SansPoint

Back (to) Tracks

Screenshot of Tracks I’ve been experimenting with web based to do managers for the past couple months. I started out using using Remember the Milk, which had some features I loved such as iCal to-do list feeds, tagging, and smart lists. Sadly, its interface was absolutely terrible and clunky, particularly when handling multiple entries in a list. Also, if you have a large number of lists[1], the tabs begin to wrap - and that just looks ugly.

So, then I found Todoist. Todoist seemed like a lifesaver. It was everything RTM was not: clean and dead simple. Actually, it was too simple… I needed something that allows me to view actions in terms of both a context[2], and a project[3]. Its date syntax was annoyingly arcane, too. Also, it was self-contained - I could not see what I had stored on Todoist unless I was online and with my web browser open. Half of my system is based on being able to carry my reference material on my iPod, so Todoist was out. Shame, really. I did, however, like the ability to indent tasks and create an to-do list with an outline structure, which was great for projects, but utterly useless in terms of contexts.

Next I tried Vitalist. It was a little more complex than RTM and Todoist, much more GTD-oriented, and utterly impossible to use. That, and its iCal feed was utterly broken. There was no way to see what I had as NAs in Vitalist in iCal, either as events or to-dos.

So, I decided to go back to an web based application I’d tried for a while before: Tracks:GTD. I’d started by running it on my Mac, and switched to a web hosted setup so I could access it on the go. Sadly, my original web-based setup, Zenlist, died from neglect a few months ago. I found a replacement in tracks.tra.in. Using Tracks, I can see my actions by context and by project, sync with iCal and my iPod, and it even looks pretty damn sharp. The trick with Tracks, as with all GTD systems, is going to be reviewing and making sure what I need to add on to my lists gets added on, what is on the lists already gets done, and refactoring mercilessly when something isn’t going right.


  1. say, five or six ↩
  2. where I am/what I feel like doing at the moment ↩
  3. anything that takes more than one action ↩

2 Responses to “Back (to) Tracks”

  1. stupid question, but how do you sync tracks to your ipod?

  2. Good question, actually. I take the iCal feeds for my contexts and subscribe to them in iCal. Then, in iTunes, I set it to sync those calendars with my iPod. Presto, paperless, portable NA lists!