April 5, 2008 at 20:16Get organized with Things
Probably everyone will ever come to the conclusion that it would be nice to become a little more organized and manage to do as many tasks as possible in a day. I came to this thought when I realized that I wasted a lot of my time. I tried a large number of To-Do programs, organizers and Getting-Things-Done systems. I tried to keep a list of important tasks for the day in moleskine . But each time I came across a difficulty in mastering, and, therefore, in use in daily work. This happened time after time until the moment when I came across a wonderful program called Things .
It was then that I felt what I was missing all this time. By and large, Things makes it easy to keep a list of all the necessary things, like many other programs. But what really distinguishes Things from all similar programs is its elegance and ease of use. It is elegance and simplicity. To start working productively, you don’t have to watch countless screencasts or read the manual. No countless column and filter settings for you. The main (and only) window of the program is in the style of Mail and iTunes: a list of projects and areas on the left and a workspace on the right.
As we can see, we have Inbox on the left, where all the tasks that you don’t know what to do are stacked. If you decide that the problem needs to be solved today, then it goes to the "Today" section. If the task is not so urgent, then place it in the “Next” section. Two more sections remain: “Someday” (“Someday”) and “Scheduled” (“Scheduled”). I especially love the “Someday” section, where I bring in something that is not very important in the near future, but I would like to do it anyway. For example, you can put “Learn Spanish” or “Buy a shirt” there, you know what I mean. Scheduled records the tasks that must be completed before a certain time. In addition to the four sections listed, your tasks and tasks can be defined in Projects or Areas. The screenshot shows that I have “Haywired” in “Projects”, where all the tasks related to the blog fall, and in “Areas” I have “Design / Illustration” and “Freelance”, where I put all the things related to this area of mine work. In Things, you don’t need to enter any metadata imposed on you, such as “Efforts”, “Priority” and others, as is customary in many GTD systems. Instead, Things has an advanced tree-based tag system. Use as much meta data as you need, or not at all. All used tags are displayed on top. If you select one or more tags, then your affairs will be instantly filtered by the selected tags. Personally, I use temporary contexts (“5 min”, “15 min”, ...), importance (“low”, “medium”, “high”) and some others. and in “Fields” I have “Design / Illustration” and “Freelance”, where I put all the things related to this area of my work. In Things, you don’t need to enter any metadata imposed on you, such as “Efforts”, “Priority” and others, as is customary in many GTD systems. Instead, Things has an advanced tree-based tag system. Use as much meta data as you need, or not at all. All used tags are displayed on top. If you select one or more tags, then your affairs will be instantly filtered by the selected tags. Personally, I use temporary contexts (“5 min”, “15 min”, ...), importance (“low”, “medium”, “high”) and some others. and in “Fields” I have “Design / Illustration” and “Freelance”, where I put all the things related to this area of my work. In Things, you don’t need to enter any metadata imposed on you, such as “Efforts”, “Priority” and others, as is customary in many GTD systems. Instead, Things has an advanced tree-based tag system. Use as much meta data as you need, or not at all. All used tags are displayed on top. If you select one or more tags, then your affairs will be instantly filtered by the selected tags. Personally, I use temporary contexts (“5 min”, “15 min”, ...), importance (“low”, “medium”, “high”) and some others. In Things, you don’t need to enter any metadata imposed on you, such as “Efforts”, “Priority” and others, as is customary in many GTD systems. Instead, Things has an advanced tree-based tag system. Use as much meta data as you need, or not at all. All used tags are displayed on top. If you select one or more tags, then your affairs will be instantly filtered by the selected tags. Personally, I use temporary contexts (“5 min”, “15 min”, ...), importance (“low”, “medium”, “high”) and some others. In Things, you don’t need to enter any metadata imposed on you, such as “Efforts”, “Priority” and others, as is customary in many GTD systems. Instead, Things has an advanced tree-based tag system. Use as much meta data as you need, or not at all. All used tags are displayed on top. If you select one or more tags, then your affairs will be instantly filtered by the selected tags. Personally, I use temporary contexts (“5 min”, “15 min”, ...), importance (“low”, “medium”, “high”) and some others. All used tags are displayed on top. If you select one or more tags, then your affairs will be instantly filtered by the selected tags. Personally, I use temporary contexts (“5 min”, “15 min”, ...), importance (“low”, “medium”, “high”) and some others. All used tags are displayed on top. If you select one or more tags, then your affairs will be instantly filtered by the selected tags. Personally, I use temporary contexts (“5 min”, “15 min”, ...), importance (“low”, “medium”, “high”) and some others.
Another nice addition is the input window, called by the global hot key, by clicking which you can quickly add a new task. You can also drag a link or text from Safari into the window, or correspondence from Adium and Mail. 
To work more productively, I do not want to play according to strictly established rules and master complex programs. I do not want to mess with filters. I don’t want to endlessly sort the columns “Location”, “Time” and so on, as the developers of OmniFocus intended. In Things, tasks look like a simple line with a name and a check-box. Everything else is secondary: if you have not entered tags, description or date, then you will not see them. In OmniFocus, however, empty columns only introduce confusion and confusion. The task manager should dissolve in the background and not betray itself. Things does it perfectly. Point.
