I live with RememberTheMilk (or RTM). All things I have to-do in one system. It is always with me on my smartphone, tablet and laptop. Always nearby to get my head empty for actions I think of but cannot do anything about because of the location, time or other things that can influence the action. And like I wrote before. No short paper notes everywhere or tattoo like pen writing on your hands.

There are plenty of to do list tools and programs available. It doesn’t really matter which one you choose. You have Evernote, wunderlist, WorkFlowy and many more. I somehow have a little bit of vendor lock-in because I am used to RTM the system already.

And it proved their business model because I went from free to pro. (more on that in a later blogpost). I was using it more and more and suddenly it became a factor that I wasn’t always in sync. But for those few euros I have a system that tells me what I still have to do.

My stats right now: 1068 completed, currently 114 actions. (Not all actions, I have my bucketlist on there too. But still it isn’t that large a number if I must believe David Allen)

I learned a lot by reading “Getting things done” by David Allen. (Recommanded!) I used it wrong. Quite a lot of actions on my list were actually projects. Which means I haven’t actually made the items small enough to be an action. I haven’t given enough time to actually think about all different actions. It keeps floating around in the mind if it is still on the project level.

So stupid but it makes such a difference to think just a bit longer about a project beforehand. It makes it much more easy to do the action because it is such a tiny step. Just a call. An e-mail. An order.

Highly recommended to have such a system installed! Have you got such a system?

This week I will share some online tools I am using to ‘get around town’ in the online world. First off a tool that helps me to get e-mails on the time I want them to be in my inbox.

I have several online systems to get my brain free for the things it has to focus on. Although we all try to do many things at the same time. We are not able to. And so to be fully focused we have to get those things that are on your mind out of your system.

So we e-mail ourselves with the ideas and tasks. But one big problem  (there are many) with email is that you cannot easily give it a timestamp for when it has to arrive. Or at least you cannot control the sender in doing that.

I try to work towards inbox zero. Which doesn’t mean I don’t have any mails I still have to work on. But it does say I processed all my e-mails. And sometimes you want to remember a certain email in a week or even a year later. The online tool that works for me in those cases is boomerang for gmail.

It gives you the option to email yourself which will boomerang back into your inbox on the moment you want it to be there. And another great feature is the ‘waiting for’ alert. An alert can automatically be deactivated if someone responds to your email.

Only available if you are using gmail and are either using chrome or firefox. Haven’t used the mobile version yet because my current smartphone isn’t able to. I will work on that.

(Of cource for the iOS users of gmail is this perfect app: http://www.mailboxapp.com/. The one that used every bit of growth hacking you can imagine. More about that in another blogpost)