Now 2016 - why nobody can make a worthy application for working with task lists

Technology has given us an outlet by pushing a single button on a taxi, a self-service laundry, to all the information gathered on history and to sex. But they could not give us any decent program to streamline the to-do list.

And this does not mean insufficient attention to the topic. There is a whole area of ​​the Internet dedicated to increasing the productivity of people's daily activities. This includes 5 "simple ways" (Simple Ways), 31 "ingenious advice" (Genius Tips) and one "mysterious trick" (One Weird Trick). Hundreds of applications range from cute list formers to e-squall, which literally plagues you while you are doing what he thinks is “complete nonsense.” It works wonderfully, forcing you to spend a lot of time on organizing and planning instead of actually getting the material done. Believe me, I do it all the time. And I'm not the only one.
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The “iDoneThis” startup (“I did it”) revealed that 41% of the tasks placed by users in its system were never completed. Perhaps you should call this startup “iAin'tDoingThis” (“I didn’t do it”), because obviously this is, the longer your list, the less it is executed.

Creating and maintaining a to-do list is almost as difficult as completing it. What is most frustrating is the constant feeling that we have to solve all the problems right now. As the work becomes more voluminous, distributed and complex, people increasingly need tools for managing time and tasks. There are many such tools: Wunderlist, Todoist, Any.do, Asana, Toodledo, Omnifocus, Things, Trello, Clear, Checkvist, Due, TeuxDeux - and they are just applications on my phone. Tens of millions of people use them, and hundreds of millions of dollars are invested in them.

Most of this armada of tools for to-do lists is quite good. Some of them are very good. But none of them, nevertheless, still solve my problem — your problem! - consisting in the fact that it is necessary to do a lot, that there is very little time and that my brain is simply unable to remember and organize everything that is required. And the foregoing fully explains why the old ways remain so popular.

“Many IT specialists, I know, are returning to paper,” said David Allen, a “guru” of time management and organization. “Because there was no tool for planning yet a better paper planner.”

Wait a second. Are you telling me that Silicon Valley with all its intelligence, that the Internet with all its information and that my phone with all its power cannot find a way to ensure that I pay my bills in time, buy a couple of milk bags and complete my presentation?

Allen laughs at my question. He knows something very useful about to-do lists. He wrote the book “Getting Things Done” in 2001 (note of the translator: the book was published in 2015 in Russian under the title “How to put things in order”), which gave birth to the whole industry "Trainee cases". He tried to make us all more productive compared to the era of the "paper" planner Franklin, published in 1984. He has some crazy ideas about the days when a holographic secretary with artificial intelligence will remind you about paying taxes. However, until that time, we were stuck with lists. Therefore, I ask another question:
"- How can we make lists better?"

You are everywhere with me

The main thing that is required from the to-do list is to be relevant. If your list is incomplete or, worse, outdated, then you simply will not check it. This makes it absolutely necessary that the developers actually implement: the ease of creating lists and adding entries to them. But technology is not particularly good at it. “You have to turn on your phone,” says Allen, “click here, click that little icon, go there ... well, no, that's enough!” He says this with irritation. “Deposit and withdrawal are too clumsy.” Here is one of the reasons why pen and paper remain so popular. Short writing with a pen is faster and easier, and better for perception. The to-do list should be fast and flexible enough to keep up with your thoughts.

The “Remember the Milk” app (“Do not forget about milk”) partially achieved this almost ten years ago. It introduced a concept called “Smart Add”, which allows, say, “Pay for an apartment on the last day of the month”, and the record will be placed in the proper list with the corresponding date anyway. It is also important that you can add tasks from everywhere: via tweet, email. mail, skype and even via instant messenger. The application built into Gmail, before starting to do so, proved to be great with Siri, before Apple deigned to connect it. It was there and then, where and when it was required, and allowed to enter a record faster than writing something on a paper with a pen, because any window for input could be perfectly used.

