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Due 2 makes timers, reminders easy and now includes IAP (Updated)
Many of us here at TUAW were big fans of Due when it arrived on the App Store. It featured a no-nonsense design that allowed you to set timers and timed reminders quickly and intuitively, plus a few niceties like a logbook for previous timed events in case you wanted to use one again. The original version sported pinstripes, which dated it well into the iOS 7 era where stripes were out and blindingly blank white backgrounds were in. But Due is now available as a brand-new app (not an update to the old one) as Due 2, and it brings the same simplicity to the store as the first version, but it is now free to try with in-app purchases for additional features. Perhaps the biggest change outside of IAP* is the addition of more gesture-based commands in Due 2. As with many apps, you can pull down to add a reminder. You can also swipe right to uncover the menu (although a traditional "hamburger" button up top is available for this as well), which includes logged reminders and timers. You swipe left to delete or mark a reminder as done. A handy "undo" button appears for a second or two when you mark something done. Due now includes something besides the iOS default day/time picker for choosing when you are reminded of something. A handy grid with times, like 9:30 AM or 6:30 PM knows whether to put a past-due time for tomorrow or not. When I put a reminder in at around 1 PM and set the time for 9:30 AM, Due was smart enough to push that to the next 9:30 AM slot, which was the next day. You can also quickly set reminders for 10 minutes, 1 hour, 3 hours, or 1 day (or in the past). When creating a reminder you can also set auto-snooze, a repetition increment (every day, every two weeks, etc.) and the sound for the alarm. You can also tap on the current date and the usual iOS date picker comes up. And Due has natural language support built in since previous versions. Timers follow a similar methodology of creation, but of course are more like a reusable reminder. Presets for coffee steeping and paying a parking meter are included as examples. One thing I like are the circles that show you how a timer is progressing, just like downloads in the App Store interface show progress. Due can thankfully be run in the background, so your reminders and timers will appear in the lock screen when needed. I found exporting to work quite well also. In my case, I exported a reminder to Things. The reminder included a callback URL that opened up Due again, which is circular but also how the Things extension works in iOS 8 (this isn't a criticism, merely an observation). The app syncs nicely across iOS and Mac, although the Mac version is sold separately. The iOS version works great on iPad or iPhone/iPod touch. *Due 2 uses IAP for people who are totally new to the app. If you update from a previous version, you should have all the features. Update: According to the Due app developers, the in-app purchase adds the following features: 5, 10, 15 and 30 minutes auto-snooze 45 new alert tones Pause/resume timers Background sync with Dropbox
Productivity Tip: Synchronizing tasks for the individual
This week's Productivity Tip... As a kid I used little Day Timer notebooks to keep track of my schedules and projects. Of course my duties in high school were minimal compared to today, but those pocket-able sprial-bound notepads were great for capturing and tracking all my "stuff." In film school I met a videographer who kept track of his schedule using a PalmPilot. I loved how, for years, my PalmPilot kept perfect sync with my Mac -- provided I put it in the cradle every day and hit the Sync button. Today, we don't have that sync button. The "cloud" has removed the need for it, right? Well, that depends. Brain sync There's a famous story of Charles Schwab, at the time the president of Bethlehem Steel, who advised Ivy Lee (his generation's Covey or Allen) that he could increase Lee's team's efficiency with one simple tip. That tip was to write down the six most important things you have to do the next day before going to bed. At the end of the next day, anything still on that list went onto the next day's six things, and so on. Inspired by this, and by Federico Vittici's use of Drafts and Day One, I've started a similar ritual. Instead of one daily pass, however, I've started journaling in the morning (using Day One) and reviewing my tasks at night (using OmniFocus). You can do both of these using Drafts, in fact. Lists can be sent to Clear as tasks -- which I do if the day has only single-task items needed -- or OmniFocus, or Due, etc. The reason I call this "brain sync" is that I now have, via Day One, a running list of my personal and professional thoughts and goals every day. Coupled with a focused task list, I can reflect on where I am at any point. Making the simple list at the end of the night helps me sleep better, knowing exactly what my priorities are for the next day. Waking up and jotting down thoughts often yields solutions to problems, but also keeps a running log of what my mushy brain thinks is important contrasted with the hard reality of my task list. The goal is to align them over time, as much as possible. When to sync The Cloud: Syncs all the time, in theory. If you use iCloud, your iOS or Mac device will sync more or less seamlessly in the background at intervals regularly enough to cause few issues for an individual user. With iCloud, the system monitors a specific folder outside of the app itself, so changes made on your iPhone to, say, a Byword document, will appear on your Mac when you open up the