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This is the second part in the series I've been writing about getting my life together. Disclaimer: this isn't actually an advertisement for Google.

One of the big mistake I've always made has been to rely on my brain for everything. Whether it's remembering homework assignments or simply going to an appointments or calling people.

Needless to say, I have a tendency to only remember about 50% of what I set out to do. This has meant that I:

• Miss appointments (which can cost money in the form of fees)
• Piss lots of people off, because I've unintentionally broken promises
• Didn't learn material that I needed to in my classes
• Caused me to fall behind the rest of the bandwagon

The last two meant that I did lots of cramming, which is no fun.

When I was back in elementary school, I didn't have much going on. Same for junior high and high school. No deadlines, no appointments to remember, etc. Some of this was simply due to being young: my parents were responsible for getting me places, so much of my day was spent on auto-pilot. As a result, the few things that I had to be responsible for were easy to store and remember.

This system didn't work in college.

I've floundered for 4 years. I knew my problem; I wasn't remembering what I needed to. So I tried lots of things: PDAs, paper notebooks, etc. The two PDAs I've owned ended up being expensive toys; I found them too cumbersome to write on quickly, which is a problem when you need to jot down assignments and readings at the end of a class. So I stopped using it.

Paper notebooks are much easier, but they're far less adaptable. It's difficult to change things and move things around and still have a calendar that's legible. I am constantly shifting priorities and changing things, so this was an issue.

Paper is fast but digital is interactive

For a long time I didn't like the idea of storing my data somewhere else. I didn't see the appeal of web-accessible anything. My email resided on my hard drive, along with all of my appointments and contacts. Then my Windows install crapped out after a bad overclock, and I wasn't able to recover my data.

Ouch.

That was about the Gmail was released, and I had scored myself an invite several weeks earlier, more to secure my name than actually use it as an email account. I never really used it. I had like two messages total, one of which was the "Welcome to Gmail!" message that everyone gets; the other was a test email I sent to myself. So I set up my old email address to forward to my Gmail account, and then I set about changing all of my accounts spread far and wide across the Interweb.

That was my first experience with having a large amount of personal data available anywhere. I remember thinking how f'n cool it was checking my email from a Telephone/Internet kiosk in downtown London when I was on vacation. I was hooked from then on.

So Gmail was great, but that didn't solve my problem with remembering things. I remember seeing one of my friends using iCal one time and thinking it was totally awesome. (I think I was more impressed with the pretty colors and Mac UI than anything else.) Gmail, of course, started the "Web 2.0 revolution" with AJAX.

About this time I was becoming really unhappy with myself, and how badly I was slipping. I wanted a method that would allow me to easily manage my life. I wanted a web calendar, but Yahoo! and Kiko seemed the only places you could really get it. I had started using Google's personalized home page, and you couldn't very well get your appointments from Yahoo calendar on there, or your Kiko ones. Then rumors of CL2 surfaced, so I decided to wait.

I started using Google Calendar on the first day it was announced, and I haven't looked back ever since. I can set things and forget them. I plug everything into it: personal projects, doctors' appointments, class schedules, travel schedules. Anything at all. And best of all, there are plugins which stick your upcoming events into both your Google personalized page, and Gmail sidebar.

I find my brain at its most productive when I'm at work. I work in a pharmacy — a very interrupt-driven environment — which leads to a constant bubbling of ideas: things I want to do, things to write about. I write them all down on a piece of scrap paper in my pocket. I expand on them right away if I have a moment, or I do it when I get home for the day. I figure out when I want them done by, and plug them into the calendar. Then I set reminder emails so I don't forget. (Alternatively, you can get them by text message, which might be useful if you are out and about, or simply want a more jarring reminder.)

Here's a screenshot of what my full calendar looks like this month, and another minus the travel bits. (I prefer the month-long view.)

The ToDo list problem

The calendar doesn't solve the "To Do" list problem.

The ToDo list problem is the ability to check things off as you finish them. While I wouldn't be surprised if this is built into a later revision of Google Calendar, it doesn't exist now. Even if it is added later, I doubt it'll be as cool as the one I'm using now…

While browsing through the widgets available for the Google homepage, I found a crude widget that allowed a list to be stored and worked with. It was okay, but it didn't really fit the bill too well: it simply wasn't powerful enough. A few months later, I was bored and decided to go through the available widgets again — the library had exploded in size during this time — and I came across the RL ToDoList by RL Widgets. It had more features, and I liked the interface better.

Bored again about a week later, I set about rearranging my Google homepage, and I started playing with the ToDo list. Holy crap. It was awesome. Tabs for sub-lists! Drag-and-drop! Customizable everything! I set it up the way it is today, and I don't think I'll be changing it anytime soon — it's as close to perfection as I've ever seen any piece of software. Here's today's list of things to do:

Final analysis

My setup isn't perfect, and I'll probably do a fair bit of tweaking almost constantly, but it's a good start. I'll have to wait and see how it weathers the test of time and school. I would like the ability to eventually sync my calendar and ToDo lists with a PDA, as I will probably buy another one in the next 12 months for drug information if nothing else.

There are those that might say that I shouldn't have all my eggs in one basket in terms of storage and usability: everything I do shouldn't be inside Google in some way. But I like this way the best, and I haven't seen any compelling reasons to not trust Google with my data. If I liked Yahoo! or Microsoft's way of doing things better, I would use their services, because I don't really have any qualms about storing my data with them either. So it really boils down to my personal preference rather than one company's ethics over another's.

Productivity, life hacks, Google, Google calendar, time management

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