It was not easy to say goodbye to Remember the Milk. I’ve shelled out $25 for a Pro account (& I’m cheap when it comes to these things).
I also got a ton of tasks already up & running in RTM. Since they conveniently didn’t put an export feature, this has increased my reluctance to transfer to another task management system.
Another reason for my hesitation is that Toodledo, my best alternative, has an ugly website. I love my websites pretty. And RTM is pretty.
Unfortunately, it seems like pretty is all they have going.
So I remained a blind follower. Much like Apple fan boys are to Steve Jobs (“He said I don’t need MMS, so I don’t!”)
When the developers of RTM said that I don’t need all the features I was aching to have, I decided to believe them: So what if they don’t have subtasks? I can use tags for all my subprojects. I can live with it. Even if I accidentally create duplicate tasks because my tags get buried. Maybe I could just clean my list ever so often.
And so what if they haven’t updated RTM in ages? So what if they don’t publish their roadmap so we have an idea of what’s in store in the future? RTM said Apple doesn’t publish their roadmap either. And, er, they’re like Apple. Right?
But months later, I noticed I spend more time fixing my task list & removing duplicates than actually working with them.
And I needed subtasks, for goodness sake. Since they added a highly useless feature called locations, maybe they’ve changed their minds about subtasks. Right?
A visit in the forums confirmed my deepest fears. A post from RTM said they will not implement subtasks. Ever.
As we’ve now provided several ways to organize tasks (tags, lists, and Smart Lists), we have no plans to introduce subtasks.
A workaround for subtasks might be to use lists and tags — for example, I have a list named ‘Shopping’, and within that list I’ve tagged tasks with ’supermarket’, ‘mall’, etc. I can then view tasks tagged with ’supermarket’ in my ‘Shopping’ list, which helps to break down the list.
Hope this helps!
Fortunately, it did help — in making me decide to jump ship.
Pretty is thrown out the window, and I skipped happily to Toodledo, ordered the Plus account, & worked on my tasks from scratch.
It was wonderful. From the first few entries, until I’ve successfully migrated 100% (& more) of my tasks from Remember the Milk. My only regret is not doing it from the beginning, before I got suckered in by RTM.
Toodledo is very straightforward. The best thing about it is how I can configure it the way I want. Don’t want to work with Tags? Hide it. Don’t like Contexts? Hide it. Want to see tasks ordered by Due Date? Here ya go. How about by Folder? And there it is.
It still aint pretty. I still wish they would finally get the service of a fantastic UI designer to help them out.
But pretty isn’t everything. Even if I say so myself.
Tags: productivity, software
I’ve just done the same thing, probably at about the same time (I switched right at the end of May), and for the exact same reasons.
I hated the look of Toodledo when I was first evaluating both services, I thought, I’m sure there’s a way around not having sub-tasks, but there just isn’t. And the kicker for me was the absolutely anti-customer attitude of RTM’s support staff. Ridiculous. I can’t believe how much better toodledo is.
Funny – I did the same thing a few months ago. I tried and tried to convince myself that RTM was truly as helpful as it should be. But once I saw the way a few coworkers were using Toodledo, I had to try it. After a day, I was done with RTM. After a week, I had upgraded to a Pro account and have not looked back.
I’m completely in the same boat. Your post perfectly summed up my sentiments. Using toodledo (with the Todo App on the iPhone is taking some getting used to).
You can also try http://gtdify.com. It’s based on open source project Tracks.
I evaluated both RTM and Toodledo for a long time before leaving my Palm Desktop for the cloud. I listened while several co-workers raved about RTM. I finally opted for Toodledo. The kicker for me were the range of import and export functions. THe palm import didn’t work for me, but I was able to get my palm tasks into plain text easily enough and the plaintext upload was dream. Also, I want a periodic hard backup, just in case I can’t find the web. The csv support means I can easily add my toodledo tasks to a little db program on my palm tx. And I drop another in a dropbox folder so it is available all over.
I love the contexts, was up and working in no time. Toodledo was a good choice for me.
Thanks you guys. This is a VERY helpful discussion for someone who is just getting started with these applications.
Don’t forget you can use User Styles or Greasemonkey scripts to beautify the interface
[url]http://userstyles.org/styles/browse/toodledo.com/all/popularity/desc/1[/url]
I’m so glad you wrote this! I am just getting into GTD and spent the last DAYS reading about to-do lists and trying programs… there are a TON out there and I bought Toodledo for iphone even before I knew about all the others!
So when I discovered all the others I went “Oh-oh!”… But then I realized Toodledo was really a complete application, even if with a so-so interface. Still checking and comparing and all, and RTM was one of the ones I was also contemplating… So reading this I feel I deserve myself a pat on the back!
Oh, and thanks for the User Styles link, Brian! Really makes some difference!
I am also a little late learning about all the apps available to us smart phone users. I did research on RTM, but felt is wasn’t exactly what I was looking for; after trying to get google (calendar, email, tasks, docs) to help me organize my day, I finally gave up and discovered Toodledo. Not crazy about the “Look and Feel” but its effectiveness in helping me organize is well worth the subscription.
Another point for using Toodledoo is it doesn’t cost $25 a year to use with your iPhone. I’ve always been a Toodledo user but as has been mentioned the ugly website was ticking me off. However, perusing RTM’s site and seeing that I would need to fork out a yearly fee to use it with my iPhone and then reading this blog, convinced me to stick with Toodledo. Another good thing about T is the Notes feature which syncs wonderfully with Notebook on my iPhone.