Elaborate productivity tools are great but sometimes it's easy to get caught up tweaking them instead of actually being, you know, productive. Check Off is a handy little Mac-only tool that docks a simple check-off list in your menu bar and opens with just one click to remind you of all the tasks you need to complete.

If you simply must tweak, then Check Off lets you do that too. Create folders for each area of your life -- work, home, kids, hobby, etc. -- and nest to-dos inside each one. You can color code each folder, name it anything you like, and display notes in global folders or inside each task. As an added bonus, Check Off lists can also be downloaded to iPods that support the notes feature.

Check Off may not be the most full-featured to-do list manager out there, but it's simplicity and usefulness is what makes it so attractive.

Why Google hasn't built something as fundamental as a todo manager into Google Calendar is beyond us, but now you have one more option for tasks on in gCal. While we've previously seen hidden code lead to speculation that todos were (finally) coming, as well as Remember the Milk integration, a new Greasemonkey script brings its own todo list to Google Calendar with an interesting twist. As you can see, this script from Google Operating System gives you a basic todo list without anything like alarms or filing in different calendars. The advantage here, however, is that the script saves todos as events in your calendar, which means you can get to these todos from any computer on which you install the script.

Check out Google Operating System's post for more details, or simply install the script to hit the ground running.

[via Lifehacker]

While many other task management applications have found ways to incorporate the ideas put forth by the Getting Things Done methodology that David Allen developed, it seems that very few have been built from the ground up as GTD applications. There are certainly a few web applications that can make that claim, but in terms of "offline" applications, the pickings are pretty slim.

One such application, however, is ThinkingRock. Written in Java, ThinkingRock boasts versions for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

In ThinkingRock, you work in specific modes that relate to the various levels of the GTD workflow. For example, rather than entering a task and setting the project it relates to and the context at that moment, you can simply use a collection view to do a brain dump of all of the tasks and ideas that are bouncing around in your mind.

Like many others who are trapped in their cubicles all day I've developed an unhealthy fascination with task managers, todo lists, and project trackers. I want that extra edge - that little boost that will help me get more done in less time. Todoist is one little tool created to make managing your pending todos easier.

Todoist is a free web based todo list app (in an already very very crowded market) that has some very special charm all its own. Built by Amir Salihefendic in "about a month", Todoist lets you create and sort projects in a very slick Ajax interface. Once you have a project you can create todo items within that project. Where the app really shines is in the customizations area. You can make text bold, underlined, and highlighted. You can also add links and due dates for items. By holding CRTL and using the arrow keys you can even indent a todo item or move it around in the list. One of the easy things you can do is create a item such as "Story Ideas" and quickly add your ideas under it using the * symbol to remove the checkboxes.

Another nice feature of Todoist is that it supports natural date keywords for setting due dates. This way you can type "tomorrow" or "next Friday" and it will understand and assign the correct date. You can then create a schedule for the week using the handy date search box. Unfortunately there is no way to share your projects at this point, but it wouldn't surprise me if that is in the works.

Todoist strives to be a very simple, fun, and easy to use tool that offers a lot of power to the average user. It doesn't offer you all the features you might expect from some of the more established alternatives, but that is by choice and what is there works wonderfully. Give it a look.

TechCrunch's Frank Gruber has done a brief round-up of five of the most popular web-based to-do list solutions: Ta-da Lists, Remember the Milk, Bla-bla List, voo2do, Tudu List. You can find the full article right here, but if you don't mind having it spoiled for you, I'll just tell you that 37signals' early offering Ta-da Lists comes out on top for its "clean and simple interface and good-enough feature set," but Gruber also praises Bla-bla List, voo2do, and Remember the Milk.