As I mentioned last time, don't choose a tool that doesn't fit your flow. What does that mean? Here's an example: I thought I'd be clever and create a separate flow for home and work. Since I work at home, the thinking was that I'd further separate my two worlds with two systems. In one corner I had The Hit List syncing to iCal which in turn was syncing with Todo on my iPhone. In the other corner: Toodledoo in my browser (or standalone in Fluid) and on my iPhone. Guess what happened?

I wound up preferring one system over another. In this case, Toodledo (a service I'll dissect in a later post). Todo and The Hit List and even lowly iCal are great, but since the majority of my inbox items fly at me in a work context, I simply wound up using Toodledo more often. That simple cognitive shift of changing to another system wound up enough of a barrier to me to discontinue my hacked-together system. Oh, and it didn't help that my hacked system didn't work right.

The Hit List is a very powerful tool, and iCal works great with my MobileMe account. The hack to sync the two with Todo, also a terrific piece of software, only works so well. My second piece of advice this week: avoid hacked solutions unless you can fix them easily. This goes back to truly learning your system. If you can code your own apps and craft your own workflow, more power to you. If you can't, admit that you won't be able to fix things and look for a total solution elsewhere.

Case in point: so-called Kinkless GTD. Remember this one? I loved it. Add items via QuickSilver into a special, fragile OmniOutliner Pro document and all sorts of magical things happened. Unfortunately, the system was fragile as a glass kitten. Once it blew up on me once, I never got it working again, and had to unlearn a number of methods for capturing and completing tasks. That is not the way to get things done. But the toolset was beyond my capacity to fix it. So take a lesson from Star Trek and don't become dependent upon a tool you can't fathom. Or, at the least, find something with support documentation.

Next I'll show you some questions to ask when evaluating tools.

TASCK is a bare-bones task list-manager web application. What TASCK lacks in features, it makes up for in minimalism. Literally, the only thing you can do on the site is add tasks by hovering over the plus symbol, and either check off or delete them as you complete them. It's unclear what the difference is between checking off a task and deleting it; in either case the list item simply disappears.

Though you don't need to sign up to use TASCK, it's probably a good idea to if you plan on making any serious use of the site. Simply clicking the How To Use link and then going back to the site was enough to lose the short list of items I had entered.

The name TASCK is intended to be a combination of the words tack and task. The site is intended as a task management tool for people that are too busy to fuss with more complicated task managers.

If you're looking for something a little more functional than a plain text document, but without all the confusing bells and whistles that today's batch of GTD-inspired applications offer, TASCK might be right down your alley.

Do you forget stuff? Do you wonder where the heck you put the keys when they're in your right hand? Do you get in the shower with your socks still on? Do you ever get to the bus stop, and realize you can't recall if you've put on pants? We're the only ones? Really? Damn.

We're willing to bet you can still benefit from Tasque, even if you just need reminders about the things normal people put on their to-do lists.

There are a few other to-do list applications in Linux, but most lack the finesse that Tasque is already bringing to the table. Tasque is a newcomer (it got its start at last year's Hackweek), and seems well on its way to becoming a big player.

Tasque (pronounced "Task") is a unified frontend for a number of backends. Honest to god, we don't mean anything obscene by that. What we mean is, it's a very standard graphical interface that works with a number of to-do and database types to make your to-do list dynamic.

With some students already in school, and some preparing to enter yet another journey into a new semester, let DLS make your studies that much more organized with a few free desktop and web applications that will make your school life that much more enjoyable.

From free document creation applications, online to-do's and organization applications, users are faced with a decision, go for the costly desktop versions and upgrade every few years, or stay ahead of the curve with free web based applications that are constantly updating with new growing feature sets. The choice has never been easier.

This DLS special feature lists out current tools that are floating around the web as highly competitive alternatives for both students and professionals.

I don't know how we missed this, but Voo2do is a very cool web-based time management spreadsheet, also known as a to do list. Well, it's more than that, obviously. And while it doesn't have all the yummy features of something like Backpack, it is pretty nice. There's something to be said for simplicity, at least. Most important, Voo2do added some features yesterday that really make it worth using. The ability to edit notes, for instance, might have been a deal-breaker for some. That's fixed. There's nascent support for group work too, which is very nice (I'd like to see this improved upon for sure). For those of you wanting more, Voo2do also has an API. Thanks Todd!