Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Using tags for context
Tuesday, March 19, 2013 by Andrew Conkling
We're big fans of tags around here for organizing our tasks across all our lists (and we have a few! :). This week's featured tip comes from lnussdor, who shares some simple, no-fuss ideas for making the most of tags to stay streamlined and productive.
I ascribe to the GTD philosophy of "getting it all out of your head." This philosophy is perfect match for RTM. I am able to use any device to add any tasks or ideas that come to me on the fly. I started to use the tags to denote the context (or type) of the task. For example, all of my tasks that are phone calls are tagged with "calls." When I filter my task list by the tag "calls," my entire list of calls are at my fingertips. This immediately increases my productivity because like buying peanut butter in bulk, doing similar tasks in bulk helps me whiz through my tasks! The "calls" tag is for both my work and personal calls with the same tag, but they are in different folders, in case I want to separate them.
Finally, I went into the Settings menu and changed the Default Due Date to "never." The original Default Due Date is set to "today", but it is important not to have many tasks show up on a particular day because, in my experience, it can be overwhelming to have too many tasks show up on one specific day. Additionally, I have already spent a previous life with Covey rewriting all of my tasks from the day before to the current day. ONLY tasks that have to be done a specific day are listed on that day. For example, I may need to call my dentist to reschedule an appointment on "some" day, but I have to call my friend to wish her happy birthday on a specific day. This allows me a greater sense of accomplishment by getting all (or most) of my tasks done when I only have 5-10 per day. If I have time for extra phone calls, I can pull up my calls and deal with them as my time allows.
Thanks for sharing this tip, lnussdor! You're our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week.
Do you have a suggestion for our weekly Tips & Tricks post? Got an interesting set-up or idea? Head over to the Tips & Tricks forum, add a new topic, and let us know how you use Remember The Milk. Each week we'll give away a 1 year Pro account to the user whose idea inspires the Tips & Tricks Tuesday blog post for that week.
Posted in: Tips & Tricks
Featured app: Speak Here Now
Friday, March 15, 2013 by Brendan Ganley
When you're on the go, you can sometimes find yourself in a situation where typing a task into your phone is inconvenient or even impossible. But that shouldn't stop you from getting it into your task list. Anyone with an iOS device that has Siri capabilities can use our Siri integration to create a task using voice input. Android users can do something similar using an app called Speak Here Now by Michael Kendle. The app requires Android 2.2 or later, and is available from Google Play.
Speak Here Now is actually a platform which developers can use to connect their apps to voice commands on Android devices. Out of the box, it comes equipped with several commands, including the ability to add a task to Remember The Milk. To create a task, tap on the Speak Here Now icon and start your phrase with "Remember…". Everything that follows will be the task name.
The first time you use the app, it will open a page in your browser which you can use to authenticate the app on your account. This is a one-time process and, going forward, you'll simply receive a confirmation message each time you add a task. Note: The authentication process must be completed in the default Android browser.
By default, the new task will be added to your Inbox list. However, you can say the word "list" to specify another list by name. This word actually works much like the # Smart Add shortcut, so you can use it to specify both lists and tags. The word "due" is also understood and is used to define a due date for the task.
Hungry for more tools to help you work with your tasks? Check out our Apps page to find something that fits with your workflow!
Posted in: Featured Apps
Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Adding tasks from PowerShell
Tuesday, March 12, 2013 by Andrew Conkling
Calling all systems admins and command-line lovers! This week's tip, shared by selan, provides a quick way to add tasks while using Windows PowerShell. It can be handy when you want to add a server task, or anything else that comes to mind while you're knee-deep in SQL statements.
If you do any work on Windows servers, you probably have used PowerShell. Here is a simple PowerShell function that will allow you to easily add tasks to RTM from the command line.
Add this function to your PowerShell profile, substituting the appropriate values for your email.
function rtm($smartadd) {
Send-MailMessage -from %your-from-email% -to %your-rtm-email%@rmilk.com -subject "$smartadd" -smtpserver %your-email-server%
}You can then call the rtm function from the PowerShell command line. It takes one parameter, which is the Smart Add description of your task, in double quotes.
For example,
> rtm "Post my RTM tips and tricks !1 ^tomorrow"
Thanks for sharing this tip, selan! You're our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week.
Do you have a suggestion for our weekly Tips & Tricks post? Got an interesting set-up or idea? Head over to the Tips & Tricks forum, add a new topic, and let us know how you use Remember The Milk. Each week we'll give away a 1 year Pro account to the user whose idea inspires the Tips & Tricks Tuesday blog post for that week.
Posted in: Tips & Tricks
Now accepting credit card payments with Stripe
Monday, March 11, 2013 by Emily Boyd
If you've upgraded or renewed a Pro account recently (why, thank you!), you might've noticed that we now accept credit card payments directly on our site. Thanks to Stripe, we now accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, Diners Club, and JCB. Woot!
Previously, the only option available was PayPal, and we know that a bunch of you had experienced problems upgrading (if you did, please try with Stripe! :). PayPal will still be available as an option alongside Stripe.
Thanks to the guys at Stripe for their help in setting us up, and making payment processing a delight. :)
Posted in: New Features & Updates
Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Lightweight issue tracking
Tuesday, March 5, 2013 by Andrew Conkling
If you've ever worked on a software project, you'll know that bugs and issues stack up faster than you can work on them. This week's tip, shared by cadetblue, describes a way to use email, Smart Lists, and sharing to quickly put together an issue tracker.
