Using Remember the Milk with the Get Organized! System. Frank Buck. Consulting, Inc.

Transcription

1 Using Remember the Milk with the Get Organized! System Frank Buck Consulting, Inc.

2 Using Remember the Milk with the Get Organized! System One place for everything you have to do, everything you want to do, and everything you aspire to be. Frank Buck, Ed.D. Copyright 2018 by Frank Buck Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved. 2

3 Introduction We live in a world of unlimited opportunities. It s both a blessing and a curse. We like to have choices about the direction of our days. On the other hand, too many choices can result in stress, the fear we re forgetting something, and the ability to move forward on any front. What if all of the choices could be trapped in one place that s easily searchable? What if each item showed up on the exact day you wanted to see it? What if repeating tasks functioned on autopilot? What if you could organize all of the s that embed to-dos? What if you could add new opportunities with your voice as soon as they occur to you? Since 2001, my task list has been digital. In a world where so much information arrives digitally, it just makes sense that we have a system which takes what arrived digitally and keeps it digital. I never have to re-write the list. Nothing falls through the cracks. It s too easy not to do. Over the years, good things are replaced by better things. In 2001, a Palm synced to Outlook housed my productivity suite. Later, my information lived in Outlook synced to a Blackberry. Then, Toodledo became my task manager on my computers, phone, and tablet. Today, I use Remember the Milk. This guide serves two purposes: 1. To give you an introduction to this service. 2. To give you a methodology for using it. If you re looking for total control over your time and the peace of mind that nothing is going to fall through the cracks, you re in the right place. 3

4 Table of Contents The 7 Essentials When Choosing a Digital Task Manager... 5 Create Your Account... 6 Establish Your Settings... 6 Account and Password... 7 General Settings Tasks Settings... 9 Adding Tasks Smart Add Revisiting the 7 Essentials Due date field and ability to sort by due date Repeating Tasks Note section for each task to house supporting information Search feature Communicates with your Syncs across all devices Voice input The Inbox Assigning Tasks to Others Planning Tomorrow Today Weekly Planning Master List Total Control and Peace of Mind

5 The 7 Essentials When Choosing a Digital Task Manager The field is crowded, and each candidate professes to be simple enough to understand yet powerful enough to give you what you need. How do you choose? I believe a good task manager must have these seven features: 1. Due date field and ability to sort by due date 2. Repeating tasks 3. Note section for each task to house supporting information 4. Search feature 5. Communicates with your 6. Syncs across all devices 7. Voice input We ll explore why each is important and how Remember the Milk has them all. 5

6 Create Your Account Go to RememberTheMilk.com and create a free account. Upgrading later provides additional features. The free account is fine for the needs of most people. Establish Your Settings Software generally includes a Settings menu. This menu provides a one-time setup to customize the software. Let s get started. Click the downward-pointing arrow in the upper-right corner of the screen. Click Account Settings. 6

7 Account and Password Let s start at the top and work down the menu items. First is Accounts. Click on Change photo and upload a headshot. This photos shows up in various places as you work with RTM. Want to change your username or the associated with your account? Here s your chance. The next menu item allows you to change your password at any time. General The General tab is important. Here is my recommendation for what to choose. 7

8 As you continue down that page, here are my recommendations. The screens for Contact Preferences and Daily Digest are self-explanatory. Personally, I don t see the need for either. Sometimes, a task needs to be performed at a particular time. RTM allows you to set a time as needed. If the task has a time, audible reminder a few minutes ahead of time is helpful. Here is the control that setting. On the next screen, Notification, check all of the boxes. 8

9 Tasks The Tasks menu is gold. In your Contacts, you will create two new contacts, one for each of the addresses you see. I named mine Remember Milk for the first and last names of the contact and pasted the Inbox address into the contact. I created a contact and named it Milk Import. The Import address gets pasted here. Here s why the Inbox is so important Any sent to the special Inbox address shows up as a new task in RTM. That feature is extremely important in helping you stay on top of the to-dos embedded in your . When we talk about how to get empty, the ability to forward an into RTM is extremely important. The Import may or may not be useful. We will examine its role later. Your settings are done! You will not need to do anything with the remaining menu items in your Account Settings. 9

10 Adding Tasks Click on the Add task window start typing. Watch what happens as soon as you enter the first letter. Notice the icons which appear. Mouse over each one to see what it adds to the task. Choose a due date, priority, repeating pattern, assign the task to someone else, and more. If you didn t choose any, simply typed the task, and hit the <Enter> key, the task would be added to RTM. It would show up in the Today list with a due date of today and no priority. The task would also show up in the Inbox. 10

