Michael Linenberger's Blog

The Things 3 app set is a set of to-do list management apps that run on the Mac and iOS devices. Reader Charles Olsen has spent a lot of time and effort developing ways to use 1MTD and MYN within those Things 3 apps. He published a guest post on this topic some time back, and now has a new guest post that improves his approach, and I’ve published it below.

Take a read and I think you will see that not only is Charles an excellent writer, but what he’s come up with as a way to implement 1MTD and MYN is very nicely done! In my mind, this might now be the easiest way to implement MYN if you own a Mac. If you like this, give Charles a big “thank you” shout out in the comments section below.

Michael

Yesterday I happened to notice that in the most recent version of the iOS Gmail app, Google has added the Add to Tasks menu item, allowing you to move an email into Google Tasks. This was absolutely needed and I am delighted to see it!

I am nearly done creating my new Google Tasks and 1MTD video course, so that feature addition was a nice project-wrap present to me, and to all of you, too, if you use Gmail and Google Tasks on an iPhone or iPad.

For the last four months I’ve made it a point of using both Gmail and Outlook, equally, for my business mail. I did this to study the differences in their current versions. I wanted to do this updated evaluation because a lot has changed in each product over the years, especially recently.

I admit I’ve been a bit biased. I’ve been an Outlook user for decades and dismissed Gmail years ago (when in beta) as being merely a good free web mail app, but not a serious business tool. Because of that, all my books and courses have mostly been about Outlook.

But that has changed. With Gmail’s recent redesigns, I now find the two apps, on balance, nearly equivalent for serious business email management. Each has advantages and disadvantages, however, and those will definitely influence your choice.

Zoom is all the rage these days for video calls. And in contrast Skype is, well, old school, right?

So why would I suggest you take another look at Skype (and perhaps pass on Zoom)?

Aside from the security issues recently discovered in Zoom, I suggest two main reasons for taking a fresh look at Skype:

First, Skype recently introduced a totally new way to use Skype, one that I think changes everything: it’s called Skype Meet Now.

Second, Skype has long had a feature that I am just now beginning to appreciate: cross ecosystem texting.

Let’s start with Skype Meet Now.

If you have an Office 365 plan, you might be surprised to see a name change on your product. It’s now called Microsoft 365.

This change went into effect April 21 for business products.

Microsoft has also repackaged its personal subscription Office offering as Microsoft 365 Personal.

The best summary of all these changes is at this ZDNet article:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-to-rebrand-some-office-365-commercial-plans-as-microsoft-365/

Boy, this feature request, which was probably the most requested feature, has finally been implemented.

Now, when you create a new task in any of the Microsoft To Do, it goes to the top of the list instead of the bottom. It’s a settable option too.

To me this is probably the single best new feature in 8 months!

All the more reason to now learn how to use Microsoft To Do with my simple 1MTD productivity system.

In a previous article, I mentioned that Microsoft had announced it is extending support for OneNote 2016, which was great news.

Now this: Microsoft is actually adding features again to OneNote 2016, which is really good news. That was announced in this online article a few months back:

OneNote 2016 gets dark mode

Maybe Microsoft will finally add a big block of features and rename this OneNote 2019, to show that it is even-steven with the other current shrink-wrapped Office set with the 2019 designation. Let’s hope so.

Michael

I decided to do an experiment recently in which I switched to using Outlook Online for all my daily email. So, I put my usual Outlook Windows desktop software aside for a while.

Why would I do this? More and more people are working from the web these days, so evaluating Outlook Online is a timely topic. Basically, I wanted to see how different the two products really were these days. I wanted to see if I could, yet, recommend Outlook Online to my readers.

My conclusion is that Outlook Online is pretty good for basic email, calendar, and contacts functions, but if you need to process high volumes of mail, or if you are using my MYN tasks system, you should stick with Windows desktop Outlook.

Want details? Read on.

The main differences between desktop Outlook and Outlook Online can be summed up in three words: tasks, views, and automation. Windows desktop Outlook does a much better job on all three of these. Let’s start with tasks.

It’s been a while since I wrote about Microsoft To Do, which is Redmond’s premiere to-do list platform these days. I released a video course on how to use Microsoft To Do last year. But you might wonder, six months later, how do I feel about it now?

Here is my current thinking: Microsoft To Do is now my first recommendation when current Outlook users ask me what app to use to implement my simple One Minute To-Do List (1MTD) system. And that’s mainly because of its simplicity and its excellent smartphone apps.

In the last few months I’ve been testing other platforms for achieving workday productivity. One of those platforms I’ve tested is Gmail. I’d used it in the past, not really liked it, but thought I should look at it again. It’s evolved greatly since my first use, so I decided to see, first-hand, how its newer versions compare with the Microsoft Outlook ecosystem of products.

I’ll write much more about in the coming months, but my initial conclusion is that Gmail’s webmail, in its recent incarnations, has come a long way and offers productivity opportunities comparable to Outlook.

Gmail Tasks and 1MTD

This is especially true of the new Tasks module that Google released a number of months ago (shown above).