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.
Thanks for sharing this tip, cadetblue! You're our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week.
Do you have a suggestion for our weekly Tips & Tricks post? Got an interesting set-up or idea? Head over to the Tips & Tricks forum, add a new topic, and let us know how you use Remember The Milk. Each week we'll give away a 1 year Pro account to the user whose idea inspires the Tips & Tricks Tuesday blog post for that week.
Posted in: Tips & Tricks
Featured integration: Bulk adding for Remember The Milk
Friday, March 1, 2013 by Brendan Ganley
Have you ever been in a situation where you needed to get a large number of tasks imported into Remember The Milk all at once? Maybe you have a list of items that you want to copy and paste, for example. For many of these situations, you can use the Import Email Address that we provide. However, if you're wanting something with a bit more structure, take a look at RTM Bulk Adder. It's a tool developed by Alasdair North which allows you to add multiple lists of tasks to your account through your browser.
The tool consists of a single webpage which has a number of multi-line text fields (up to 30 of them!) each of which can be used to enter a list of tasks. Smart Add syntax is supported so you can specify all the task's properties on a single line. For each list, you have the option to save its contents so that you can come back later to continue constructing your lists, or to send it to Remember The Milk, which will import the tasks to your account.
The source code for the webpage is available and you're free to download it and host it wherever you like for your own use. For convenience, the author has hosted his own copy which you're free to use as well. When you save your lists, the data is recorded locally in your browser, so none of your tasks are stored server-side.
Got an idea for a tool that will make task management easier for everybody? We'd love to see it! Our API page will show you how to get started.
Posted in: Featured Apps
Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Keeping work and home life separate with Smart Lists
Tuesday, February 26, 2013 by Andrew Conkling
One of the benefits of keeping lists of tasks is that everything can be in one place. However, it can get a bit tricky to keep things separated. This week breadbean shares a handy tip: using the power of Smart Lists, you can easily keep your work and home tasks so you can focus on what you can do in each place.
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!
Thanks for sharing this tip, breadbean! You're our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week.
Do you have a suggestion for our weekly Tips & Tricks post? Got an interesting set-up or idea? Head over to the Tips & Tricks forum, add a new topic, and let us know how you use Remember The Milk. Each week we'll give away a 1 year Pro account to the user whose idea inspires the Tips & Tricks Tuesday blog post for that week.
Posted in: Tips & Tricks
Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Goin' home
Tuesday, February 19, 2013 by Andrew Conkling
If you live far from home, you can relate to needing to be very intentional about what special things you do when you make a trip there. This week bordaigorl describes how they organize these things before, during, and after a trip home.
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.
Thanks for sharing this tip, bordaigorl! You're our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week.
Do you have a suggestion for our weekly Tips & Tricks post? Got an interesting set-up or idea? Head over to the Tips & Tricks forum, add a new topic, and let us know how you use Remember The Milk. Each week we'll give away a 1 year Pro account to the user whose idea inspires the Tips & Tricks Tuesday blog post for that week.
Posted in: Tips & Tricks
Featured integration: QuickFox Notes
Friday, February 15, 2013 by Brendan Ganley
Inspiration often strikes in a flash. Sometimes jotting down a quick note can be the difference between an idea that turns into something productive and an idea that's forgotten. (Bob once told me he wrote 35 additional verses for Bananaphone but forgot to write them down.) If you're an unrelenting note-taker and you live your life inside Firefox, the QuickFox Notes extension from InBasic was made just for you. The extension allows you to easily write and organize notes from within your browser and, using the Remember The Milk add-on script, integrate with your task list. The developer has provided videos demonstrating the features of the extension and how to install add-on scripts.
To add a new task from within QuickFox Notes, simply click on the Remember The Milk icon. Tasks can be added quickly using Smart Add syntax, and the shortcuts are displayed for easy reference. In addition, any note text that you've selected will automatically be added as a note to the new task.
You can also display your tasks inside the extension by clicking to the right of the Remember The Milk icon and using the “Fetch Tasks” command. Click on a task to view its details in the web app.
Looking for more tools to help you interact with Remember The Milk? Take a look at our Apps page to find something that fits in with your workflow.
Posted in: Featured Apps
Surprising your significant other on Valentine's Day… with tasks!
Tuesday, February 12, 2013 by Emily Boyd
Yes, tasks can be romantic! Here's how one member of our team (thanks for sharing this, Grant! :) plans to surprise his girlfriend on Valentine's Day:
Are you looking for something romantic to do for your significant other for this upcoming day of love? My girlfriend also has Remember The Milk, and we have a shared list for housework.
Unfortunately, I'll have to work a bit late on Valentine's Day, but I asked myself how I could be romantic even away from home. And the answer I thought of was… Remember The Milk and a miniature chocolate-treasure hunt!
Here is how I will go about doing it tomorrow:
- Make sure you and your Valentine's Day partner have a shared list.
- The night before Valentine's Day, hide pieces of chocolate, love notes, and diamond rings around the house (Okay, maybe not the rings.. unless you're super rich). Make sure to jot down where they are so you don't forget later!
- When you are at work and she is at home, add one task at a time that hints at the location of your hidden treasure. For example, "Check between the couch cushions… complete this task and I will add a new one."
- Once he or she completes that task, (i.e., found the chocolate), add another task.
- Feel free to make the hints as easy or difficult as you choose!
Enjoy your Valentine's Day, everyone!
Posted in: Behind the Scenes