document there. There are some issues with cloud sync, however. Depending on the mechanism, you might run into version conflicts. Services like Dropbox allow you to roll back, but iCloud really doesn't. Also, if you force quit an app while a sync is in progress and the app isn't using iCloud, you could end that sync session and wind up with problems. This is a rare one, but it's something to consider if you're the type of person who routinely "cleans up" their list of open apps on iOS. Apps: If an app is using iCloud, sync "just happens." Dropbox also has a sort of background sync, and apps that are in the process of uploading data can continue to "stay live" when closed for up to 10 minutes. Provided you don't lose your network connection, that should be ample time for Evernote and other such apps to sync their data. There are times when you will want to manually sync, however. In OmniFocus, for example, the default is to sync when opened. I also like to click the sync button if I've just gone through entering a bunch of data (after a review on my iPad, or if I've just powered through some errands). Then there are some apps which allow you to see when a sync happens, or force a sync when you wish or maybe even require you to manually initiate a sync. Again, I recommend doing this before closing the app. When I move a timer to the next day using Due, for example, I like to pull to refresh the timer so my Mac isn't sitting there chiming for a couple of minutes before sync happens. Paper: If you're using a mix of apps and paper, for best results sync at least once daily, then do a top-down check once a week to make sure everything is on track. It's sort of like reconciling your bank accounts. How to sync Cloud: I highly recommend using the sync service preferred by the application you use. iCloud is Apple's effort to push a ubiquitous sync solution in iOS. Unfortunately, as of this writing there are some serious problems with iCloud. Gus Mueller goes into the gory details, but I have hope that with WWDC looming, Apple is going to fix this. OmniFocus uses Omni's own sync service, and I have almost never had issues with it. Omni's sync is now available to other apps from the company as well, which makes for a delightful experience. Apps like Drafts and Simplenote use Simperium. There are tons of apps out there with Dropbox integration (I use Byword with Dropbox), and of course Google's products are all starting to get connected and sync up. Most of the time, all of this stuff "just works," and it works much better than it used to! Paper: How you sync if you blend paper and digital will, of course, depend upon the mix of the two. If you're lucky enough to be able to easily transcribe your paper stuff into digital stuff, you're way ahead of the game. Things like the Livescribe pen are expensive, but you can also use Evernote to scan your handwriting and do its best to find your words (it does pretty well, in fact). Personally I'm not afraid to spend some time scribbling notes in my project books or notepads, then spend about 10 minutes a day transferring what I need to OmniFocus. Perhaps the best of all worlds is this fancy Evernote Moleskine, which I haven't tried yet. What I do, now, is keep a collection of 3-ring binders. Each binder is a particular context, more or less. There's one notebook for home, comprising my DIY projects (repairs and improvements), tasks like checking on insurance and so on. There's another for work, which contains projects and plans for TUAW. Like Behance's Action Method, anything that needs to be done beyond a single-step is a project, and gets a sheet in the notebook. One sheet, that's all, for every single project I cook up. I wind up using leftover ruled paper I buy every school year for this. I use dividers, emergent task planning sheets and the like in these notebooks, but ultimately those are all for my mush-brain to write out and try to analyze. Once I have a specific path organized and ready to go, I put in the relevant project tasks into OmniFocus or my calendar (or sometimes Clear). This setup gives me the flexibility of being able to plan with sheets of paper -- and that's how my mind works best -- but digitize and distill the action steps needed to get there. Each week I sync up tasks completed and marked in my digital tools with the notebooks on the shelf, ensuring I can see progress towards the goals. Each project has a page, with a goal. Each project has a set of tasks. Those tasks go digital, then are scratched off digitally, then on paper. If reshuffling and more planning are needed, I find it's easier to manage this in paper form, with notes in margins, arrows pointing to milestones, etc. There's a benefit to me to having all of this on paper and having to double-check things. This is actually a rather new system for me, so I'll be detailing progress and usage in posts to come. For now, I wanted to give a concrete example to anyone out there with so much as a simple notepad they use to track tasks. My recommendation is that you try to sync at least once a week, and consider tools to help transcribe your notes. Conclusion We're currently enjoying the best way to sync so far right now, but cloud services have their caveats. Network problems, data collisions and more can turn sync into stink. I find myself doing more work on paper first, then transmuting it into digital forms for dispersal and action. That way I have some form of backup for my thought processes. No matter what you do, consider a "brain sync" twice a day to help keep you focused on those most important tasks, whether you keep them digitally or on paper -- and never forget to back up your critical data!
