Blog Oklahoma Podcast / Blog Oklahoma Podcast 053: Moving From Wunderlist

In this episode I tell about moving away from a favorite app, I share some information about the upcoming solar eclipse, and I let you know what I've been up to and on why I put the podcast on hiatus. It's been a while, but I'm happy to say once again.

Welcome to Blog Oklahoma

When you have all sorts of projects you need to work on, having a good to-do list is a must. It helps you keep organized, keep track of what you're working on, and when you should be working on it. For me that's a service called Wunderlist. It's a cross platform utility to help manage your tasks. Wunderlist can handle anything from a simple shopping list to a collaborative project with subtasks, notes, and file sharing. I can honestly say I have use Wunderlist everyday since I first started using it some 6 years ago. I have watched Wunderlist grow from a simple to-do list app to an integrated multi platform power project management tool. And I'm not the only one who liked Wunderlist. Just search through tech blogs for those articles where they reviewed task management apps, you'll often find Wunderlist at the top of many of their lists.

Back in June of 2015 the company behind Wunderlist was acquired by the tech giant Microsoft. The future looked great for the service. Soon came a good Windows app and integration into Microsoft Outlook. It was beginning to look like Wunderlist could be integrated into the Microsoft Office suite in some way. Alas that didn't happen. Soon came the news Microsoft is retiring Wunderlist in favor of the unimaginatively named, Microsoft To-Do.

As of right now, you can use a preview of Microsoft To-Do. Though functional, it's currently no Wunderlist. It's a very simple to-do list. It's generic and I don't think it looks very good. They made a lot of UI choices that just don't make a lot of sense to me. Maybe they're going somewhere with it, I don't know. This is after all a preview. Maybe they're going to be rolling in all the features that made Wunderlist great, but then it again, maybe they're not. In Microsoft To-Do's current iteration it doesn't match my needs.

Since this news came out in April, I've still been using Wunderlist. Unfortunately there is no telling when Microsoft will just up and pull the plug on it. It might be more than a year before that happens, but then again I could be tomorrow. So I've been endeavoring to find a replacement for Wunderlist.

For my needs I need something beyond a simple shopping checklist. It needs to be able handle multiple lists, have a way to organize those lists, be able to share and collaborate with others on those list, and most of all it needs to be multi platform meaning I need to be able to get to it from my phone and desktop. Other key features I'm looking for are priority sorting, subtasks, and integration with other services.

I've been testing out various services and trying different methods for task management for the last few months. I've even tried just using a simple text document to manage my tasks, though flexible, it didn't really work out too well.

The good people over at Zapier have a great article called, The 40 Best To-Do List Apps in 2017: From Simple Task Lists to GTD. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. So I'm going to leave the detailed review of all the different services to that article. I encourage you to go read it, it's very comprehensive.

I tried many of the services and apps mentioned in that article. A few I really liked, like Remember The Milk, Asana, and even Microsoft To-Do (it has possibilities,even though it's currently Wunderlist lite). There were a few I really didn't, like Any.Do. One that really intrigued me was MeisterTask, but it didn't mesh with my particular workflow, but if I ever have to manage a team project I might revisit it later.

The service that I've decided to move to was one recommended by a coworker. It's called Todoist. It has all the features I'm looking for, its multi-platform, and can be integrated with other services like Google Calendar.

I've been using Todoits for the last few weeks and I really like it. It took a couple of days to get use to how it works, but since then I've been using it daily.

So I've been transferring all my task lists over from Wunderlist to Todoits and it's been an almost seamless transition. All of Todoits' apps work well and there is a uniformity between all the different platforms.

Todoits has three plans: Free, Premium, and Business. Unfortunately, depending how you look at it, the majority of the power features I needed are all only available with the premium and business plans. It's costs $28.99 per year for the premium plan. That is a bargain for what you get and it helps support the developers. So I don't mind paying for something that I'll be using quite a bit.

I will miss Wunderlist. I can say it's quite literally been at my side for just over half a decade. It's been a very useful assistant in keeping me organized. Todoits looks to be good successor.

So let me know what you think? What task management app are you using?

This episode's writing suggestion is

to share your particular workflow. How do you get certain tasks done.

Solar Eclipse

There is a total solar eclipse coming to the U.S. on August 21, 2017. Oklahoma is not in the direct path of totality, but we will get to experience an 85% partial eclipse. Here in Oklahoma the eclipse will begin at 11:37 am and end 2:34 pm with maximum coverage at 1:05 pm. Please remember don't look directly at the sun unless you have properly rated eye protection. I'll share some links below with more information about this historic solar eclipse.

The Hiatus

I'm sure you've noticed I haven't put out a new episode of the podcast in a while. Back before the summer I put the podcast on hiatus. I needed to take some time off to review and recharge. As I looked back over past episodes, I really wasn't happy with how they turned out, the writing mostly. Some episodes were better than others, but I feared I was sacrificing quality over quantity in the push to put out a weekly podcast. Those episodes where I took my time to write, I feel turned out the best. And even the listener statistics supported this conclusion. So I put the podcast on hold so I could have time to write. Over the weeks since then I've been filling up my idea bin and doing research on several topics. Such as this episode about moving from Wunderlist.

So I'm happy to say the podcast is no longer on hiatus. Yay. But I still will not be returning to a weekly schedule. New episodes will be out when they are done. By not sticking with a fixed schedule I hope to give you a better podcast, and it also eases my mind a bit that I'll actually have time to do it.

Of course though I haven't exactly been taking it too easy while on the hiatus. I've taken up vlogging. Please feel free to check out my new vlogs over at my personal YouTube channel. You can get there with the shortcut programwitch.com/youtube. It'll give you just a tiny look at what I've been doing while I've been away from the podcast.

So I want to thank everyone for your patience while I took my break and for all the support you've given me over the years with this little hobby of mine. It means a lot.

Links from this episode

Moving From Wunderlist
Solar Eclipse: August 21, 2017
- Start: 11:37 am CDT, Max: 1:05 pm, End: 2:34 pm
- Eclipses in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA
- Oklahoma to see most of the rare August eclipse - NewsOK
- How to tell if your solar eclipse glasses are real - The Washington Post
- Lunt Solar Eclipse SUNglasses
Hitting Pause on the Podcast
My Personal YouTube Channel
My Vlogs - programwitch.com
Blog Oklahoma Podcast Facebook Group
Our CafePress Store

This episode's bonus interesting articles

This episode's bonus musical selection

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