How to be a Task List Magician
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I was going to title this post “How to be a To-Do Ninja,” but then realized my own distaste for the hyper-use of the word ninja. The way this system works is like magic. You’ll find yourself thinking, “How did I accomplish anything before Scott changed my life with his ‘How to be a Task List Magician’ system?”
Well, you might not actually say that to yourself, but I do think you’ll find this system useful, efficient, and freeing. You’ll be able to keep track of more tasks, mind-dump your to-dos at a moment’s notice, accomplish more menial tasks in a time-effective manner, and be mentally present wherever you are since you’re not focusing on not forgetting your next task.
The tools you’ll use:
- The first tool you’re going to need is Highrise, the client/customer relations management software [CRM] produced by 37Signals. I spoke with a woman a couple months ago that said she had a “corporate crush” on 37Signals. The way they run their company is just beautiful. Highrise has a singular purpose, manage your contacts, but does a couple other things superbly. Its task manager and reminder functions are genius and integrate perfectly with the contact manager. They offer a free account that will handle up to 250 contacts, which is what I recommend you sign up for.
- The next tool is Jott, a simple little transcription tool that lets you leave yourself [or anyone else] voice messages from your cell phone that are transcribed into text and sent wherever you want them to go. It’s accurate, fast, and free. What more could you want?
- Your cell phone.
- Six email addresses you can forward. You can create these using your current hosting provider or by signing up each email with Gmail for their free email forwarding service.
That’s it. Just four tools to turn you into a Task List Magician. Now to help you learn how to use these tools with David Allen-like efficiency.
- Sign up for the free Highrise account I told you about. It takes about 30 seconds. To move your contacts into Highrise, just export a vCard from your current address book/contact manager/CRM to your desktop and import it into Highrise. All your contacts will magically appear in Highrise.
- Sign up for a free Jott account. This is just as easy. Make sure the phone number you use as your primary number is for your cell phone. Also, make sure you use the email address of which we spoke earlier; tool #4.
- Set up the Jott phone number (866-JOTT-123) in your cell phone’s speed dial. If you have to bump someone else off your speed dial to do it, then so be it.
- Go back to your Highrise account and click the “My Info” button in the top right corner. Then click on the “Task reminders” tab in the main content section. If you’d like SMS reminders sent to your cell phone, then choose that option. Otherwise, make sure you have your main email address plugged in and click “Save Settings”. Now click on the “Email dropbox” tab. You’re going to set each one of these as contacts in your Jott account using forwarded email aliases. Make sure to name them appropriately. Here’s a screenshot of my Jott contact manager for reference.
- Using your cell phone, call Jott. The automated voice will ask you who you want to Jott. Say the name of where you want the Jott to be sent (today, tomorrow, this week, next week, later). After confirming, you’ll hear a beap and then you’ll leave your to-do, task, or reminder as a voice message. When the automated voice hangs confirms that she understood, you can hang up.
- In about five minutes, the Jott will show up in the appropriate day in your Highrise task manager. Voila!
I hope you find this useful. I use this system to manage all of my tasks on a daily basis; Updatable, church, blog, and personal. If you have suggestions to take this further, let me know your thoughts.
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had to read through that a second time…had my head spinnin’ (in a good way)! it sounds quite handy, so much so, i’m going to give it a try!
Wonderful. If you have any questions, give me a shout.
scott,
a little confused on one thing: the e-mail addresses need to forward automatically to where?
Zak
zak’s last blog post..Clutter. Simplicity.
Good question. The email addresses need to be forwarded to your highrise “email dropboxes” that correspond to the proper time-categories for your tasks (i.e. today, tomorrow, this week, etc).
You’ll find those “email dropboxes” when you look in your highrise account under the “My Info” page. Click on the tab that says “Email dropboxes”.
You’ll place your forwarding address in the Jott contact manager since Jott won’t recognize the highrise “email dropboxes” as real email addresses.
Scott,
Thanks for the clarification! I have it all set up now and I will be checking it out for a few days! Thanks for the great idea.
For an iPhone user like me, this is PERFECT.
Zak
Zak White’s last blog post..Clutter. Simplicity.
Scott,
only having one little problem…every single task in highrise ends up starting with “SPAM: Jott from Zak White…”
Annoying!
Ideas?
Zak White’s last blog post..Clutter. Simplicity.
Question: Is it possible to just use the create-a-task-by-email dropboxes from highrise instead of creating five other emails to put in jott that then forward to the dropboxes?
Nathaniel,
No, the highrise emails aren’t recognized by Jott. However, it’s not necessary to create all five. You could create one for “Today” or “Now” and one for “Later” and get the same job done.
Zak,
make sure you flag the email coming from Jott into your email client as “Not Spam” so that when they’re forwarded, they don’t get tagged.
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