Productivity Tip: Using specialized lists for specific use cases
It's time for this week's Productivity Tips column. While I use OmniFocus for just about everything, there are times when I prefer other task managers to handle certain things. Many productivity gurus advise against using more than one tool to list tasks, but I don't like putting short-term list items into OmniFocus. More to the point, I use specialized list tools for specialized tasks -- groceries, kid chores and the like. While you can put all of that into OmniFocus and see it only when you want to, there's something to be said for specialized tools which are tuned to a specific purpose, and may offer features not found in a more general-purpose product like OmniFocus. You can always use one task manager to rule them all, of course, but there are limitations. OmniFocus, for example, isn't where I store my recipes. If I want to create a grocery list in Sous Chef, it's a relatively easy affair. Better yet, I can plan a week's worth of meals and then make a grocery list easily from those menus. To do this in OmniFocus (or other general-purpose task managers like Remember the Milk), I have to do a lot of copy and paste work -- which sort of defeats the purpose of using these magnificent technology products, doesn't it? If I need a short list for a short period of time, I use a "punch list," which requires no contexts or setup. Sometimes an app with a narrow focus has so many great features that I can't help but use it. I've also found geofenced reminders in OmniFocus to be less useful than I'd like, but that's another story. Here are a few ideas for when to use specific task managers, and some of the ones I use. Punch Lists A punch list -- the term comes from the construction industry -- is the stuff you need to do in sequence, right now or by a specific deadline. It's often used for the "fixes" that accumulate towards the end of a project, with only a few loose ends or tweaks to finish off. For quick turnaround projects, it may be all you need. As I tend to use OmniFocus for bigger/long-term projects, I do also sometimes use it for these punch lists, but only when a series of steps will take me longer than an hour or so to complete. If I'm making a quick list to prep for my kids coming over to stay for a weekend, I use a short-term list tool (I don't always have to do the same things each time they come over). Apps: For general, short term lists I love Clear. If I have 3 or 4 things to do in a given hour, and I'm just coming up with that list on the fly, I'm likely to use Clear to quickly set those up and knock them down. Quick, short-term lists are great with Clear, which also syncs with my Mac. Wunderlist is a great solution as well, and so is Remember The Milk if you need to collaborate. There's also iOS/OS X Reminders, but I have wired most of my reminders to go to OmniFocus because I want to capture once and process later. When it comes to making lists that need to be in cold storage for a while (like Christmas wish lists), or lists of info which I need but not on a regular basis, I use Evernote. Evernote makes it easy to find lists I've made earlier, and add to those from anywhere. Kids or pets As a divorced dad, I have to keep up with a lot of info on my kids. From wish lists (often generated while we are at a store -- the old "daddy I want this!" cry) to favorite foods to blood types and other medical info, my puny brain can't keep it all. We've also started a chore chart, and I wanted to use something a bit friendlier than OmniFocus. If you have pets, there are a number of things to track and keep on top of, from vet visits to dietary needs and more. Luckily, there are a few apps for that. Apps: If you have pets, check out PetMinder, which will track all sorts of things about your pet including vet appointments and allergies. If you have those other household inhabitants known as "human children" I have been loving iAllowance for their chores. iAllowance allows me to use Dave Ramsey's system for saving, spending and giving, and handles all the math and checklists for me. I can even sync with my iOS devices, so I put the iPad on a table and as kids finish items they come and mark them off. Travel Do you really want all those shops, restaurants and tourist sites in your task manager along with all your work stuff? Aren't you supposed to be on vacation? Just like how I use Firefox for work stuff (well, and Chrome) and Safari and Opera for personal browsing, I like to keep my vacation info and work info very separate. A great example of a punch list, too, is your typical packing list. Again, you could keep a list of potential packing items in your task manager, but that could add hundreds of items that you may only need once in a while. I find packing lists are an easy win when testing list apps, not to mention there are some great special-purpose apps for this. Apps: Travel apps could be an entire month's worth of posts, so all I'll say here is that if you frequently travel for leisure you'll want to look into the "to do" aspects of Foursquare and Yelp. By creating accounts and using the app's bookmarking features as your wish list of stuff to do, you can quickly get directions