Firetask for iPad

Firetask for iPad

Let’s start this out with a confession. I have read David Allen’s Getting Things Done several times since it was first published. I have listened to the CD’s in Getting Things Done Fast many times while on long drives for work (this is a set I highly recommend but which appears to be out of print). The GTD concepts resonate in me and make absolute sense as a means of staying focused and organized. However, I suck at it. The mental discipline to stick with it seems forever elusive. This is probably why I look for apps like Firetask; my hope is to one day find a tool that will help me suck LESS at this stuff.

Make no mistake, this will not be a treatise on how to properly follow GTD principles. That’s why David gets the big bucks. GTD purists will probably find many nits to pick with my implementation for this discussion of Firetask but that isn’t the point. We’re here to talk about the software and I’m at the keyboard, so my bastardized version is what you get for now.

Firetask offers a suite of programs aimed at helping you manage your task list from a project-oriented perspective. There are three different versions: Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Today we’ll look at the version for the iPad. This will be followed later by a look at the Mac version. There is no shortage of applications aimed at GTD enthusiasts but not all cover these three devices and provide a reliable sync between them all.

When you first launch Firetask, you are presented with a clean desktop. Aside from a “Miscellaneous” project and a nice list of categories, it doesn’t throw a lot of data at you.

Note the orange sync button in the lower left corner. My first action when I launched Firetask was to press this button. I was immediately presented with a list of the Macs that were currently active on my network (the sync is wi-fi based but there is a cloud sync in closed beta–I was not able to try it out). After selecting the MacBook Pro that had Firetask for Mac installed, the iPad connected to the MBP and the sync options below appeared.

Pretty standard stuff but the initial sync was quick and reliable. After the initial sync, changes flowed back and forth between the two apps seamlessly and quickly. There is a Preferences setting on the iPad that allows you to determine whether the sync is automatic (upon startup of Firetask on the iPad) or manual. Note that the sync is always driven by the iPad, not the Mac version.

Also note the Show Due option in the preference panel above. This determines the window in which tasks with a due date will begin appearing in your Today view. The options are: tomorrow, 3 days, 5 days, and 7 days.

Key Data

Because it is project oriented, Firetask expects each task to be associated with a project. Essentially, a project is something you want to do that takes more than one task to complete. Since you will likely have many tasks that are a one-off, the provided Miscellaneous project may be your default for a lot of the things you want to accomplish.

Related to tasks is the idea of context (a GTD concept that Firetask calls a category). The idea with a category is that many tasks have a context in which they will/should be performed. For instance, if you need to research a company, you might assign that task a category of “Computer” because you will do the research by checking the company’s website and by Googling that company. The power of categories is that it allows you to group tasks from different projects by context. f your Internet connection is not available you might ignore the Computer tasks. Instead, you might look at all the tasks associated with “Calls” and plan to spend a few hours on the phone. If you’re out shopping, you might want to look at all the tasks linked to the “Errands” category. And so on… This is a very powerful way of getting things done and Firetask supports it admirably, providing a strong list of likely categories but also offering the flexibility to add your own.

In-Tray

Perhaps the most freeing concept in GTD (for me, anyway), is the concept of “clearing your psychic RAM,” as Allen describes it. The idea is to get EVERYTHING you need or want to do out of your head and into some sort of recording system. Firetask supports this through the In-Tray. It’s a place where you can empty your mind and then decide later what you will do about all the things you’ve recorded. If you’ve never tried this exercise, you should. It’s hard to describe how good it feels to get all those nagging little thoughts out of your head. When your brain realizes you’ve finally put them someplace so you won’t forget them, it will generally lay off for a while. Of course, your brain will then expect you to do something about them. Firetask does an excellent job of helping you record, categorize, and assign your tasks to projects. Items in your In-Tray remain there until you change their status. This means that they don’t clog up your today view until you take some action to get them out of your In-Tray.

Above, we have added a few items to the In-Tray and are in the process of adding a fourth. Anything added here will remain here until you take some sort of action on it. You could:

• Add it to the default project by touching the status square to the left of the item. This will change the status to Actionable and it will become a task under the Miscellaneous project.
• Edit the task and change the project.
• Edit the task and change the status.
• Convert the task to a project.

In reviewing a few of these items, it’s clear that they will require more than one task to complete. This means that they should be converted to a project and then tasks will be assigned to them later.

Scratchboard

A slightly different concept, and one that is new to me, is Firetask’s Scratchboard. Here the idea is to have a place to record all of those small, quick tasks that still need to get done. You could be daydreaming through a conference call and start thinking of all the little things you could be accomplishing instead. Just record them in the Scratchboard. If you get a break and can take care of them, just do it from the Scratchboard. If you look at them later and decide that they should be assigned to a project or converted to one, you can do that from the Scratchboard as well.

Project View

Within project view, you can look at the tasks related to a project. You can also add new projects.

What I like about this view is that it allows you to concentrate on a particular “project” but also shows you the next action for all your other projects. To me, this is a nice overview of all the projects that are currently on your plate.

Categories View

Category view allows you to add new categories. It’s also the view you would go to when, as we mentioned above, your Internet connection is down and you decide it’s time to exercise your phone voice. This view shows the number of tasks associated with each category, further helping you to see how your tasks break down. The screen below shows all of your To Do items but the category panel provides access to all categories and their associated tasks.

Today View

The beauty of the today view is that it allows you to focus. It shows only:

• Tasks that have a due date within the action window you defined in Preferences
• Tasks that you have “Flagged” by editing the task detail or clicking the white flag icon to the right of the task
• The next action for every project to which tasks have been assigned

It’s a brilliant way to stay on point without getting overwhelmed at the sheer number of tasks that were recorded during your brain dump to the In-Tray.

Organize View

This is another outstanding view. It shows you the items sitting in your In-Tray. It shows items with due dates. It also shows next actions. From this window you can touch and drag tasks:

• Out of the In-Tray and into one of the due date based columns to have a due date assigned (drag to the “Due” column and you’ll get a calendar for selecting a date)
• Out of the In-Tray and into the Next field to convert the entry to a task with the default project but no due date
• Out of a due date based column and into the Next column to remove a due date
• Out of any of the other columns and back into the In-Tray to get that task out of your face

You can also touch a task to see and edit the task details.

Someday

The last view I’ll talk about is the Someday view. This is another GTD concept for tasks that are less substantial. This is where you record things that you don’t want to forget but you don’t want to assign to a date or project because the due date is far out in the future. It could also be where you record tasks that you would really like to get to once your life slows down a bit (as if…). This might be tasks like: write a book, learn to play the piano, learn to speak Spanglish… It’s like a repository for your dream goals.

Bottom Line

I really like this app. It does an excellent job of fleshing out GTD principles but it carefully avoids the complexity trap that so many of these apps fall into. It provides a clean and elegant interface for keeping track of all the things you need to do but gives you the flexibility to focus on just those tasks that you can or should act on soon. It makes me a little sad that I’ll have to give the iPad back to my wife, now that I have finished looking at Firetask.

That isn’t to say that the program is perfect. It would be nice if there were a gesture for adding tasks, so you don’t have to hit the plus button. It doesn’t have the fantastic tagging feature that we’ll look at when we cover the desktop version. It doesn’t appear to integrate with iCal or to provide alerts when tasks are falling within your chosen action window (although the Local Notifications setting in Preferences makes me wonder if I haven’t just missed something).

If those last few items are deal killers, you’ll have to look elsewhere. However, if you do, you’ll be missing out on an excellent task management program.