If you have outlined some goals for yourself, such as how many hours you’d like to spend in a week doing “x” (volunteering, exercising, billable hours, etc.), then color coding your calendar items is a great way to see where you are out of alignment with your goals.  For example, if you’ve decided to spend four hours each week volunteering, and you’ve coded the volunteer time on your calendar as blue, a quick glance at a weekly or monthly view for all the “blue” will give you a sense of whether or not you’re reaching your goals in that area.

How?

First, in a calendar view, go to the “Edit” menu and click on “Labels.”  Jump to the bottom and click on “Edit Labels.”  Here you can change Microsoft’s defaults to the words that work best for you.  Resist the urge to color-code everything if it’s not an activity you care about measuring.  It’s ok to have some color and let everything else be white.  To color code a calendar event or appointment, open it, and the “label” field should be sort of in the center, on the right side of the window.  Here you can select the appropriate color.

Your brain was not designed to manage the details of your life. So in order to be effective, you need a tool. And that tool needs to manage at least 5 things well: calendar, contacts, to-do’s (or tasks), email, and notes. I believe that everything in one place is best. If it can’t be one place, the fewer the better, in my experience. On a PC, this is handled quite effectively by Microsoft Outlook, and Outlook has the added advantage of syncing pretty seamlessly with most smartphones.

Mac’s answer to this challenge is 3 different programs, and those programs don’t work particularly well together (even though Apple claims they do): Apple Mail, iCal, and Address Book. It’s not easy enough to create a task from an email, so I had to install an add-on program called MailTags (and BTW, MailTags does lots of other things. I’m a fan). The next problem is that Notes and Tasks don’t sync to iPhone. I am not alone in my shock that Apple would ignore such basic functionality, but there it is. I went outside the Mac native tools for my notes, and chose Evernote, and it enables me to see my notes on my iPhone. My one complaint with Evernote is that my notes are not synced locally on my iPhone, so I need an internet connection to view/edit them. So now instead of one program for my productivity system, I’m up to four.

Until recently there was no good solution to take your tasks from iCal and get them to your iPhone (see comments on OmniFocus, below). There are plenty of simple to-do apps that are web-based, like Remember the Milk, Toodledo, and Jott. But what I wanted was one that would sync with my tasks from iCal, so that I didn’t have to add yet another tool to my productivity system (4 already seems excessive). Finally, Appigo has solved my problem. They offer a free sync tool called Appigo sync, which you download on your Mac, and an iPhone app (although pricey for an app at $9.99) called ToDo. Finally! This solution allows me to sync my tasks from iCal to my iPhone, and it has lots of functionality for managing views, such as viewing by calendar, priority, due date, etc. If you’re a Mac user and looking for a productivity solution, I suggest you give this formula a try. There is another solution to task management that will also sync with your iPhone, called OmniFocus, but in my opinion, it’s unnecessarily complicated, it may not play as well with Mac OS as OS-native tools, and it’s pricey ($79.95).

If you’re a Mac user with another solution for managing the combination of tasks, calendar, contacts, email, and notes, that is also accessible from your iPhone or smartphone, I’d love to hear about it. Thanks for reading!

Ok, so yesterday I discussed my personal productivity beliefs, and the tools I used before I switched to Mac.  A couple of years ago, I became a convert, drank the Kool-Aid, and now I use a Mac and an iPhone.  I have to say that personal productivity with Apple tools is not as good as using Outlook and a Windows Mobile device.  But really,everything else is better on a Mac, so that fact did not convince me to go back.  And I’ve found ways to work around the shortcomings.  (Note to Apple Computer, Inc. programmers:  I would LOVE to help you solve these problems!)

For a while I used Entourage, which is basically Outlook for Mac.  And actually Entourage is better than Outlook, mainly because it has the very powerful “Project Center.”  However, I was warned that it was unstable, and not easy to back up, and I found this to be true.  It crashes, and it takes forever to get back up and running, even if you’ve backed up.  That was a deal-breaker for me.  So I switched to the Mac-native tools, which are part of the operating system:  AppleMail, iCal, and Address Book.  I don’t think it’s quite as convenient, because of the whole “everything in one place thing.”  So now I have to use at least three, and even these aren’t comprehensive enough, so they need some help.  The first problem is that creating a task from an email is very clunky and not easy.  So I’ve added on a program called MailTags.  Well worth the $29.95 download cost and solves that problem.

Next problem:  I think the ability to color-code my calendar, and categorize my to-do list, is essential, and iCal requires a little bit of overkill.  You can’t just add a tag or color to a calendar event, or just select a category for your to-do’s.  But I’ve found a workaround for this as well and it works fine.   I created a main calendar for calendar events, with sub-calendars for every calendar category I wanted.  Then I created another main calendar for Tasks, and created sub-calendars for all my Task categories.

As I mentioned, it’s more complicated than it needs to be, but until iCal gets better at event and to-do list categorization, it’s necessary for me.

Notes are another problem.  They aren’t very user friendly in Mail, but it leads me to the BIGGEST frustration for me with Apple tools:  neither To-do’s nor Notes sync to your iPhone.  What’s the matter with those Apple programmers?!  Upon searching the web to see if there was a way to do this that I just couldn’t figure out, all I found was people complaining that it couldn’t be done.