11 Let s Practice Are you one of those people who has reminders everywhere? They re on sticky notes. They re on random scraps of paper. They re stuck in your purse, wallet, and all around the computer monitor. They re floating around in your head. They re embedded in meeting notes in various legal pads. Start putting those tasks in Remember the Milk. You ll get valuable practice that makes the process automatic. You ll also be taking a huge step toward total control and peace of mind. Huge tip Make each task crystal clear. Start the task with a verb. Make the task specific and doable in one sitting. Projects masquerading as tasks will sit on your list for eternity! Sally s birthday is a terrible name for a task. Call ABC Bakery to order cake for Sally s birthday is a great one. As you enter tasks, use the icons which appear to add due dates, priorities, repeats, etc. Remember, if you add no due date, today becomes the default because of what you entered in the Account Settings. In the next section, Smart Add shows an even quicker way to add tasks. 11

12 Smart Add Click an icon below the task line and a list of suggestions appears. In this example, clicking on the due date icon inserts the ^ following by a list of possibilities. Click on a selection and either press <Enter> of click Add Task. Adding a priority, repeating pattern, and even assigning a task to someone else works the same way. This task is due tomorrow, is Priority 1, will take around 10 minutes to complete, and (in this demo account) has been assigned to Frank Buck. I can later change any of these elements and add more. Click on the task and making changes in the pane that appears to the right or the bar that appears across the top. Smart Add allows you to add this information right in the task line. 12

13 More on Smart Add Do you like to use the keyboard instead of the mouse? Smart Add also allows for typing the symbols as part of the task. For example, try entering this task: Call Joe tomorrow at 10am The result will be a task that says, Call Joe. In the field for Due Date, tomorrow s calendar date and a time of 10am appears. Because our Account Settings included a reminder 5 minutes before any task with a due time, RTM will send the appropriate alert 5 minutes before the due time. This ability to free-type a date or time in the subject will become even more handy when we address adding tasks via voice. For other selections, adding a symbol following by free-typing text will work: ^Tomorrow Task will be due tomorrow. ^Feb. 23 or ^February 23 or ^2/23 Task will be on the upcoming February 23 rd.!1 or!2 or!3 Assigns a priority to the task. *Every Tuesday or *Every Month Assigns a repeating task. Call Bob // Left a message Creates a task Call Bob and creates a note that says, Left a message. The note will be date/time stamped. See other examples on this page in the Remember the Milk Help Center: 13

14 Revisiting the 7 Essentials When Choosing a Digital Task Manager This guide opened with a list of the 7 things to look for when choosing a digital task manager: 1. Due date field and ability to sort by due date 2. Repeating tasks 3. Note section for each task to house supporting information 4. Search feature 5. Communicates with your 6. Syncs across all devices 7. Voice input This section explains why each is important. 14

15 1. Due date field and ability to sort by due date Think of the digital task list as your Digital Tickler File. Give every item a due date that answers the question, When do I want to see this task again? Some tasks need to be completed as soon as possible. Others cannot or should not be done for days, weeks, months, or even years. Do you have a passport? It s good for 10 years. What s going to remind you 9 years and several months from now that it s time to renew? Create the task now. While you re thinking about it. Add a due date, even if that due date is almost a decade away. It s out of the way and off your mind. On the appropriate date, it magically returns. Sort by Priority Your Today view shows only the items for today. The This Week view also arranges tasks by due date. Priority provides more control over the order of tasks within the day. Here is how I use mine: 1. Priority 1 My Fab 5, the 5 tasks that either must be done at all costs or are highly profitable tasks. 2. Priority 2 Tasks I want to accomplish in the morning. 3. Priority 3 Tasks I want to accomplish in the afternoon. 4. No Priority Tasks I want to accomplish in the evening. Click the gear and choose Sort by priority. 15

16 Do you need additional control? Suppose this is your list for today: The Fab 5 today is only 2 tasks. Three (dark blue) tasks are scheduled for the morning, one (light blue) for the afternoon, and four (gray) for the evening. 16

17 Suppose you want to order each segment. Perhaps you wish the Outline article for newspaper to be listed first and the phone call to Joe to be listed second. Click on Today in the left menu. The tasks for today display. Click the gear and notice an additional sort is available "Drag and drop Now, drag the items in the order you wish. Here s the new list: 17

18 What About Overdue Tasks? At the end of the day, you ll likely have items that didn t get done. How will Remember the Milk handle them? Suppose this is your list at the end of the day. Six items have not been completed. One of them was a Fab 5 (red). You already have 4 tasks planned for tomorrow. Here is how your list looks the next morning. Overdue tasks migrated themselves into your list for today. Yesterday s Fab 5 join the section for today s Fab 5. Yesterday s morning tasks are mixed among the morning tasks for today. Notice the overdue tasks retain their due date. That way, it s obvious they had been planned for previous dates. 18

