Here's a shoutout to DROOLS (as promised):

. . .

Thanks for the comments in the previous entry asking for how you manage your to-do list. I'm not sure if I'm getting busier, or if smaller tasks are occupying a greater portion of my attention, but I've been finding it harder and harder to manage my daily tasks. Between work, home stuff, and my own side projects ... I get very scatterbrained.

To the anonymous guest who posted about their moleskin, I used to have a moleskin too! I had a small one that worked perfect while I was traveling in Korea (although my to-do items in Korea were mainly "go out and eat," "go check your email at the internert cafe," and "go meet some ladies"). Once i got the States, I tried to break down the moleskin into sections to manage the to-do lists into groups ("life stuff", "tabulas stuff", "audiomatch stuff", etc.), but this just fell apart. The problem became organizing on a meta-level and sorting through an existing list ... I like to keep a prioritized list of items, and this is simply impossible to do (this comment points out the problem: you end up rewriting your lists over and over again).

I then moved onto the physical post-it notes. This worked well; I would write a post-it and stick it on my wall. When I got finished, I would take it down. But again the problem I ran into was the simple problem of organization and structure. I couldn't move the post-its around too often (I have some cheap free ones) that would fall apart. And if one were to fall off while I was sleeping, that task would never get completed. Oh, the horror of the missing post-it note. (Not to mention post-it vandalism by my sister; one day I woke up to find a post-it that had in suspicious girly handwriting, "Anna is the best sister ever!")

So I started keeping a list on Microsoft Word. But to load up MS Word every-time I want to edit a small task? That just didn't work. So I naturally switched to Notepad. That worked the best out of all the solutions thus far.

I've never been a fan of the virtual post-it notes that people have on their desktops. I've seen it on Alice and Lillia's computer, and I can't *stand* cluttered desktops. I go to extreme lengths to keep my desktop free of stuff (including changing the icons on the recycling bin to nothing and moving disabling my computer/my network/all that crap).

The best solution for me, seeing as how often I'm in front of the computer and we have broadband ... was through the internet. You'll remember how I used to keep a stickied post on this Tabulas for Tabulas to-do items. That worked well. It only was cluttersome if I brought it up, it didn't require any extra programs I wouldn't already have open, plus it was a clean implementation.

Lately for work, I've been keeping my to-do work list updated on my workspace, so my bosses can keep track of what I'm doing and what I'm going to be up to (my company develops software for this purpose and a whole lot more).

Ideally I'd like a web implementation of a hassle-free list manager. Something that doesn't have a clunky user interface so I can manage my to-do list efficiently ... something that lets me quickly reorganize my list with a drag and drop interface. Something clean. Something standards compliant... something on the web so I can access it from different places - ideally I can tie in my cell-phone to send a text message somewhere to add an item to my todo list, or through a PDA, or through a wireless connection. You get the idea...

Or maybe I should just build a robot instead.