This article is part of my Haywired.ru blog . By and large, this is a blog about everything that happens in the world of Apple, but we are not limited to this. We do not translate numerous articles that are useless in Russian realities from English-language sources (and some do it, and it’s mediocre), we write our own. Mac users for Mac users. I believe that Haywired is one of the few copyright blogs on this topic. Blog Team -two versatile people who have an opinion, not the opinion of AppleInsider or MacRumors. We will only be happy if you become our regular reader.
It was then that I felt what I was missing all this time. By and large, Things makes it easy to keep a list of all the necessary things, like many other programs. But what really distinguishes Things from all similar programs is its elegance and ease of use. It is elegance and simplicity. To start working productively, you don’t have to watch countless screencasts or read the manual. No countless column and filter settings for you. The main (and only) window of the program is in the style of Mail and iTunes: a list of projects and areas on the left and a workspace on the right.
As we can see, we have Inbox on the left, where all the tasks that you don’t know what to do are stacked. If you decide that the problem needs to be solved today, then it goes to the "Today" section. If the task is not so urgent, then place it in the “Next” section. Two more sections remain: “Someday” (“Someday”) and “Scheduled” (“Scheduled”). I especially love the “Someday” section, where I bring in something that is not very important in the near future, but I would like to do it anyway. For example, you can put “Learn Spanish” or “Buy a shirt” there, you know what I mean. Scheduled records the tasks that must be completed before a certain time. In addition to the four sections listed, your tasks and tasks can be defined in Projects or Areas. The screenshot shows that I have “Haywired” in “Projects”, where all the tasks related to the blog fall, and in “Areas” I have “Design / Illustration” and “Freelance”, where I put all the things related to this area of mine work. In Things, you don’t need to enter any metadata imposed on you, such as “Efforts”, “Priority” and others, as is customary in many GTD systems. Instead, Things has an advanced tree-based tag system. Use as much meta data as you need, or not at all. All used tags are displayed on top. If you select one or more tags, then your affairs will be instantly filtered by the selected tags. Personally, I use temporary contexts (“5 min”, “15 min”, ...), importance (“low”, “medium”, “high”) and some others. and in “Fields” I have “Design / Illustration” and “Freelance”, where I put all the things related to this area of my work. In Things, you don’t need to enter any metadata imposed on you, such as “Efforts”, “Priority” and others, as is customary in many GTD systems. Instead, Things has an advanced tree-based tag system. Use as much meta data as you need, or not at all. All used tags are displayed on top. If you select one or more tags, then your affairs will be instantly filtered by the selected tags. Personally, I use temporary contexts (“5 min”, “15 min”, ...), importance (“low”, “medium”, “high”) and some others. and in “Fields” I have “Design / Illustration” and “Freelance”, where I put all the things related to this area of my work. In Things, you don’t need to enter any metadata imposed on you, such as “Efforts”, “Priority” and others, as is customary in many GTD systems. Instead, Things has an advanced tree-based tag system. Use as much meta data as you need, or not at all. All used tags are displayed on top. If you select one or more tags, then your affairs will be instantly filtered by the selected tags. Personally, I use temporary contexts (“5 min”, “15 min”, ...), importance (“low”, “medium”, “high”) and some others. In Things, you don’t need to enter any metadata imposed on you, such as “Efforts”, “Priority” and others, as is customary in many GTD systems. Instead, Things has an advanced tree-based tag system. Use as much meta data as you need, or not at all. All used tags are displayed on top. If you select one or more tags, then your affairs will be instantly filtered by the selected tags. Personally, I use temporary contexts (“5 min”, “15 min”, ...), importance (“low”, “medium”, “high”) and some others. In Things, you don’t need to enter any metadata imposed on you, such as “Efforts”, “Priority” and others, as is customary in many GTD systems. Instead, Things has an advanced tree-based tag system. Use as much meta data as you need, or not at all. All used tags are displayed on top. If you select one or more tags, then your affairs will be instantly filtered by the selected tags. Personally, I use temporary contexts (“5 min”, “15 min”, ...), importance (“low”, “medium”, “high”) and some others. All used tags are displayed on top. If you select one or more tags, then your affairs will be instantly filtered by the selected tags. Personally, I use temporary contexts (“5 min”, “15 min”, ...), importance (“low”, “medium”, “high”) and some others. All used tags are displayed on top. If you select one or more tags, then your affairs will be instantly filtered by the selected tags. Personally, I use temporary contexts (“5 min”, “15 min”, ...), importance (“low”, “medium”, “high”) and some others.Another nice addition is the input window, called by the global hot key, by clicking which you can quickly add a new task. You can also drag a link or text from Safari into the window, or correspondence from Adium and Mail. To work more productively, I do not want to play according to strictly established rules and master complex programs. I do not want to mess with filters. I don’t want to endlessly sort the columns “Location”, “Time” and so on, as the developers of OmniFocus intended. In Things, tasks look like a simple line with a name and a check-box. Everything else is secondary: if you have not entered tags, description or date, then you will not see them. In OmniFocus, however, empty columns only introduce confusion and confusion. The task manager should dissolve in the background and not betray itself. Things does it perfectly. Point. This article is part of my Haywired.ru blog . By and large, this is a blog about everything that happens in the world of Apple, but we are not limited to this. We do not translate numerous articles that are useless in Russian realities from English-language sources (and some do it, and it’s mediocre), we write our own. Mac users for Mac users. I believe that Haywired is one of the few copyright blogs on this topic. Blog Team -two versatile people who have an opinion, not the opinion of AppleInsider or MacRumors. We will only be happy if you become our regular reader.