This is a guest post by Tara Rodden Robinson.
If you’re an Evernote fan, then maybe you’ve already browsed their handy Trunk. When you got there, you encountered a fantabulous collection of tools that leverage all the things you love about this capture-find-access software. As The Productivity Maven, I’ve tried a slough of task management packages–here you’ll get my take on Egretlist, an iPhone app and one of the many handy Trunk items which is billed as a to-do manager.
Egretlist takes makes the most of two features of Evernote: tags and checkboxes. By ferreting out any notes that have to-do checkboxes, the program constructs lists. Egretlist then goes about organizing those lists based on tags and notebooks. If you like the look and feel of Moleskine, then you’re in luck with Egretlist since the interface is patterned on a paper-based notebook. The home page comes pre-populated with categories that will strike a chord for nerds like me who enjoy GTD® (aka David Allen’s Getting Things Done®).
So how would you use Egretlist?
Task management
If you’ve tried managing tasks from within Evernote, you may enjoy how Egretlist organizes these lists for your iPhone. Once you grasp what Egretlist is looking for (that is, checkboxes and tags), it’s simple to create checkboxed lists on your desktop or browser interface and tag them by category (such as “Next,” by Context, and so on). You’ll then need to inform Egretlist which tags to look for (e.g., @Errands as a context) and sync. Poof! You have neatly organized lists to work from.
You’ll want to remember that a tagged note lacking text in the body of the note is invisible to Egretlist–you’ve got to put a checkbox followed by text for the item to be picked up for a list. That means anything emailed into Evernote has to be processed manually to become a to-do item. For this reason, I suggest you create at least two notebooks just for task management: an Inbox to email items into for processing and a second notebook as a default “binder.”
For items with deadlines, or to set reminders, you can add due dates. These reminders can be sent to your calendar but will show up as if they are actual appointments, not to-do items. There is a calendar within Egretlist as well, allowing you to view to-do’s by date if you don’t want to clutter your appointment calendar.
List management
If you already have a task management system and aren’t looking to switch, Egretlist still presents some advantages over Evernote alone. One of the things Evernote users love is the capability to add all sorts of items to your notes, creating beautifully enhanced lists complete with photos, URLs, and the like. In this regard, I find Egretlist’s notebook and list organizing superior to Evernote’s own iPhone app. The Egretlist interface is easier to handle, eliminating lots of scrolling around to find a particular notebook or list item. Again, however, lists must be annotated with checkboxes to become Egretlists.
Summary
- Egretlist is a helpful addition to the Evernote Trunk for managing tasks and lists.
- GTD-nerds will appreciate the pre-existing categories for organizing tasks by next actions, projects, and contexts. If you process a lot of email into tasks, you’ll find Egretlist requires some extra labor on the processing side.
- List management using Evernote on the iPhone is easier with Egretlist as long as you don’t mind the extra step of annotating your lists with checkboxes.
Known as The Productivity Maven, Tara Rodden Robinson is an author, coach, and educator. You can learn more about her by visiting her website: www.theproductivitymaven.com.
Disclosures: This is an independent review. The Productivity Maven has no financial or material interest in Evernote, Egretlist, or Evernote Essentials. All trademarks are properties of their respective owners.
(If you’re itching to dig deeper into this kind of Evernote wizardry, I’d highly recommend you check out Brett’s eBook that will get you up to speed very quickly.)
Photo by Picture Taker 2
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