To do a to-do

Apparently, one of the most common type of utility programs / apps out there are tools to create to-do lists, Jiminy Crickets that whisper in your ear what you have not done and how long overdue it is. For a long time, I did not think I needed any such, not because of the clarity of my conscience, but because I tended to use Mail's "In" box for the purpose: Most of my "tasks" come through email, and I tend to deal with them in one of two ways: What can be done at once, I reply to immediately as I read the email, which is then sorted to its permanent storage (hence "reading my morning email" tends to take me until lunch or longer). What needs consideration, I leave in the In box and get back to when I have pondered. The In box thus became the To do list. When an item was so old that it passed out of sight above more recent emails, then it was probably too late to do anything with anyway.

This actually worked fairly OK, except for those who had passed above, who mostly never received a reply. Since I use imap mail, my In box is identical at home and at the office, so I could see my tasks whereever I went. What began to break it down, was actually as I started to create new filters ("rules") that put email from such and such correspondent (students, e.g.) directly into their respective mailboxes (and into an "unread" smart mailbox). Then, if it contained tasks of the ponder type, it could disappear from view if I did not move it to the In box or set its status back to Unread.

So, to avoid overlooking things I should do, I noticed the "To do" button in Mail's toolbar which I had previously ignored. Could I mark these pre-sorted emails as "tasks" in Mail's To-do list so I could find them there on need? Yes, I could, selecting some text in the email creates a link so I from the To-do list can click directly to the email and see what I am supposed to do. This link was essential for me. Mail also allows me to set a due date to sort the tasks by, and priority. It also syncs the to-do items with iCal, which is of less use to me. Good. However, what about the home / office synchronization? Both iCal and Mail are synchronized, so logically, my new to-do list should sync either way, shouldn't it? Well, it should but it does not. The two sync in different ways, iCal through MobileMe, and Mail through the iMap on my university mail server. Neither syncs the to-do list between office and home.

As for iCal, it matters which calendar you select for the item. Since the original email was in a campus imap folder, iCal links the item to a separate imap to-do calendar outside of the MobileMe calendars it syncs. If you try to move it to a MobileMe calendar, the link between the task and the original email is broken in Mail, which was the object of the exercise. As for syncing directly in Mail through the imap account, that just does not work. Perhaps my imap server does not support task syncing (or attaching to-dos to emails in the first place - which sounds reasonable, since this appears very much to be an Apple Mail thing). Anyway, it does not show up.

Full sync attempt
So, I started looking at third-party options. Because of the history above, my requirements were:
- It should link tasks with Mail and/or iCal, and not break the email / task link inside Mail.
- It should in some form or other allow syncing between two Macs (home / office).
That was really what I wanted, and was missing from the internal Mail solution that was otherwise good enough for me. Yes, of course, grouping tasks into topics, marking overdue items, and so on were useful additions too, but not essential. And, since my needs beyond Mail was so simple, I was not willing to pay terribly much for the app: simple would do.

There was indeed a bewildering array of programs to choose from. So, the correct one may have passed me by. But I started out looking for the first requirement, linking with Mail (or iCal). Not many did so, and of course I did not look at the behemoth "project managers" that deal with flow charts and project subroutines and whatnot, I was not about running a company or assigning underlings. Many programs add my simple "to-do" requirements to other tasks that were not important to me, I just wanted a simple manager that took care of my two wishes. In the end, I found one I thought might do it: Things (€40). Fairly straightforward, it does allow grouping tasks into projects, keeps track of "Today" and "Later", and lets you set priority (like Mail does). Pretty much what I wanted. It syncs with iPhone as well, and it syncs with iCal, which was point 1.

Syncing with iCal and through it with Mail worked pretty well. There is always some confusion when you have three programs that sync with each other, but easily sorted out. However, the second point was not in place. You can sync one Mac and iPhone (over wifi), but not Mac with Mac, which was what I wanted. So, I thought maybe I could use my iPhone as relay: Sync office Things with iPhone, take that home and sync iPhone with home Things. Well. It worked after a fashion, I guess. It would refuse to auto-sync the iPhone to the second Mac, so you would have to delete the iPhone connection and re-install it each time, which only takes a few seconds, actually. But eventually, it got confused. Of course the original emails were the same at home and office, but Things saw the to-do tasks as separate, so you would have to make sure to create a task on only one of the Macs, and not to change the status, category or anything else on a task "belonging" to the other Mac, otherwise it would be orphaned or appear in duplicate or triplicate, or the email/task link would be broken. In time most of these links that I wanted to preserve disappeared. I mostly do different things at the home and office, but not quite always, and in this system a task could have its email link only on the Mac it was created, not on the other. It became more and more messy and less and less useful.

Semi-automatic
So, in the end I gave up on the full-automatic solution. Proper syncing should really take place inside Mail or iCal, and adding a third party solution does not seem to work. If Things were to add full Mac-Mac syncing, then maybe, unless that also introduced some new troubles for the Mail links.


Thus, I have settled for a simpler "semi-automatic" solution. Leaving Point 1 by the side, I focused on Point 2, Mac-Mac synchronization. Here, again there may be many solutions, but I found one which seems to fulfil my requirement: Wunderlist (free). Since it is free, it is also as simple as it could be: It does not link to iCal or anything, you type in your item and set a date. You can create groups of tasks and star an item, but no other priorities (but you can add text in a comment field). It does not sort items by due date automatically, but you can move them around in the order you want.

Most importantly here, it does sync between all kinds of devices, including multiple Macs, iPhone, other smartphones or PCs, using its own server; you can also access your list on the web.

So, that has become my solution for the moment: It requires me to create the to-do item in Mail either on my home Mac, on the office Mac, or in both places, they are now quite separate. At the same time, I create an item in Wunderlist, into which I can paste relevant bits from the email, if I want to. The wunderlist works as the actual reminder of what I should do, and when I get to it, I can open the To-do panel in Mail and click on the link that takes me to the email. The extra work is not substantial, and if I know that this is an "office-only" task, I can ignore it on my home Mac and vice versa; and if I know that I will get to the job quickly in Mail, I can create the to-do there only without adding it to the Wunderlist, which makes the system perhaps more flexible even if less automatic. Of course, I can, in Wunderlist as in all these solutions, type in reminders to tasks that are not based on email. And the price is right.

In Lion, this kind of syncing should be vastly improved in the cloud, so we will see when all my Macs eventually get to that stage, but for the moment, I think this will work. Just as long as I remember to check into my to-do list to find what I exactly have to do.