Issue / bug tracking is a must when running web or software business, but often a full fledged issue / bug tracking solution, like Bugzilla or Atlassian or ever Mantis BT could intimidate customers and collaborators, often featuring several levels of experience and skills; so a really lightweight solution able to put order in your activities and manage in a disciplined way the issues you must face (like it or not) could make the difference between a wishful thinking failure and an humble success. So, there is nothing really smart in what I made, but at least it is a working solution with a 45 seconds setup effort.

I set up the following tags: severity-feature, severity-trivial, severity-text, severity-layout, severity-minor, severity-major, severity-blocking.

Then I have defined the following Smart Lists:

tagContains:severity AND NOT status:completed

aptly renamed issuesOpen, then – guess what? – I have set up the following Smart List:

tagContains:severity AND status:completed

aptly renamed issuesClosed.

Lastly, as soon as I receive some issues reported by mail from a customer, I immediately forward it to my RTM import email address; then I add details about due date and I tag the activity according to the severity. The email body already contains the issue description, but I can edit it for clarity. Last, I share the activity with people in charge for the issue addressing. Then I start the issue monitoring by means of the Smart Lists. That's all. It works.

I use RTM for home and work, keeping things separate with Inbox, B and C lists for home and Work A, B and C lists. On my smartphone I use two widgets, one as 'due today' and the other as 'work due today'.

The Smart List syntax for 'due today' is:

NOT list:WorkAList and NOT list:WorkBList and NOT list:WorkCList status:incomplete and due:today or dueBefore:today

The syntax for 'work due today' is:

list:WorkAList status:incomplete and due:today or dueBefore:today NOT list:Inbox

I also have a list for 'weekly orders' for products I need to purchase repeatedly for work, I just tag them 'orders' with a repeating schedule and put them in the WorkAList. BAM, done! This might look confusing, but it actually simplifies my life so much!

I live far from home for long periods. From time to time something like "next time I go back home I'll do this" pops in my mind… Sometimes it's just "next time I'll get that cheese I cannot find here and I'll bring it back" or "I must remember to bring this book from here". Some other it's more "I must visit this guy" or "send a postcard to that person".

So, in order to actually remember to do all this stuff, I set up a list named after my home country where I put all the things that randomly pop in my mind and that concern my next trip back home.

I use mainly two tags in that list: fromhere, athome and fromhome so that I can filter the fromhere ones when I pack to go home, the athome ones when I am there and the fromhome ones when I am leaving again.

I prefer a separate list instead of a location because I use locations for places I actually visit frequently: using a very far location I seldom go to clutters my "general purpose" list with tasks with no priority and no known due time and zooms out the map for no reason.

I've recently started studying for Cisco's CCIE qualification and was wondering how best to ensure I'm remembering as much as possible. Flash cards are always a memory good tool, and I had a look at some dedicated flash card apps, as well as Evernote. But I'd prefer to keep things centralised with RTM, which I use for all other tasks and reference notes. The RTM iPhone app is actually pretty well suited to flash cards, using the notes function and swiping to reveal an answer.

I setup a Smart List called flash cards using "tagContains:fc-".

Then added a task per study topic, each with a tag representing the study area, e.g. a task called BGP fundamentals with a tag fc-routing.

Then, in each task I'll be creating multiple notes, one note = one flash card.

A single note has a title, a question and an answer. I've put >10 lines between the question and answer, so that in the iPhone app, the answer is not visible until I swipe to reveal it. Multiple blank lines don't seem to work in RTM notes, so I've used a ↓ per line.

That's pretty much it. Creating the cards by hand is a good process in itself in terms of memorising things.

A good way to create multiple flash cards at once is using rtm's email import function. Then you can add a load of notes into the email body.

As I have to manage attendance and input to a lot of project meetings, I have developed an RTM system of tags that helps me to achieve this. To illustrate, lets consider 3 Projects called Red, Green and Blue. Each of these projects has various supporting meetings such as Project Reviews, Risk Meetings and Design Meetings. Now when I come across an issue that I need to raise in one of these meetings I just tag it with a “Mtg_ProjectName_MtgName” tag such as mtg_red_risk. Now I can use the tag to quickly find items for that meeting either in advance, or during the meeting.

Better still, by using the tagContains: search operator, I can also set up Smart Lists to quickly show me all items for a given set of meetings, e.g. tagContains:"mtg_blue_" to allow me to prep for meetings. By also setting due dates to the date of the meeting I can produce a really powerful set of views that allow me to prepare much better in advance.

Finally, I also have a mtg_action tag that I can apply to tasks that fall out of actions given to me in meetings which again allows to be quickly sort and search and ensure I have done what I need to do. Hope this is of interest.

Besides using RTM for classic task management, I extensively use it within my music evaluation flow. I buy quite some music and try to avoid any buying mistakes by listening to music upfront, rather than just buying on impulse.

How do I go about this?

1. I get my music recommendations from three main sources:
   • offline reviews, radio, talking to friends, …
   • online reviews (websites, blog posts, etc)
   • last.fm activity (what are my friends listening to)
2. How do I transform these sources to actionable RTM items?
   • as for the offline stuff, I just send a mail with the name of the artist and album in the subject line to my private RTM address. I do this as soon as I get the recommendation, in order not to forget about it later on.
   • online reviews and listening activity (in the form of RSS feeds) get routed to my Google Reader account. On a daily basis, I check my Google Reader account and browse/read all new items. If I stumble upon something that I (might) like, I send the RSS item to the same private RTM address. Whenever relevant I already add some tags: who recommended the item, where can I listen to it, etc.

