I’ve tried many different ways of keeping track of the things I need to do. From trying to remember it all (yeah, that didn’t work) to writing everything down on post-it notes or in a notebook. I’ve yet to find the perfect solution to meet my needs. A recent post on Hacker News motivated me to try out some task management apps and see if I could find a better way to manage my tasks.

Things  

Things might be the most popular task management app on the Mac, especially after they released an iPhone version (costs $9.99). You can quickly brain dump your to-dos in an inbox, drag tasks between lists, and create areas of responsibilities to assign tasks to. Things provides a hotkey key to quickly add tasks no matter where you are. The only downside is you have Things open for this shortcut to work.

I would have given Things a better rating if it weren’t for two things. First, I would like to be able to publish my task lists for others to see. I need my boss at ATDC to be able to see what’s in my queue.  Things provides calendar and iPhone synching but no publishing. Second, Things is beta software (a paid version is coming soon) and as such it has a few bugs. It’s fine to have bugs or missing features, I just found it annoying that Things kept telling me when I tried to do something it couldn’t handle:

Remember the Milk

Like Things, Remember the Milk provides many task management features, like multiple task lists, due dates, tagging, and notes. Where Remember the Milk really shines though is in its integration with other services, like Twitter, Gmail, and mobile devices. You can even call an 800 number to leave a voice message that will be transcribed into a task (via Jott). Remember the Milk has the most services of any task management software I’ve seen, including the ability to share or publish task lists.

While all these services are great, it makes me think the Remember the Milk team is spending more time on services instead of on the interface. There are many features the site lacks. I can’t drag and drop tasks, drag a priority level onto a task, or click a calendar to add a due date (you must manually enter the date). These are things I due on a regular basis and I’ve found it very irritating they haven’t made the site easier to use.

Zenbe

Zenbe has a very simple web and iPhone task management system. In fact, if you don’t have an iPhone, this solution won’t work for you. Zenbe’s main product is a cloud-based Outlook replacement, with email, calendar, contacts and tasks. But, they also have a free iPhone app for task mangement that has its own web interface. I don’t use the Outlook features — I only use the iPhone app and interface.

What Zenbe lacks in features, it makes up for in simplicity. You can’t add notes, URLs, or priorities to tasks. You can only create a task, set a due date and share task lists with others. I like the simplicity but would like to see a way to prioritize tasks beyond due dates.

ActionGear

ActionGear is the lightest task management app I tried, just over a megabyte in size. ActionGear adds a small icon to your taskbar and is activated by a hotkey. Its small footprint allows you to always keep it running so you quickly pull it up to add a task. ActionGear is beta software is a great start for only a couple months of development work. But it is lacking some must-have features, like prioritizing tasks, setting due dates, and sharing your lists.

OmniFocus

OmniFocus is a very sophisticated task management app. OmniFocus is built around capturing, organizing and contextualizing tasks. This is great if you have many projects with many tasks. You can add contexts (similar to tags) to tasks and switch between project and context view. These added features make it more useful than Things, but do not justify its hefty price tag ($79.95/license). Why pay $80 for basic functionality that is provided by other free apps? If I’m going to pay more than $20 for task management software, it better have an iPhone app and let me share my lists.

What’s the verdict?

Most of these apps have the same core functionality: adding, prioritizing and organizing tasks. Where they really differ is in the services they provide (or lack thereof) and their sharing capabilities. I enjoyed using Things and Remember the Milk the most, but Zenbe is a new contender that just might win me over. Zenbe’s free service and iPhone app make it a great solution. But without the ability to prioritize tasks, I can’t switch to Zenbe just yet. For the time being, I’m going to use Remember the Milk as it lets me prioritize and share tasks.

What task management app do you use?