19 2. Repeating Tasks Everyone has tasks that repeat at the same time each year, each month, each week, etc. Don t even consider a task manager that does not allow you to designate task that repeat and choose a repeating pattern. Explore the various options Remember the Milk offers. What are the repeating tasks in your job? What projects come around the same time every year and carry with them the same tasks to perform every year? Don t rely on your memory. As soon as a task lands on your radar that is a repeating task, put it in RTM. Do the same with items in your personal life. What home maintenance items need regular attention? What repeating tasks do you have surrounding your finances? 19

20 3. Note section for each task to house supporting information When you do the task, there s often additional information needed when performing that task. RTM provides a notes area for each task. Put a check mark next to the phone call to Joe, and an entire panel opens on the right-hand-side of the screen. Notice the Notes area. In this case, I ll use it to list the questions I want to ask during the call. You can have more than one note on any task. Notice the note is date and time stamped. Suppose your attempt to reach Joe is unsuccessful and you want to document having left a message and at what time. Click in the note and add, Left message to call me. RTM adds the date and time. 20

21 4. Search feature Enter a word or phrase in the search window at the top of the screen and press <Enter>. Imagine you re in a place where the only thing you can do to be productive is make phone calls. Enter Call in the search. If you re consistent about putting the word call somewhere in any task that involved a phone call, the search returns all of your calls regardless of due date. Likewise, when Joe calls you or walks in the door, what if you could quickly put your hands on all of the items you were going to contact him about anyway? Search for Joe and there they are. Need a more in-depth search? Click the drop-down to reveal the Search Wizard. Click Add another criteria. Click the Choose dropdown to gain an idea of the choices available. 21

22 5. Communicates with your How many s sit in your inbox day-after-day because they are reminders of things you have to do? Usually, they re poor reminders. You read five paragraphs in order to figure out to to-do is Call Bob. Wouldn t it be nice if the s subject line was something that was actually helpful? How about something like Call Bob. When you get one of those s, you have two great choices: 1. Do the task right now and be done with it. 2. Put the task on your task list. Vow never, never to just let to-dos sit in your inbox. You wind up reading and re-reading. You wind up thinking and then re-thinking what needs to happen first, second, third, etc. The task sinks farther down the page and on to the next screen, and the next No wonder we re drowning. Let s end the madness. If you can t do that task right now, hit forward. Do you remember the special Inbox address from page 9? You already put it in your contacts. Put that address in the to line. 22

23 Now for the good part. We re going to change the subject line before sending. Think of what the to-do is going to be like Call Bob. Before sending, add more to the subject line using Smart Add. On what day do you want to see this task? Is there a specific time? Put those in the subject line. Do you want to see the task in the morning (Priority 2)? If so, this in the subject:!2 The task shows up in RTM for the date, time, and priority of your choosing. The entire body of the is in the note area of the task. 6. Syncs across all devices This one s easy. Download the Remember the Milk app. Log into your account. Your tasks sync. You have your list no matter where you are. On the RTM mobile app, I love the ability to swipe tasks. Swipe to the right to mark a task complete. Swipe to the left to postpone to a future date. 23

24 7. Voice input Input has always been the difficult part of using a mobile device. Typing on a small keyboard or small screen pales in comparison to the full-sized keyboards on our computers. Voice is available on both Android and ios. ios Use Siri to add tasks to Remember the Milk. See this guide for the ios operating system you currently use. Android We will use Google Assistant, your service, and a free service called If This Then That. Create your IFTTT account at Choose My Applets Choose New Applet. Click this Enter Google Assistant in the search window. You will be asked to authorize IFTTT to use your Google account. 24

25 On the next screen, choose Say a phrase with a text ingredient. Choose a word or two that tells Google Assistant what you want to do. For example, you might put New Task. Put a space and a dollar sign ($) after the key word(s). You can add another up to two other ways to get the same command. You might have Add task or Remember the Milk as the other triggers. What would you like Google Assistant to say back to you? If can be anything. You could put OK. Got it. Maybe you want, Sure, I ll add this to Remember the Milk. Maybe even, Sure thing, O Captain, my Captain. Click Create Trigger. 25

26 Now you have something that looks like this. Click that. Choose Gmail or . You will be promoted to grant IFTTT access to your account. 26

27 Choose Send an In the To address, paste your Remember the Milk Inbox address. For Subject, click the Add ingredient button and choose TextField. In the Body field, highlight and delete TextField. Your example should look like what you see on the following page. 27

28 Click Create action. On the next screen, click Finish. Now let s test it: With your phone, tablet, or Google Home, say: OK Google, new task, Get dog food. In a few seconds, you will see a task appear that says, Get dog food. Remember the Smart Add? Let s see how we could use it. Here are three examples: OK Google, new task, Get dog food Tuesday. OK Google, new task, Get dog food Tuesday at 9AM. OK Google, new task, Get dog food every Tuesday. 28

