Modern Optimist

Truth is, every person who works online has once in their lives thought of creating their own to-do-list application.

This idea was meant to tie in with my previous Idea Bin entry, Reminder To Me, but as you can see they both found themselves in the idea bin:)

My idea was more about a fresh concept in task vs idea management opposed to creating another to-do-list app which the market is definitely not crying for.

Below I’ll explain exactly how the idea works and why I’m not rolling it out as an online app. You can totally use this idea on paper yourself, I do on a daily basis and it works really well.

The Concept

You may have noticed the 3 i’s in ‘Liiist’. They stand for:

1. Important (to do right now)
2. In time (next to do, not important)
3. Ideas (not yet tasks/to-dos, still being finalized/brain stormed)

Now you divide your page/app into 3 columns like this:

The illustration should explain it all but in a nutshell:

• Left column (important) is today’s essential tasks, people are expecting work and you said you’d deliver
• Middle column (in time) are tasks that need to be done, but not as much as left column tasks, these can be done tomorrow or in next few days. Once these become important they move left. The app I envisioned could do this with drag-and-drop functionality.
• Right column (ideas) are not yet tasks, they are potential tasks, they could be deleted right here if they aren’t good ideas. If they become tasks they move to middle column as tasks to be done in-time.

Competition

There is tons, and tons and tons of competition. But none obviously using my concept.

DaeIt

This week the dudes behind NIVO Slider brought us an uber minimal to-do-list online app called DaeIt. I’ve been using it and must admit the simplicity and functionality is pretty much exactly how I envisioned To Do Liist, but of course without the 3 column concept.

iOS5

Also this month, Apple released a video overview of it’s (incredible) iOS5… which includes a built-in to-do-list app… yup, the big boys at Apple have just formed a dark cloud over all to-do-list app developers and it’s starting to drizzle.

Conclusion

The sea of online to-do-list apps with a cherry of the iOS5 built-in one on top, is the reason I’m not putting a line of code down. I really like my concept, but don’t think development time is going to be worth it. So yeah, developers out there, take it, leave it, use it, it’s yours… just drop me a credit if you do:)

I must admit at the end of the day, nothing beats a pen and paper. I find myself reverting back to this every time after trying new online to-do-list applications.

Try ‘To Do Liiist’ yourself

Give the 3 column approach a go and let me know how it goes!