The whole point of having a portable computer is to make your life easier. Couple the power of your smartphone with some of the latest time management techniques and you should have a winning combination. It's just a matter of finding the right application and discovering what the initials GTD mean.
To use its full name, “Getting Things Done” is one of many time management systems that people can choose to follow. They all promise to help you spend your time better through organising and filing things you need to do and keeping a close eye on goals, both personal goals and those of any projects you are working on.
To be honest, while I think GTD is a great idea, it's just too much organising for me. I've lifted some of the techniques so they work for me, and have found something that works with how I do things. This is generally how others approach it, too. But there's a lot of crossover in the methods used in the variety of systems out there (e.g. Zen to Done and The Unexpurgated Code, to name two others), and every one of them needs some tools to make best use of them.
Which applications are the ones to help you manage your time and keep you on course through the working day and beyond? The ones you can use, in conjunction with the flavour of the month technique, to have your smartphone helping you?
S60 ToDo
Let's start with what everyone has, and that's the built in PIM suite, and specifically the To-Do view in the Calendar application. One of the keys of any system is to file things in the correct place, so when you do need to do something then it's obvious you need to do it. Partly this means having something which allows you to put a date and time on an entry (the entry being a task, reminder, note to look up something, an action to perform, etc); but it can also mean grouping tasks in different projects together.
The lack of category support in the S60 PIM application pretty much neuters the To-Do view for use in any major time management system. Which is a shame because the underlying database can support this information.
SBSH Calendar and Handy Calendar
Luckily, there are third party replacements for the built in PIM that provide you with the needed category support for your appointments, alarms and to-do entries, to follow the basic tenets of the time management systems. SBSH Calendar and Handy Calendar are both full diary replacements with a focus on power users and a huge range of options, both in attaching information to each entry but also in how the information is displayed. Even better, they use the same database as the S60 Calendar application, so it's relatively easy to try them both.
Setting up even the more complicated systems can be easily done within either of these applications, and if you're looking at a predominately date-based system, these are probably your best choices. Probably the only disappointment is that these are only available for S60 3rd Edition devices at the moment – so touch-based device owners will need to look elsewhere.
SBSH Calendar
Handy Calendar
Download SBSH Calendar – Download Handy Calendar
Projekt
A long lived Symbian OS application, Projekt by Kylom is an Outliner application – essentially it's like a notepad but jazzed up by a few magnitudes. Imagine the directory structure on your computer, and specifically the tree-like collapsing and expanding view of the directories. This is how an Outliner application works. Under each note you can add sub-notes and create a hierarchy of information, breaking things down.
This task-based approach is a good alternative to the more modern “file and forget” date-based approach championed by the GTD system, and Projekt keeps as much flexibility as possible, with the ability to add rich text documents to each note, links to your Contacts (and into the Calendar application – good for setting alarms) and does some comprehensive searching and filtering on your notes.
It can become very complicated very quickly, but for the mind that breaks big things down to little things, Projekt is a good investment.
Mobile Task Manager
List keeping is at the root of many good systems, and this is why a good To-Do list system is always useful for time management purposes. The java-based Mobile TaskManager is more focussed on a single list with items that can be ticked off, and does allow the building up of a hierarchy, just as in Projekt. Tommi Laukkanen's application is a lot easier to get into and understand, though. For those of you looking for a lightweight application to help you sort out and organise ideas, I'd recommend Mobile Task Manager – especially as even for a small application it has good import and export options.
Download from Author – All About Symbian review
MoTask
Of course, a connected device should make use of the internet, and these next three apps are all “cloud-based” in that they are based on a web server and can be viewed through the web browser not just on your smartphone, but also on your desktop computer, or any computer with a browser. MoTask allows you to keep a list of tasks, and mark those that need to be done as finished. Like the built in To-Do app, this is limited to one task, but by setting up multiple user-names you can gain the usefulness of having a number of lists. It's small and has relatively few functions, but does what it sets out to do.
Remember the Milk
Probably the best balance between a simple to understand concept and a clean interface that can be used via the web browser, 'Remember the Milk' not only wins the prize for best named application in this round up, but also shows how a web-based app, even when not designed for a specific handset, can work well. Thanks to its mobile verion (http://m.rememberthemilk.com/) you get the benefit of using a full sized computer to enter all the notes (if you wish) and the portable version on your smartphone screen.
Where this app wins is in the export options – it's a simple matter to move your lists into online apps such as Google Calendar, have alerts sent to you via Twitter, and also get them synced to Microsoft Outlook.
Evernote
While not strictly an organisational tool, Evernote is a great tool for capturing ideas and inspiration, be it as little text notes or snapped pictures, video and multimedia created on your handset. Like Remember the Milk, it is a web-based application, with access from a deskbound computer sitting alongside a mobile client. Unlike Remember the Milk, Evernote does have a Symbian-based widget. While it's not a full blown native code app, it opens up the sharing of Evernote and allows all your thoughts to be captured. What you do with them after that, well that's what the other applications and tools are for!
Evernote for Symbian released (AAS News post)
TimeChime
Finally, one of my favourite apps, Time Chime, gives you a little alarm every fifteen minutes, giving you a nudge to either move onto another task, or just reassess how things are going. Until someone codes up an application for the (10+2*5) system, this is probably my most productive application.
-- Ewan Spence, June 2010.
Time management can be a very personal issue, so what tools are you all using? Let us know in the comments.