web and need to add something quickly? Just use the Quick Entry shortcut and you can enter all the info needed for a single event, including assigning it to a particular Project or Area.
Integration
Things will sync any events in the Today field with iCal todos. This ensures that you know what needs to be done for the day, without having all of your events crowding iCal’s limited space. Unfortunately, iCal todos don’t show up in MobileMe online nor do they show up on the iPhone Calendar.
Another much requested feature, MobileMe syncing, is actually already present. While the team is working on a more elegant solution, you can move your Things database to one of your iDisk folders and sync it over to another Mac. Here are some instructions for doing so.
iPhone
I’ll be talking about the iPhone version in a separate post, but just know that it is an equally mindblowing app. Seamless syncing with your desktop client to carry over your events wherever you go. The App Store version [iTunes link] costs $9.99.
Will it get things done?
As you can see, Things has you covered on all areas of managing your tasks. The interface is brilliant to say the least, and the free form structure of the events gives you flexibility in managing any task at hand. Cultured Code has refined Things, adding little functions, tweaking the UI, and everything has culminated into this brilliant piece of software, Things 1.0.
Things costs $50 for a single user license, but you can get a 20% discount through January 15th by using the code “THINGSPRESALE20”. A trial version is available as well. The desktop application, coupled with the seamless sync with the iPhone version will definitely eliminate your procrastinating habits.
Do take a look at TaskPaper 2, which has a much different approach to the same end, and keep a lookout for The Hit List from Potion Factory. Currently in private beta, it looks like a promising contender in the GTD space. Above all, let us know what you think of Things.