and reviews in the app, saving you time. If you want a packing list, PackingPro is one of the best, and Stow features a clever Q&A method for using templates. If you're collaborating on a list with your partner or spouse, Avocado's one-to-one messaging includes a flexible list feature as well -- good for those last-minute pretrip items. Food There are some outstanding apps for wine and beer out there. To replicate those databases elsewhere would be onerous at best. So if you're a fan of touring wine country and want a list of wines to check out, you're more likely to use one of these special purpose apps here. Everyday cooking and food shopping are greatly enhanced when using one of the dozens of great cooking apps available. I am still in the process of finding my favorite, but most of them offer features out of the box that would be a pain to replicate in a general "to do" app. Apps: When it comes to food, I use Sous Chef or Groceries. If I haven't planned my meals, Groceries has a nice interface and makes it super easy to add items (even those not in its database). Sous Chef is my go-to for meal planning and recipe-keeping. Fitness Along with food, there are some great fitness apps out there with lists of exercises or tools to track your weight, food, etc. Apps: I don't actually use a lot of fitness apps, but I have used 30/30 to create a workout routine and it's great. 30/30 can also be used for daily routines, and I love the interface and experience. I used Lift for a while, and if you're trying to get into a habit of doing something, it's quite good. My only problem with Lift was that the entire interface was completely dependent on a network connection. Given AT&T's coverage where I live (and in many cities where the networks are clogged), I found that the simple act of loading the basic interface would sometimes fail -- which isn't very encouraging. That said, there are lots of options here for goal-setting apps, and they are all essentially list tools. DIY There are a number of awesome apps available to help you plan construction projects or minor repairs at your house. Like a food app, these take a project and break it into a parts list -- again something which you'd have to copy over to another tool. Along with DIY home projects, anything involving crafting, knitting, sewing, etc. will result in a specialized list. Do you need that list of yarn for that one project forever archived in your task manager? Probably not. Apps: DIY is another huge topic, but as an example of specialized apps, I like to point to My Measures and Woodcraft. My Measures will create a list of dimensions for a room and its fixtures. Woodcraft will create a list of wood you need for a given project. Both are quite excellent, and getting that data into another app is onerous and not that useful. I'm sure there are similar apps for sewing and other crafty stuff. Daily Routines, Location-Based Reminders While OmniFocus is pretty good at most things, I have resisted using it for daily repeating actions. For one thing, I keep running into a repeating item that starts multiplying itself over time (no, I don't need to balance my checkbook 4 times a day!). Also, there are tools out there which are more aimed at motivation (like the goal-setting apps mentioned in the fitness section) vs. plowing through a set of tasks. If you are self-motivated a one-size-fits-all approach might work for you. If not, check out some recommendations below. Lastly, OmniFocus does have a pretty good location system but I found it a bit onerous to use (espeically on the desktop) and annoying in daily use. No, I don't need to be reminded to fix something every single time I pull into my driveway. But I do need to be reminded to put out the trash when I arrive home on Wednesday mornings. For this, I use Siri and it's the easiest method I've found so far. "Remind me when I get home to..." just sounds like the future, doesn't it? Apps: For daily routine stuff I do wind up using my squishy brain for a lot -- but I also have a variable schedule. If I have a set of routines for a day, I hop into 30/30, where I have a list. I also use Due to remind me about repeating items. Due is very insistent, but makes it easy to move an item to another day, plus it sync with my Mac. Conclusion I do not use a separate app for inboxing items. I do believe that this is important, because the more complexity in your task management, the less likely you're going to get things done. I still use OmniFocus+Siri to capture stuff. In rare cases I use Clear to make a quick list, but that list is very quickly sorted and knocked out, eliminating the need for messing around in OmniFocus for those tasks. Similarly, if you find yourself needing one-off or specialized lists, consider looking at a specialized tool. While OmniFocus and other power tools can be bent to your will, sometimes an app offers features you would have to spend a lot of time replicating elsewhere. And that's what this is all about, really: Getting things done and saving you time. Isn't that what technology should be doing? Shout out your favorite special-purpose apps in the comments below and we here at TUAW will try to review any we haven't looked at before.
