ProdPod: Episode 56 — Software Overview: Remember The Milk

One of the most important principles of any productivity system to which you will be externalizing your memory is your ability to rely on the tool/s you select. I hear most often from productivity experts the term ” trust” when it comes to your system and their supporting tools. And, I think that’s a great way to describe it. Over the past decade I’ve had to test and manage hundreds of technologies from staplers to mobile devices to biometric door knobs in my professional world. While most of those technologies were fascinating none has endured in my productivity system than RememberTheMilk (or RTM as its known by its users).
On the surface RTM is simply a task management application, but that in and of itself is its genius! Definitely built with the Getting Things Done meeting in mind, RememberTheMilk has all the functionality needed to manage next-actions and projects on your Runway and 10,000 foot Horizons of Focus. And it stops there, not trying to do more or less. It allows you to email or text message one or multiple tasks or projects into the tool. And you can use what are called Smart Add tags to complete fields such add as list, due date, repetition, context tags and more. Smart Add is also available in the Web interface to add tasks anywhere you’d like from the Smart Add field to anywhere else in RTM. While there are so many other features, the ability to add virtual lists (called Smart Lists) that are defined by anything in the system you can search for. Every list has a print button, share capabilities and feed so you can subscribe to the tasks for view outside the app. The program is completely free to use on the Web and on most mobile devices, and it has a mobile Web version that slims down the feature set to make for quick capture of information on the go.
The pro user account costs a mere 25$ per year and The main benefit is that gives you unlimited synchronization across your devices and once you start heavily using the software you’ll easily want this feature.
If you are struggling managing your daily, weekly or other tasks and projects, RTM is an amazing tool worth checking out!
Episode XX: Remember the Milk (RememberTheMilk.com)
It’s been X years since I stumbled across this tool touted as the “best way to manage your tasks” on their website and reviewed in Linux World in 2005. I wanted to give an overview of Remember The Milk for those of you looking for a task list program for your productivity system, highlighting some of my favorite features.
Other than being a competent task and list manager, Remember The Milk (or, RTM, as it’s called) boasts some really important features when choosing a task management software for your productivity system.
Ability to print any list.
Offline access in Google Chrome and its mobile apps.
Tags for linking projects to tasks as well as contextualizing tasks.
Location-based triggers
URL field to link to websites or reference material (I especially like the ability to link Evernote notes, Google Drive files (including PDF, audio and video formats), and Dropbox files
Notes – as many as you need to support a particular task
Email into RTM with Smart Add functionality
Bulk task import also with Smart Add functionality
Available in Gmail, Google Calendar, every kind of mobile/Web app, Twitter, text, etc.