29 The Inbox Anyone who has ever used knows the concept of the Inbox. It s where the new stuff goes. In Remember the Milk, new tasks go into the Inbox: 1. Tasks you typed into RTM 2. Tasks you forwarded to RTM via 3. Tasks you entered via voice 4. Tasks others assigned to you (a concept we haven t covered yet). Your job is to: 1. Look at the Inbox every day. 2. Decide if you are OK with what you see. Does a task need a due date (or different due date)? Do you need to change the priority? Is the repeat OK? 3. When you are OK with everything there, we are going to move them in mass. First, you need a place to move them to. In the left-hand menu, you see an area called Lists. You have two created for you: Personal and Work. I don t segment my list that way, but you can if you like. The point is this: Anything in the Inbox stays in the Inbox until it s moved to a list. Each day, we ll get the Inbox empty by moving the items to a list. Let s create one more: 1. Click the small + beside Lists to create a new one. 2. Name this new list.organized and note the dot in front of the word. That dot causes it the item to sort to the top of the list. 29

30 Next, let s clear the Inbox 1. Examine the items in the Inbox to be sure you are OK with task names, dates, etc. 2. Put a check at the top, up above the Add task line. All items will now be checked. 3. Select the Move to icon. The names of the lists appears. 4. Choose.Organized. 5. Your Inbox is empty! You can assign tasks to others who use RTM. Assigning Tasks to Others In the Contacts area, click the + and enter an address. If the person is not already a RTM user, he/she receives an invitation. To assign a task to a someone, put a check mark beside the task. Select Give to either from the icon at the top or the field in the right panel. 30

31 Planning Tomorrow Today With a digital list, you never rewrite a task. However, you will likely do some rearranging. At the end of the day: 1. Empty the Inbox. 2. Look at your Today list. a. Are you OK with the items which remain rolling over to tomorrow? b. Are you OK with the priority for each one remaining the same? c. If so, you don t need to do anything. d. If you need to make changes, you can do so in mass. i. Put a check mark beside items whose due dates you want to change. ii. Select the Postpone icon or the Due icon to make changes. e. Do the with tasks that need a different priority. 3. Look at the Tomorrow list. a. Do you see any items you no longer want to tackle tomorrow? b. Do you see items whose priorities need to change? c. Handle changes in mass. 4. Look at the This Week list. Do you see anything you want to pull back into your tasks for tomorrow? Weekly Planning It s a good idea to look at the This Week list. Have you accumulated a backlog on the Today list? Now is a good time to clean it up. Select tasks and reassign due dates in mass as needed. When you finish, you should have a This Week list that looks reasonable. 31

32 Master List We all have tasks that have no specific due date. They have no sense of urgency. We can do them now, next week, or next month. I call this group my Master List. I handle these tasks by assigning a date of the last day of the month. During my daily and weekly planning, go to the All Task view. Sort it by due date and scroll to the last day of the month. Multi-select some of those items and bring them forward to your upcoming few days. When the last day of the month arrives, the Master List is front-and-center. Using the Postpone or Make due button, select specific days for the following month for tasks as needed. Postpone the remainder to the last day of the next month. Total Control and Peace of Mind What does your digital task list give you? Everything you have to do is in one place. Tasks appear when they need to appear when you need to appear. Repeating tasks are on autopilot. You can find anything instantly. You have a strategy and tool to get tasks out of your . You can even enter tasks with your voice as they occur to you. Worrying about what is falling through the cracks is banished. 32

33 Copyright This document is protected under the US Copyright Act of 1976 and all other applicable international, federal, state, and local laws. All rights are reserved, including resale rights. You are not allowed to give or sell this guide to anyone else. If you have received this document from anyone other than the author or legal purchase, you ve received a pirated copy and should delete it. You are welcome to print a copy for your personal use. You may store it digitally on any of all of your digital devices for your personal use. Outside of these approved uses, no part of this document may be reprinted, posted, or transmitted without the prior written consent of the author. Requests for permission should be sent via to the following address: Frank@FrankBuck.org. Copyright 2018 by Frank Buck Consulting, Inc. All Rights Reserved 33

34 W hen people say, What do you do? I respond, I make life easier for other people through organization and time management. Time management is not the thing. Rather, it s the thing that gets us to the thing, whatever the thing may be for each of us. I ve had the pleasure of speaking to organizations both down the street and halfway around the world. I ve spoken to large groups and helped people one-on-one at their desks or through videoconference.. If I can help you get where you want to go, please contact me through my website: FrankBuck.org 34