I'm looking for mac and/or web software that will make it easy for me to track the tasks I need to do.

June 15, 2012 3:11 PM

I need the world's simplest time management/task management software for the Mac and/or web. Ideally free/open or cheap.

Features it must have:

• Ability to add deadlines & have notifications/alerts as deadlines are nearing
• Ability to add priority
• Ability to add tasks without necessarily needing to enter a date/time
• Dashboard-type display that lists all outstanding tasks
• Ability to add sub-tasks
• Full control via keyboard (i.e., don't make have to click on button or right click to create a record)
• Intelligent sorting (items ending soon, items with high priority, etc)
• Calendar-type view so I can see all my tasks at a glance

Features it must not have:

• Complex hierarchy, or the need to create a project or category for each task
• Anything GANTT-ish
• Mandatory iCal integration (i.e. must not save events/tasks to ICal)
• More than 2-3 windows

Features that would be nice to have:

• Some kind of synchronization so I can also use it on my Android
• Quick creation of tasks (i.e. I just type in "Resolve xyz tomorrow 3pm" and it automatically sets tomorrow's date and 3pm as the deadline with "Resolve xyz" as the task)
• Tons and tons of alerts, with repeats, and with the ability for the alerts to get to me in various ways
• Google calendar integration of some sort (so alarms can come up on my phone)

Basically I just want some easy way of keeping track of everything I have to do for work without spending more than a few minutes to deal with it. This is especially why I don't want something gantt-like, as the last time I tried to set something up with that I spent 30+ minutes on it and ended up only entering a few tasks.

If the best thing is not free, my budget is ideally under $30.

posted by Deathalicious to work & money (6 answers total)

I don't use it with my phone/gcal so I can't speak to those features, but I've been trying out Fantastical on a trial and it's great and matches several of your bullets including keyboard-based activation and natural language parsing.

It might be slightly too far to the "lightweight/non-intrusive" side on the spectrum of lightweight<>lots of features for your needs but there is a trial so you can see. Not free but within your budget. My favorite thing about it is that I don't ever have to open iCal.
posted by Your Time Machine Sucks at 3:41 PM on June 15, 2012

Toodledo comes pretty close to what you're after.
posted by eafarris at 3:46 PM on June 15, 2012

Ah, I misread your "must not use iCal" as "doesn't have to use iCal". I think Fantastical can integrate with other calendars but since I've only used it with iCal I don't know whether you can prevent it from making use of iCal's db.
posted by Your Time Machine Sucks at 4:02 PM on June 15, 2012

Lesson learned: Friday afternoon at 6pm is a bad time to post work/productivity-related questions. :)

Thanks for the answers here, none of them were quite right, I've run across one piece of software but it's a bit out of my price range for now ($50).
posted by Deathalicious at 9:39 AM on June 25, 2012

Just stumbled upon this. Todoist.com does all of that! I love it. And it is free.

I only use the web browser version, though - I'm not sure how it is for Android. And I don't integrate with Google.
posted by amaire at 9:09 PM on August 23, 2012

Still no luck. I've taken to creating a new folder each day on computer and putting a text file called "tasks" in it. Low tech but it works and I'll worry about synchronization later.
posted by Deathalicious at 2:57 PM on December 31, 2012