   I do this either on my computer at home, or on my iPhone. When using the iPhone to register the item, I do not add many tags at this point of the process.

3. I regularly review my RTM Inbox, which I really use as a inbox (in a sense that I want it to be empty after I had a look at it): I add some more tags if not done yet, assign a priority and transfer the item to my listening list.
4. Once a week, I open the listening list, check the item at the top of the list (which is sorted on priority), look at the tags to find out where I can listen to this album online, I listen to it (just once or several times if needed) and decide whether I want to buy this album (electronically or physically). Based on the 'recommender' tag, I sometimes also read the review again while listening. If I do not (sufficiently) like an album, I mark the item complete to remove it from my list. If I do like it, I move it to the appropriate list (buy or download). In some cases, I add some more tags, like the name of the online shop where I plan to buy it. Then I move on to the next item.
5. Whenever we go out for an 'entertainment shopping spree' (or whenever I feel like ordering online), I look at my buy list (which i can also access on-the-go via the RTM iPhone app), get the listed albums and check them off my list.
6. Done, enjoy the music.

After we read Tim Ferriss' 4 Hour Body, my wife and I made a bet: the first person to a 20lb body recomposition is taken out to a night on the town on the other's dime. Easy enough?

Her goal was to lose 20lb of fat, something she's been unable to do. Ever. My goal, however, was to gain 20lb of muscle, something I've been unable to do. Ever.

For anyone without the book (highly, highly recommended), "Occam's Protocol" is a workout regimen based on two alternating workout routines spaced out by a number of days. These rest periods range from 2 days to over a week, and I really don't want to keep tweaking a calendar every time these periods change length.

Enter Remember The Milk!

The plan was to add one task per Workout:

Workout A @Gym !1 ^Monday *every 4 days
Workout B @Gym !1 ^Wednesday *every 4 days

To explain these Smart Add shortcuts:

1. Name (which workout)
2. Location (wherever you work out, of course!)
3. Priority 1 (if you really want to win!)
4. Initial due date (the day you're starting to work out for A, two days later for B)
5. Double the resting period (this is the special sauce. Double the resting period to find the repeat delay, so they'll alternate at the right times)

To each of these tasks, I added a Note describing the target workout. You could, however, use the Workout Checklist tip or a shared Evernote Note URL to keep track of what's going into each.

Every time I need to update the period between workouts, all I do is bump up the repeat frequency (remember that it's doubled!), and push the second task's Due Date out one day.

For example, if I just finished Workout A, and I know I need to wait longer before my next B, I would:

1. Increase Workout A's "Repeat:" field 2 days. (Example: from "every 4 days" to "every 6 days")
2. Increase Workout B's "Repeat:" field 2 days.
3. Postpone Workout B 1 day.
4. Mark Workout A completed, and notice the due date. (Example: 6 days from now!)

Back in sync, and ready to keep gaining!

Probably one of the most helpful things an assistant has ever done for me was to be persistent with questions. "What have you done about the budget?" "Did you talk to Steve yet about his daughter" Etc.

For some items on my to-do list I don't neccesarily have tasks for them yet. They're just things I need to think about. So I put questions to remind myself.

• What song are we playing tomorrow?
• How do we deal with the electricity bill?
• Have the projector lamps come in yet?
• What camera did you decide on?

There could be endless possibilities. For me, each day brings tasks, but it also brings questions I need to deal with.

It also helps if you're not naturally considerate like me. For instance, I just put in my list: "How is Mindy (my wife) doing?". As I look through my to-do's I'll remember to check on her and see if she needs anything. (She has a little bit of a cold.)

You could feasibly tag these as questions and make a whole separate list, but I haven't found a need to. They seem to play nice with my other simple tasks like, "Remember the milk!".

I use RTM to remember many things, and one of those things is to keep track of items that I would like to sell online soon to make a few dollars and clear up the clutter in my house. I set up a special list in my account for these items, and every time I come across something that I don't need anymore, I add to it to the list. This way, when I have some time on my hands, I can go through the list, take pictures with my camera, and start making ads online. Every time something is sold, I can mark the item as complete.

I've been using RTM for several years now. In the beginning I didn't use due dates very well. More often then not, every task would just get assigned to "today". (Mostly so they would all stay in front of me)… anything that didn't actually get done "today" would be simply postponed to the next day.

Of course, this meant spending time postponing tasks each day. Frankly, it wasn't the best way to handle things.

Recently, I've decided to start making due dates more relevant and actually assign them to meaningful days (i.e. when I really msut absolutely get a task done by).

However this means just looking at "Today's Tasks" I might get surprised be an important task on the day it's due.

So now my default view is a Smart List for tasks due this week:

dueBefore:today OR due:today OR (dueWithin:"1 week" OR due:"1 week")

However, some tasks I don't want to see until the day they are actually due. For example, I have a weekly status report due every Wednesday… I want this on my list the day it's due, but I don't want to have an item on my list everyday. Similarly, what about really important tasks that are due more than a week from now, but I want to see sooner?

Tags to the rescue! The two type of tasks get tagged with either a #wait or #warnearly. Items tagged #wait don't appear on the list until their actual due date and items tagged #warnearly show up if they are due within the month. So my Smart List was modified as follows:

dueBefore:today OR due:today OR ((dueWithin:"1 week" OR due:"1 week") AND NOT tag:wait) OR ((dueWithin:"1 month" OR due:"1 month") AND tag:warnearly)