Five Best "To Do" List Managers

Earlier this week I gave my presentation on Multitasking to a meeting of the Project Management Institute in Houston, Texas. During the presentation I mentioned an article over at Lifehacker.com which indicated the 5 Best "To Do" List Managers according to the readers of Lifehacker.  I didn't want to leave the audience hanging, so here is the link.

Image courtesy of Michal Marcol at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Now, complete honesty, I haven't tried most of these options. As I mention in my presentation, I tend to live by the Outlook Task list because my company email is managed in that software, and the task list is already there. I am looking at ways to merge the task list from Outlook with Android, but running into issues because I use .pst files for my storage of emails. It figures that Microsoft wouldn't want to play nice with Google (as I have an android phone). Perhaps one of the services listed on the link can remedy that. I may have to try them out, look back to see which ones I try (aside from pen and paper, which has, in my world been replaced by EverNote).

Unfortunately, it means that I am not as effective as I would like to be. One of the many points from my presentation is: If you don't schedule your time, someone else will. Please, look at how you spend your day. Are you accomplishing what you want to? Or are you running from meeting to meeting (scheduled by somebody else) an replying to emails, texts and IMs rather than focusing on tasks? My goal is to move more toward the former question, rather than the latter, and I hope that most of my readers agree with me.

Now, if you would like to know more, or would like to see the Multitasking presentation, I have a treat for you. Coming up in June, the Houston chapter of the Project Management Institute is hosting their annual conference, of which I will be providing two (count them 2!) sessions. On Wednesday I will be presenting much requested Multitasking Speech. But before that, I will be trotting out a whole new presentation/workshop: Murphy's Laws of Project Management!

I'm really excited for both presentations, and there will be other fabulous speakers there, including another fellow Toastmaster. If you want more details, please go here (more details coming soon).

Thank you all for reading, and if you have other tips/tricks that can make a person more effective, please feel free to share them in the comments.