Make it Manageable

How I Use Things

Things for me is a great combination of iOS and Mac software designed to let you organise all the stuff you’ve got in your mind and store it in a safe, reliable system. That’s great. I love it. I know a lot of people who use Things on their Mac for all their input and sorting needs and refer to their iOS device througout the day to know when they need to get things done. 

I don’t think that works for me. For me, the input and organisation all happens on my iPhone.

“BLASPHEMY!” you all say, and I understand your reaction, but if I’m sitting at my Mac when I’m adding all my tasks, something comes up and bites me, and it’s the urge to create thousands of incredibly detailed tasks and projects which will make the weekly review ten times longer. 

If the little badge says that I have five things to do today, I’m a lot more likely to do them than if it said fifty, or even five hundred. If my inbox badge on my Mac reads 100+, I won’t touch it. I’ll throw out the entire database and start my task input from scratch, which is far from productive. 

So I add tasks on my iPhone, where the input process is so restricted that I have to think about what tasks I’m putting in, and whether they really need to be as detailed and as many as there would be were I sitting at my Mac. 

A tip from this that you might find useful? Find a balance between the detail of your tasks and the quantity of them. Not too detailed that your list becomes too long, but not so short that your tasks aren’t detailed at all.