Productivity Tip: Time for timers
Every day you have the same 24 hours as the rest of us to get what is likely a crushing amount of work done and out of your way so you can spend some time relaxing. Or, as one author has framed it, you have 168 hours in a week to accomplish what you want and move forward toward your goals. How do some people manage this while others are constantly rushing around late to everything? I was certainly guilty of this until I started minding my time in small chunks. Here are some ways to get those tactical moments -- the day-to-day stuff -- managed and under your control. What are you doing? At any given time, what are you doing? Probably the most significant thing you aren't doing is being mindful of the time you are spending on tasks. While the Pomodoro technique might not be for everyone, simply setting a timer to keep track of how long you're working on a given task is absolutely vital. At the end of the day you will have a better idea of where your time went, and by not getting bogged down in one or two things during the day, you'll find you can better cope with the myriad items you happen to be juggling. Think about it like this: How many times have you become engrossed in your work so much that you "lost track of time?" While being in a state of flow and working on something for a long stretch can be beneficial, over time you'll find that you tire easily and get "burnt out" after too many of these marathons sessions. You'll also find smaller stuff starts slipping through the cracks. Brain scientists and productivity experts agree that there are good reasons to break up marathon work sessions into smaller chunks. This is to avoid fatigue, primarily, but also so that you are making sure you get to all the stuff you have to do in a day, not just the one thing you're communing with that morning. Mindfulness Guess what? There's an app that ships with every iOS device currently made which will help you be mindful of your time on tasks. The Clock app has both a stopwatch and a countdown timer. If you use Siri, you can easily set a timer just by telling your iDevice for how long. But of course, there are dozens of timer and productivity apps on the store to help you out. First I'm going to explain what you should be doing, then I'll list some apps to help you out. Mindfulness has a specific meaning for Buddhists, but I'm really referring to the awareness aspect. By becoming more aware of how quickly time passes while our minds are engaged in a task, we can start to feel more in control of our daily tasks. Even emergencies (which I'll handle in a moment) won't throw our life into disarray if we have the knowledge of how our time flows at any moment. I cannot stress enough how important it is to be mindful of your time, and this doesn't mean checking the clock every hour or setting a chime. Being mindful of your time means you are setting the rules, you are taking control and you are paying attention. In the book 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think by Laura Vanderkam, one of her first suggestions is making a log of your time for an entire week. Everything, from brushing your teeth to making your bed to your commute and break times should be logged. While it sounds onerous, logging everything you do in a week is much like a very thorough physical exam. In this case you are getting an x-ray into your life. By seeing how much time you spend in the morning making espresso, you can determine whether that time is well-spent. A lot of what we do is wasted time, maybe because we're not familiar with a tool we use or maybe because we're still doing things manually when they could be automated. In any case, a complete time log is the first step to awareness and will lay bare which parts of your day are being spent doing wasteful things. Note that I'm not referring to recreation time, which I feel (like family time if you have kids) is a necessary thing. So is sleep, although I have yet to accomplish 8 hours a day of sleep as Vanderkam claims is possible! Once you see what you are doing and how long it takes you, it's time to start forcing yourself to be more mindful of your time. If you are the shortcut type, you may skip to this next part without a week's worth of data... Set a timer After you are done reading this article try an experiment. If you don't already time your tasks or use a countdown timer, try this: Choose a task to tackle next, something that's part of a project but not something you know will just take a couple of minutes, then set a timer for 20 minutes and see how far you get towards finishing that task. Pomodoros are 25 minutes, and then it is recommended to take a 5 minute break. Personally I like to go in 20 minute sprints, then take 10 minutes to read, make coffee or a snack, or just get up and walk. I find, since I work at home, that 10 minutes is enough time to handle light chores in-between work tasks. So that's it! Set a timer for 20 minutes, then get to work and do not look at the timer. If you were really engrossed in your work, that 20 minutes didn't exactly crawl by, did it? It never does. If you were bored, you likely kept wanting to look up to see how much time you had left. This is how time escapes us, as the perception of time is fluid in our brains. Once you begin to time yourself, you begin to really manage what you are doing, and time becomes just a metric for focus. The joy for me comes in knowing that, in an hour, I can likely work on two tasks (possibly to completion) and get a couple of chores done. Now multiply that by 8 (not that any of us works a mere 8 hours a day) and all of a sudden you are making steps towards completing all sorts of larger goals by forcing yourself to march to a drumbeat of small time chunks. If you pace yourself, you can go anywhere