How to keep up with it all...

You may have noticed I haven't done much posting lately.  The problem isn't lack of desire; it's lack of time!  I'm taking two courses at college in the evenings and until recently, was finishing up an independent study class.  Just to show you what it's like, one of my weeks had a final on Friday, read a book and write a report for a class for the following Tuesday, and study for a midterm for the other class on Thursday.  All this while keeping up with class attendance, class reading, and doing assignments!  I'm amazed I didn't drop dead that week!

The only way I was able to keep things straight was to have all my assignment deadlines online and at my fingertips.  I could bore you with all the to-do list type applications that I went through or mention the probably hundreds that I didn't have time for, but I won't do that.  If you'd like to take your own journey through that vast field, just Google "to-do list applications" or "GTD" (Getting Things Done).  It'll definitely keep you busy.

For me, I just had a few requirements:

• online - I had to be able to access it from anywhere.
• easy - nothing complicated.  Just let me enter a task, a due date, and be done!
• quick - See "easy".  Quickly add a task and date.  Keyboard shortcuts are a real help here.
• flexible - But when I need it to do some more complicated things, those features should be available somewhere.  And nothing fancy either: recurring appointments, flagging tasks, stuff like that.

So after a bit of testing, I settled on... are you ready for it?... Todoist.  Like I said, it's nothing fancy, but it lets me do what I need to do to keep organized and on top of my homework quickly and easily and for free!  There's a monthly paid version, as well, with more powerful features which is probably worth it if you need those, but for me the free version is good enough.  

Right now, I'm just using it online, but according to their website they have both iPhone and Android apps available (third-party I'm assuming), and an API to extend Todoist's functionality.  Something I'll have to play with (once I have some time... :) ).