I've switched! From Remember the Milk to Workflowy for my to-dos

For organizing myself, I use my to-do list, and have done for years. I had it in my paper binder/organizer for years, then in my old Palm Pilot for many years, till 2010, when I switched to an Android phone, and also switched to the Remember the Milk task tracking app. It was a great app, very full-featured, with great support and a great website. It was a paid app, $25/year. I sent in a few tips for their "Tuesday Tips" contest, and one of them won a year's additional membership! That was exciting.

Anyway, I'd been thinking for a while that the app was a little too restrictive. For instance, I wanted to order the things on my to-do list. But other than setting a priority of 1, 2, or 3, that wasn't possible. You could hack it by putting fake letters in front of the to-do (for instance, a - buy bananas would sort over b - call mom). But that was pretty unsatisfactory. They had developed a new version, which included hierarchy and sorting, but I wasn't successful using it.

So after a lot of searching around, I've moved completely away from a to-do app at all. I'm now just using Workflowy, an online outlining tool. And I love it! It's a completely different concept from a to-do list. Instead of a list of to-dos, with various attributes like priority, due date, etc, it's a hierarchical information manager, with a great interface, very clean and minimal. One of my top level hierarchies is To-Do. Indenting/outdenting, moving things around - it's all very easy.

I'm sold on it. It's a free product until you add more than 500 list items a month, and once you get over 450 a month, there's a very sleek unobtrusive message box at the bottom telling you "450 of 500 free list items added". I'm skirting on the edge now, but I'm going to have to upgrade to paid membership pretty soon, which I'm okay with ($50/year).

I don't only use it for outlining, but also for tracking and organizing all kinds of things. For instance, my new business SQLPracticeProblems is managed almost entirely in Workflowy (a different section from the to-dos).

I don't use some of the more advanced features (tags, etc), but I may work up to that at some point. Right now I'm enjoying the flexibility of using an outlining tool, instead of a to-do app. I briefly considered OneNote, but it's a little too feature-rich and cluttered.

Actually, just now I did a tiny bit of research, because it strikes me that $50/year, paid every year, is actually a good chunk of money. I just took a look around at some other tools. So far, none have struck me as the right combination of usability and a clean/uncluttered look.

A few notes on our summer trip to Europe

We've been back for 3 weeks already, but the first 2 don't count since I got a massive sinus infection that only released its hold on me after I started taking antibiotics. I'm feeling peppy now, so time to jot a few notes before everything fades. I also put up a few select pictures here.

My original goal was to try to recapture the experience of living overseas, that we had in Geneva a few years back (http://vasiliksinswitzerland.blogspot.com/). Kind of like a mini-sabbatical. I thought and researched a lot, but it turns out that kind of experience is really difficult to reproduce on a short-term basis, with a family. Maybe impossible. Yes, you can plop your family down in a new location, but unless you have some kind of connection there (school, work, family) I think you'd feel isolated and disconnected, if you were to stay there any length of time. I'd be happy to hear from people who discovered otherwise.

So, what we ended up doing was pretty much a regular touristy trip, just spending more time than most people would, in the various locations we stayed at. And that worked out fine.

Here's a few general impressions:

- There were next to no tourists in Belgium. At least, in the locations that we went to. I wonder if lots of people stayed away, spooked by the recent terrorist activity?
- The police presence in Brussels was very, very high. Possibly this was because the Brussels airport was where the recent terrorist attack took place.

But in a town less than a half hour away, Ghent, you saw almost no police, even at very large public gatherings (the Ghent Festival).

- The people in England were, in general, really friendly. People walking down the street would sometimes nod and smile at you. And we got into multiple longer chats with people. That didn't happen elsewhere. Apparently this is characteristic of northern England (which is where we stayed).

- England really seems to have a sex-segregated drinking culture. In England, on a Friday or Saturday night, you would see many large groups of people, either men or women, but usually not mixed. They were very carefully dressed, and it really seemed like a big deal. Also I saw lots of groups of women, wearing a colored sash indicating they were in the same group (like a "hen" party, or somebody's 40th birthday celebration).

- I would love to go back to Ghent and York, those were some of my favorite places. Central, friendly, easy, loads and loads of things to do. Both university towns.

What would we do differently? I should have stressed out less over not having everything planned. If you don't go to the main tourist locations at the very most busy times, you don't need to plan so far in advance.

Also, I should have tried harder to find quick-drying clothing. Since I was washing everything by hand, and then trying to hang things in the hotel rooms or apartments we were in, drying time was a major hassle for some things (I'm looking at you, 100% cotton). I did use the tips I wrote about in my article on hand-washing clothing, and that helped.