with this, just like a march in real life. Don't forget to budget time to be social, however. Emergencies and schedules What about emergencies? I have tried a regimented schedule, and frankly, it isn't for me. I'm not the guy who gets up at 6am every day, refreshed and ready to start another day carefully portioned out in hour-long blocks. For one thing, my life is messy. For another thing, the news business isn't really conducive to careful planning of one's day. Instead, I needed a way to handle the numerous emergencies at work and in life with my larger schedule and long-term goals. Here's how. First, you have to have goals. We'll cover this in another post, but for now let's just say it's impossible to know where you're going if you don't have a destination. All of your tasks are just steps toward that finish line. Next, you have to have priorities for those goals. As I said last time, I use OmniFocus to help me sort through all the things I have to do to determine, based on priority and time, what I need to do next. Only when you know what has to get done can you plan to do it. Yes, that sounds simplistic, but I find that a couple of times a year most of us could benefit from a housecleaning of our tasks and goals, otherwise we find ourselves swimming upstream with a constant torrent of downstream asks which can overwhelm us. If you know what you have to do each day (again, something we'll work on in future posts), handling emergencies actually becomes a lot easier. Yes, you will have to shift things around. No, you will not have to freak out about it. The secret is simple: Be mindful of your time. Also give yourself a break every so often. As an example, let's say you are going through email in a 20-25 minute block. You've set a timer, you dive in, and about 5 minutes into the task you see an email from your boss with the ominous, all-caps subject URGENT: RESPONSE REQUIRED. Knowing you have to respond to this, you open the email (still part of your "check email task") and read it. It takes another 5 minutes or so to read the email and scratch down a quick list of what needs to be done. As you look at the list of 3 things needed, you can break down what is needed to accomplish this emergency goal -- or not! If it's a report "due tomorrow without fail" you can probably finish your email session and then get to work. If it's due by the end of the day, it's time to reset that timer, take 5 minutes to clear your head and then restart the timer and get back to work! Again, if this is an emergency then everything else is on hold. By keeping at it in small, 20-25 minute sprints toward the finish broken up by short breaks, you can stay focused. You might even throw in a 20-minute "do something else" task if you start getting tunnel vision. The brain can only take so much, depending on your age, etc. Above all, don't panic. Know that like a brick mason laying brick by brick, over time your tasks will build towards the goal. Unless you are really terrible at what you do, you'll get there. Over time you'll learn to see how your pace is affected by longer sprints. At the end of the day you'll find you can say "I spend X hours on this" and you will feel good about the fact that you put the time in. If you didn't get that emergency handled, you'll probably know why that happened, too. It wasn't because you weren't focusing on what needed to be done! The other thing about emergencies is that we have to push other stuff we had hoped to accomplish in a given day back, which leads to stress. By knowing you can only spend so much time per day doing something, you'll feel less stressed knowing those time blocks will be there tomorrow, and whatever derailed your plans for today can hopefully be cleaned up for a fresh attempt in the morning. As for schedules, we'll talk more about them in another post, but for now it's important that you stop thinking about your day in terms of appointments, and think more about what you're trying to accomplish every day. Do your best to minimize distractions on your calendar, as in your life. Timers help you focus, as long as you don't get distracted during those times. Apps that can help I've tried a number of timer apps but have settled into only using a few. As you can imagine, too many choices means you'll just trip up on what to use, and when. So I keep it simple, but I'm mentioning a few apps I think may be interesting to some of you, since you're not all as loose with a daily schedule as I am. On iOS: Clock Well, this is free and from Apple and you have no excuse not to use the Timer function starting today. While Apple's Clock is a no-frills affair, you can set your own alert sound and the timer is Siri-enabled, if you're into that sort of thing. Untime I love this timer app for a number of reasons. It's free, it's fast and it looks cool. Not only that, the dots on the screen are like sands in an hourglass, showing you at a glance how much time you have remaining without numbers (until the last 10 seconds, when a countdown appears). I love that the numbers go away, so your brain only sees how "much" time you have remaining. The alarm is pretty great as well, and the whole app reminds me of something Tron might use. Untime is simple, elegant and cool -- just how I like my apps. Due My favorite across platforms, Due has been covered before. iCloud sync is a huge time saver when setting up task timers, however. And yes, I set multiple timers because a task of playing with Legos on the weekend with my kids takes longer than an email sweep -- this is called keeping your life balanced! 