I downloaded Calvetica earlier this week after reading an explanation of the theory behind it from the app’s creator, Rob Foster. I didn’t want to post too soon about this, but after seeing the link from Dave, I wanted to add my $0.02.
This app is really, really good.
I’ve spent a lot of time (and money) experimenting with to-do methodologies. I’ve read Getting Things Done. I’ve tried Things (for Mac, iPhone, and iPad), Omnifocus (Mac and iPhone), RememberTheMilk, Taskpaper, a hipster PDA, pretty much everything you can thing of. And I didn’t stick with any of these approaches. I never felt as if they bought me that “peace of mind” that they advertise - sure, all my tasks were kept in one place, but I had to spend a good amount of time organizing the tasks, tagging the tasks, tracking the tasks, and being reminded of all the crap I hadn’t done yet, and don’t you feel like a failure you little twerp, you have 500 items across these four projects and you’ll never finish them all and you’ll die a miserable failure.
So yeah. My lack of success with these methodologies and apps might reflect more on me than on the apps themselves.
Calvetica changes all that. I bought in on a whim - it looked pretty, and was described as being quite fast, so I was curious to play with it if only from an iPhone development perspective. After entering my tasks for the rest of the week into it, I went through my day as normal. The shocking realization came the next morning: I had slept better. I felt less stressed.
The theory behind Calvetica works perfectly for me. It provides you with the storage medium - think of a task, get it out of your head immediately and into a trusted system - that GTD demands as the basis for any task management approach. It forces you to schedule time to perform or reflect on a task, which I think is particularly helpful for me as I switch between different roles during the day. But Calvetica wins over a traditional calendar system with its quick entry and quick deferment. If a reminder to perform a task comes up, and you’re busy with something else, just snooze it - for 10 min or 2 days, whatever makes sense. You know that you’ll still get that reminder, the task is still there, but you’re clear to continue your immediate work without having too much of a mental interruption.
Beyond that, you’re never presented with a master list of EVERYTHING you have to do. For me, that’s really important, since I’ve found myself intimidated by my to-do lists in the past.
If you’ve struggled with task management approaches, reach Rob’s methodology up above, and then try out Calvetica. I think you’ll like it.
