A puzzled expression crossed the Procrastimonster’s face. His eyes seemed to be locked on the hand that was holding the weapon, and his brow was furrowed as if he was trying to remember something. She took a step closer and prodded the beast in the chest with the point of the weapon. Before she could blink, he pulled the weapon out of her hands, and looked incredulously at its cow-patterned hilt. With a grunt that was almost a laugh, he tossed the weapon backwards over his shoulder, shook his head, and lumbered back towards his cave.

Dumbfounded, our heroine just stood there staring after him for a few moments before starting to hike towards where her weapon had landed. Picking it up, she examined it closely. Why did the Procrastimonster react to it the way he did? Surely, he couldn’t have been laughing at it.. or was he? The cow motif wasn’t THAT silly, was it?

She shook her head to clear it, and decided not to take it personally. After all, the weapon’s use and purpose was fairly subtle, and the name inscribed along its length was certainly not something to make anyone tremble in fear: “Remember the Milk“. She knew that another attempt to slay the beast was in order, but first, she had to remind herself of all the strengths that this weapon had. Her mind was whirling with all the pros and cons, as she made her way back to her abode…

Later…

She put down her quill, and gazed at the parchment that was filled with scribbles and lines and exclamation points. With a nod, she placed it down on her desk for her scribe to find later. She had some sharpening, polishing, and practicing to do.

What I Like About “Remember the Milk”

• Powerful Search
  • By tag, location, list, due date, added date, notes, time estimate…
  • Save Searches as Smart Lists!!
• Customizability
  • Smart Lists!!
  • Multiple Lists!!
  • Tags!!
    • the Tag Cloud
  • Notes!!
    • for repeating tasks with no due date, can track progress
    • can outline subtasks or next tasks
    • and of course, info about the task
  • oh and did I say Smart Lists?!
• Accessability
  • online directly, from any web browser
  • Google homepage
  • Google calendar
  • mobile phone
  • can email tasks
  • Jott
  • Firefox sidebar
  • sharing with other people
• Interface
  • natural language date field
  • multi-edit mode is neat (though somewhat awkward..) (improved recently)
  • uncluttered, yet can see everything
  • keyboard shortcuts ftw
  • priority change is easy
  • tabs for Lists & Smart Lists
• Developers
  • communicative
  • dedicated to the project
  • updated frequently
  • seem like nice folks!

What I Don’t Like…

• keyboard task selecting awkward at times (though improved recently)
• so flexible, it was difficult to start using well
• width of space used << width of screen (fixed recently)
• “checkboxes” are misleading at first.. highlight is enough, or could use a dot or something
• needs better customizability for organizing lists
• alphabetical sorting of everything..
  • at least this can be exploited for customized sorting
• the Overview page
  • not clickable (but the blog says they’re working on it…)
  • not organized how I’d do it
• no subtasks or sequential tasks
  • use of notes field can kinda help
• no “hide until”
  • hack: tag to indicate hidden, and check the tag when it’s appropriate to see the task

Madam: I hope this transcription meets with your approval.
– Sincerely, your Scribe.

Later Still…

Our heroine stopped to catch her breath, having just sidestepped an awkward lunge from the Procrastimonster. They were both tiring, and they both knew it. They both paused, eyes locked, and simultaneously they began to back away from each other. Step, step, step… and soon they both turned away, knowing that they would meet again.

Our heroine felt slightly discouraged by the stalemate, but she knew she would improve with practice. The Procrastimonster still would occupy her conscious thought, but that actually helped make sure that he didn’t slip into her subconscious. With time, she would be able to parry and dodge his advances without a second thought. For now, however, she knew that she was best to keep herself armed by Remembering the Milk.

It seemed that the weapons were either not flexible enough, shattering upon striking the Procrastimonster’s solid exoskeleton, or they were not strong enough, and didn’t even leave a mark on the beast. Careful thought was needed here, and she had to be careful not to discard tools she simply wasn’t using well enough… while also being careful not to use any truly inappropriate tool for too long. “Surely,” our heroine pondered aloud, “there must be a tool out there that is balanced enough to defeat this fiend once and for all?”

Instead of frustrating herself with this line of thinking, she looked into herself for guidance. “What did I first realize I needed in my choice of tool?” she asked her scribe, who ruffled through only a few pages of notes before finding the right words. With a gasp, our heroine realized that the answer was right there all along! She skimmed through her own words, making a mental bullet-point list of the pertinent phrases:

• …haven’t …used the one power that I was so excited to have: tagging.
• …either too many things to look at at once, or not enough. (too cluttery, too simple, not “Web 2.0? enough, too limited of a free version, too tacky…)
• …to figure out what to do next … I would generally have to look through everything, and get overwhelmed…
• …[make] the concepts work into my life… How do I need to distinguish between whether I should be working on one task or another? …more frame-of-mind based?
• …use my own creativity to come up with something that works for me…

Suddenly, she saw that she had wrongfully discarded the perfect weapon, all to try and protect herself from falling victim to the temptation that the Procrastimonster uses to draw in willing souls. She had feared that this particular tool would take her too long to learn how to wield well… time that the Procrastimonster would gleefully use against her. The mind games of this beast were certainly tricky, but she was determined to be right this time!

She smiled, gazing thoughtfully at her chosen weapon, already visualizing how she would shape it to fit her needs…