30/30 This might not be for everyone, but if you have a number of items to accomplish in a day that you do often, 30/30 is a very nicely designed app that helps you structure the order of those tasks and set timers to help you keep on target. I feel like 30/30 could benefit from a better ability to reset those lists, but on those days when I need a little more structure, 30/30 does an amazing job of helping me power through a hectic schedule. Timer Aptly named, Timer from App Cubby offers 12 slots for preset timers. I find something like this very handy if you have a number of timed things you need to do in a day. For example, I try to get in 40 minutes of cardio twice a day, so having that as a simple button makes it easy. I have a basic Pomodoro, a "sprint" of 20 minutes and a 5-minute timer all pre-set in Timer for when my day is fluid, but I still have some regimen to adhere to. App Cubby's apps are always beautifully designed, as well. (There are lots and lots of Pomodoro apps, so feel free to share your personal recommendations in the comments below.) On Mac: Due Again, since Due has a Mac version, setting timers and getting alerts doesn't get much easier, and again iCloud makes your efforts portable. ApiMac Timer If you're ready to get fancier, ApiMac's Timer is a power user's dream timer. While the free version is great, the pro version allows the app to do all sorts of awesome things like run AppleScripts, send email logs and can even put your Mac to sleep. Timebar Timebar is a minimalist's dream. It sits in the menu bar, allowing easy access to set a timer. Better yet, it shows a progress bar in the menu bar itself, and as the menu bar "drains" you have a good idea of how much time you have left on a task. For me, this only enhances my stress if I'm under pressure. For others, this might be a way to gamify certain tasks that you hope to do faster. But it's cheap, efficient and effective and offers a snooze button when you need more time. Howler Our own Kelly Hodgkins recommends this one, and if you use Growl, Howler can hook into it. Howler offers a lot of features you might not need, but if you find a basic timer isn't cutting it, or you need to loop or chain timers (perhaps you have a series of tasks which rely upon a sequence), check it out. There's also an iOS version. Wrapping up Even if you do nothing else to make your life more productive, the simple act of being aware of your time spent can have a profound impact in your happiness. When I discovered how much time I had spent mucking about in email, I began training to help change that behavior (and yes, we will cover email in another series of posts). As a result, I got about an extra hour of work time in each day without having to stay later than usual. If you feel frustrated that you can't get things done, start logging what you do and how long it takes, then start breaking up your day into manageable timed chunks no more than 30 minutes at a time. Within weeks you'll find that you feel happier and more in control than ever, and you'll know where you can improve. Don't worry about fancy tools or tricks, just keep a timer going, pause for breaks, then get back to it. Unless you are Sisyphus you will find that eventually you've rolled that boulder up that hill.
Friday Favorite: Due
Yesterday around the TUAW water cooler a number of us expressed our love of Due, an app for Mac and iOS that is basically a simple timer/reminder application (my original review here). After trying dozens of timer apps, I think Due wins for a number of features that make it stand out from a very crowded field. After all, your iDevice comes with a timer in the Clock app, and there's Apple's Reminders app. While Reminders syncs with iCloud, your alarms in the Clock app do not. Due can help you stay focused and never overcook a boiling egg again. Due's interface is simple as can be. There are three views: Reminders, Timers and Logged Reminders. You can quickly set a reminder for later in the day, or whenever. Due accepts natural language instructions, so you could say "next Thursday at 1 PM" and it'll set a reminder alarm for just that. Note that Due doesn't integrate with the built-in Reminders app, so I'm only referring to reminders (lower case) within Due itself. Once a reminder has gone off or you check it off manually, those go into Logged Reminders. This is handy if you need to recall what you did or if you need to remind yourself of the same thing again, later. I tend to use the timer function more frequently (as I use my calendar for appointments and OmniFocus for repeating tasks and "to do" items). I have a 25-minute timer for Pomodoros, a 5-minute timer for breaks and a couple of others for things I need to do at some point in the day, but things which require me to focus on just that thing for an allotted amount of time. By doing this, I help my squirrel-like brain stay focused on some critical tasks throughout the day, but it also helps me be flexible enough to not dread going out of being flexible in my daily schedule (more on this in next week's Productivity Tip). Best of all, Due has just the right number of preferences. From changing sounds to setting a snooze time, Due can be as intrusive or quiet as you like. You can even change the alarms to use Notification Center or Growl -- handy especially if you use something like Prowl. I particularly like the option to "suppress alerts on launch and wake" because I hate opening my Mac to have 30 alarms from past events going off all at once. Is it just me or is that "throw a million notifications at me on wake" thing seem a very obtrusive, Windows 98-like behavior? But I digress. Due is a rock-solid, beautifully designed app. iCloud sync works flawlessly (you can also use Dropbox) across my Macs and iDevices, meaning I always have what I need where I need it. Most importantly, Due keeps me focused on doing things, and not setting myself up to do things, which is precisely what technology should be doing. You can get the Mac app here or the iOS version here.