Such "omnipresence" is now commonplace. Further programs - Siri, Cortana, Android Widgets - develop this trend. Until someone creates the telepathic interface of the smartphone, the “openness” problem can be considered largely solved. Big deal, really! But this is just one problem. And her decisions are not enough to put off the pen and notebook forever.

By providing the ability to easily write down some considerations almost as soon as they come into your head, the developers go further - so that they can be labeled. Michael Ciarlo, the creator of the new application called Doo, thinks that the best way is to make eye contact with the task in front of you. In Doo, each task gets its own card. The easiest way to proceed to the next card is to complete this task or translate it into a “dream,” which means actually saying, “OK, I will not do it now. Sometime later ... ”Translation into a“ dream ”gives me a feeling of guilt that I often just complete the task. And this is a trick! “Being aware of what needs to be done helps motivate people,” says Ciarlo.

Other applications use push notifications, such as the default “Hey Remember Me” icon, to keep you on task. Such reminders will become more effective as your devices become more aware of you. For example, an application can use time and your location to remind you of tasks not only at the right time, but also in the right place. Wearable electronic devices have access to key vital signs and other data that could optimize your performance. All this means that the to-do list opens the way to a task cloud that follows you everywhere, easily reminding you of business.

Google has already advanced well on this road with its productivity tools, which intentionally do not contain a special application for the to-do list. Instead, Google transfers tasks to you. “Instead of creating an autonomous task management space, we give you easy interaction in places you already visit,” says Jacob Bank, who joined Google after the company bought its Timeful Task Management application. In a Google environment, your tasks are embedded in your email, calendar, phone, and interact with them.

Google is still finalizing its approach. But the real purpose of Bank is to create, nevertheless, such a list for you. This, by the way, can explain why he came to Google: millions of people send and receive emails to Gmail, work in Drive, chat in Hangouts, take notes in Keep. Bank believes that Google can help you understand the in-depth analysis of this data in order to understand what you really need to do with them.

This is already happening to some extent in the Inbox, where your emails are sorted more by priority than by time. “It's already 10 years old,” says Bank, “GPS is working in your life.” You tell him the most basic thing: I want to train more. I have a big project. I repair the kitchen. “And it shows you step by step.” The big innovation of “Timeful” was the automatic programming of your calendar with filling unoccupied time with reasonable assumptions. With data from Google at your disposal, Jacob Bank can go much further.

Robot organizer

Amir Salihefendik, founder and CEO of Todoist, has a similar look at Google. As part of a recent upgrade, his team reworked the structure of the machine learning algorithm, which can determine how a person naturally and seamlessly builds his to-do list. The algorithm could even recommend the best day to perform a particular task. “If you look at our data,” he says, “almost all days look very similar” for most users. “We can predict troubled boot days.”

Building a forecast to-do list is easy, he says, if first-class data is available. But the results of accessing such data (everything from the date to your exact location to what you had for breakfast) are extremely difficult to put together and interpret. Therefore, the bulk of the work of creating and tracking your to-do list remains with you. At present, the ability to quickly add some records and get a useful push notification is what it is.

But remember David Allen and his crazy idea about sensible holograms? He takes it seriously. “Once,” he says, “you will enter the room, having a chip on your hand, and he will know that you are discovered. There will be a holographic image in front of you, as it will be Friday at 3:00. ”Such a sensible robot will know everything about you and help you plan what things should be done and how to make them the best possible way. David Allen claims that all the technologies required to create such a system are currently available. “It will cost approx. at 6 billion dollars, if done only for myself. "

Allen in 1995 made a voice productivity tool called the Actioneer, which was incredibly effective and extremely advanced for that time. Later, he began working with Intentional Software, a company founded by Charles Simonius, the "gray cardinal" of Word and Excel, in the direction of creating a single tool that everyone needs to do everything. They are still doing it. “We spent two years figuring out whether there was a next generation of productivity software that would be ready for further development,” says Allen. “And it turned out not. Not yet."