There are many, many workarounds for Tasks but for me they are all lacking in one way or another, plus I’d prefer not to have to use YET ANOTHER program.  But here’s what I’ve discovered:  when I am away from my computer, I don’t need my tasks.  If I’m away from my office/computer, it’s because I’m at a meeting, speaking, delivering training, etc., so there is no reason to be consulting my task list.  Before you jump to a web-based program for task management because you can’t sync with your iPhone, consider whether you really need your tasks on your iPhone or not.  If you absolutely have to have that feature, there’s Remember the Milk, Vitalist, Toodledo, and Todoist, among others.

It IS vital for me, however, to be able to sync my Notes and have them with me.  I use Notes for all kinds of lists and reference information, so I need them often.  Since there is no easy way to use Notes in the Mac-native suite, nor do they sync with an iPhone, I was forced to include yet another program into my personal productivity arsenal.  I chose Evernote.  It has a desktop application and an iPhone application, and it’s very powerful in that I can take text notes, video notes, audio notes, web clippings, etc.  And they sync, via the web, where I can view them on my iPhone.  But the one thing I don’t like is that they don’t reside locally on my iPhone.  I can only access them when I have an internet connection on my phone and that’s not always convenient.  So while it’s not a perfect solution, it’s one I can live with for now.

Using Mac native tools for productivity now has one big advantage for those who need to share things with others:  you can publish to the web via MobileMe and share calendars, contacts, and view your emails online.  This also allows you to keep them synced with another computer.  Still doesn’t include notes and tasks, however, but most people don’t need to share those things.

So there’s my rant about Apple and productivity.  If you have comments, suggestions, or questions, I’d love to hear them.  You can also follow me on Twitter @mnthomas, where I try to post useful productivity information.

1. Everything in one place.  Some people look at the “one place” as their computer, but I think if you can drill down more than that, it’s better.  If everything is on your computer, but in 5 different programs or documents, that’s not as efficient as if everything is in ONE program.
2. You need to consider FIVE things for comprehensive productivity:  calendar, to-do list, contacts, email, and notes.  If they all can’t be in one program, then the programs should at least play nicely with each other (the ability to easily create a task or calendar event from an email, for example.)
3. You are most productive when you can refer to your system on the go, meaning a handheld device will increase your productivity.  However, your handheld device shouldn’t be your only tool, or even your primary tool, unless you are a true road warrior and are almost never in front of a computer.  Handheld devices are not designed for convenient entry of data.  Do the entry on your computer, accessit on your handheld device when you are away from your computer.

Another thing that’s really crucial to personal productivity is an effective methodology.  (I use my Empowered Productivity System.  But I’ll have to discuss those specifics another time).  So, given those rules, I used to use Outlook with a Palm handheld, then later with a Windows Mobile phone.  If you are a PC user, Outlook syncing with a Windows Mobile device is a very powerful combination.  (If you are a Mac user, come back tomorrow when I will continue the post).  Outlook plus a Windows Mobile device handle all five things very well, and it is very easy to integrate each of the five things together in Outlook (creating a task from a to-do, or birthdays in the contacts appearing in the calendar, for example.)

A single installation of Outlook does have some drawbacks, however.  It’s not a project management tool, but I think there are many ways to get around this shortcoming that work just fine.  I’ll have to save those for another post.  One of the biggest drawbacks is the inability to share calendars.  Because of this, some people abandon Outlook and use only Google Calendar.  I think this is a mistake, because Google doesn’t yet handle the other four items at all, or as well as Outlook does.  I have two suggestions if you need to share calendars.  One is to consider a hosted Exchange solution, like from MailStreet.net.  The problem with this is that it’s not free, but for a small business it’s inexpensive and easier than hosting your own Exchange server.  An easier (and free!) solution for an individual is to just use Outlook as your primary calendar, but sync it up to Google calendar to share with others.

IMHO, that’s the best solution in personal productivity tools for a PC user.  A couple of years ago I switched to a Mac.  I’ll explain what I use now in tomorrow’s post.

Have thoughts?  Comments?  I’d love to hear them.  And you can follow me on Twitter where I try to post lots of productivity-related information @mnthomas.

QuickSilver also allows you to quickly perform many other tasks, with many other file types, not just applications.  Type the first few letters of a document you were working on recently, and get lots of choices including open it, copy it, emai it, etc.  Many thanks to @MegaJustice for showing me this a long time ago.

Now, Fluid I learned about by using OtherInbox (as if you needed another reason to use OIB.  If you aren’t yet, Sign. Up. Now!  BUT, I’m using OIB on the beta site, and it doesn’t seem to work with Fluid.  If OIB staff reads this, please comment.)  Fluid is an app called a “site specific browser.”  What this means is that if there is an application you use often on the web, you can use Fluid to make it like it’s a desktop app.  For example, I’m not using Tweetdeck or other Twitter aggregator, because I haven’t been using Twitter that long and I had just figured out how to use the Twitter web page, so I didn’t want to complicate things with another program right away.  So rather than launching Firefox, and then navigating to Twitter, I create Twitter in a site specific browser using Fluid.  So then I type Fn+F1+Tw+Enter.  Twitter launches in it’s own, standalone “browser window,” which actually looks just like a desktop app with it’s own menus & stuff.  You can even put the icon in your Dock and launch from there if you want to.  Very cool, and very fast.

If you have more questions, please feel free to email me, or post a comment here and I will reply.  I hope that this information will save you some time!  And if you’re not already following me on Twitter, I’m @mnthomas.