Apple discounts OS X task managers in new Get Stuff Done promotion
Apple launched a new three-week promotion on OS X productivity apps. The Get Stuff Done offer starts this week and features a handful of task managers. We've already told you about Things 2, which is available at 50% off its regular price of $49.99. Also included in the sale are Todo ($6.99), Due ($4.99), The Hit List ($24.99), BreakTime ($2.99), TaskPaper ($11.99), 2Do ($14.99) and Clear ($6.99). The sale starts today, January 24, and ends January 31.
Due for Mac now available with cloud sync, much more
We've been using Due for iOS for quite a while now (our review) It's exciting that there's finally a Mac version of Due available. It's just as useful as its mobile counterpart an offers wireless sync, rapid reminder creation and great looks. Plus, it's still a nag, which is exactly what I need. Here's a look at Due for Mac. UI Due for Mac is quite good-looking, as you'd expect. The main window is small and unobtrusive by default, though you can resize it. Four icons line the top of the main window: view reminders, view timers, view logged reminders and create a new reminder. The pinstriped window is tidy and resembles Due for iPhone. When you create a new reminder or edit a timer, a pop-up window appears which also looks very nice. Use Creating a reminder is simple. Click the new reminder button (or hit Command-N) to open the creation window. You can use natural language here, which is great. "April 10" works as well as "tomorrow" or "in four days." Also, "10:00 AM" works as well as "10am." Also, you needn't tab into each field. You can simply type "Pick up mail at 2pm tomorrow" and everything will be filled in properly. The reminder is set as soon as you finish typing, so there's no "confirm" button to click. Keyboard support is extensive. You can create reminders, hide the app, pull it up front again, reschedule things, mark them as done and so on without touching a mouse. The snooze feature that I like on my iPhone has made it to Due for Mac. When a reminder's due date passes without being marked as done, the app will repeatedly remind you that it's still outstanding. Of course, the cool new feature is cloud sync between Due for Mac and iOS. All of your reminders and timers can be synchronized via iCloud or Dropbox. In my testing, this works flawlessly. Reminders created on either device showed up on the other almost instantly. Also, marking a reminder as completed did the same thing. It's really nice to create errand-based tasks on my Mac and have them ready to go on my iPhone when I leave the house. Finally, the customizable alert sounds are pretty cool. You can assign a longer or louder alert to an especially important task. That's also useful if you know you're going to be in a noisy setting when the reminder will sound. Conclusion At US$9.99 it's not a throw-away app. I think it's worth it for the cloud sync alone. Due for iOS has kept me on track many times, and now I'm glad to have my Mac in on the fun. I recommend checking it out.
Due for iPad brings reminders to the big screen
Due, the simple and almost supernaturally useful reminder app for the iPhone (our review) has finally gone universal. Due on the iPad (US$4.99) offers the same great look and functionality as its iPhone-exclusive predecessor, and it introduces over-the-air sync of reminders thanks to the magic of Dropbox. I've been using it for a couple of weeks now, and I can say that it's just as great on the iPad as it's been on the iPhone. Here's my review of Due version 1.4 on the iPad. %Gallery-119171%
Due: A simple, beautiful, wonderful reminder app for iOS devices
Perhaps the most important of the distinguishing factors of the App Store and iOS development is the insanely high quality of apps. Not all apps -- not by a long shot -- but the ones that are made with care and attention are truly wonders of form and function wrapped in a gorgeous shell. Due is one of those apps. It takes the mundane task of setting a quick reminder and makes it easier than using a calendar app and more, dare I say it, fun than it should be. No tricks, just good solid design and all the functions you need within easy reach. Functionality Make no mistake, Due is just a to-do list with timers, so if you're looking for something else, Due isn't for you. But if you ever used Diddlebug on the ancient Palm OS, this is as close as I've found (with Diddlebug you drew on the screen and added a timer). Why there's no iOS version of Diddlebug is beyond me, even a crappy 8-bit version would suffice. At any rate, Due allows you to create a timed reminder with a default notification and chime within about 4 or 5 taps, depending on some options. Four if you accept the default timed "on the next quarter hour." You can adjust the default time interval in the app's settings, from 1 minute to 30. Reminders, once created, go in a queue. Tapping on a reminder allows you to set whether or not snoozing is allowed, if you want a reminder to repeat, chime options and if you want to reschedule this for 10 minutes, 1 hour or 1 day later. All of that in a submenu, and it's quite intuitive to boot. Swiping a reminder allows you to delete it. An example of the app's lovely attention to detail: when you go to set a reminder, there are four "default time" buttons which correspond to when you wake up, what time you eat lunch, when you leave work and just before bedtime. %Gallery-118233%
