by now in my life, there is just too much stuff to do and keep track of to rely on my limited brain, so natural i turned to google-searching to find the right software solution. i’m pretty sure i have tried about every to-do list (a.k.a. GTD) program out there, and my current favorite by a pretty large margin is things, by cultured code.

other GTD programs, such as omnifocus do have more features, but using other GTD programs felt like i was doing work just organizing my work, which defeated the purpose of evening using them. things feels much more like an apple product; it really emphasizes simplicity and user design, making it effortless. give it 5 minutes of tinkering, and you’ll understand how to add projects, add tasks, order them by priority and dates. it is also super exciting to know that they are already hard at work on an iPhone app for once iPhone firmware 2.0 comes out.

although the design is great, the driving reason for using things is how reliant i am on using apple-key containing hot keys in my workfow.

if i want to launch an application or document (or do a bagillion other things), i press apple+spacebar to launch my absolute favorite utility program quicksilver. if i want to change applications, i use apple+tab to sift between them. and now, if i want to add a new task / idea that i need to get done, i press apple+option+space to launch thing’s quick entry window. each of these hot keys launch a similar bezel-shaped, semi-transparent overlay so all these actions feel like part of the same family. because of this, things perfectly slides into the way i zip around the computer.