Michael Linenberger's Blog

I am very pleased to announce the guest post below by reader Charles Olsen about Todoist. You may recall that Charles wrote a few guest posts about Things over the last year, and this one is even better!

The Todoist app suite is a set of to-do list management apps that run on virtually all platforms: Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and the web. It’s one of the most popular to-do list apps out there. Charles Olsen has spent a lot of time and effort developing ways to use 1MTD and MYN within those Todoist apps. Charles’s guest post below shows you how you can do this yourself.

This notice from Microsoft:

“September 3, 2020: We will soon roll out the new tasks experience in Outlook on the web as we move from preview to general availability. With this change, we will remove the preview opt-in toggle; this means the classic tasks experience will no longer be available.”

I am still curious about what’s going to happen with future releases of Desktop Outlook, which is now the only way to see the older, and more powerful, legacy Tasks system in Outlook. We’ll see how that plays out.

Michael

Yey! Microsoft finally did it. They’ve added a Create a Task command to their Outlook iOS App. This is a critical app feature I like to see in all apps that my 1MTD and MYN readers use.

If you have a subscription to Office 365 (now called Microsoft 365), and you have been regularly updating your desktop Outlook app, then here’s a recent change you might care about: the ability to turn off yellow highlighting of flagged mail in the Inbox has been fixed.

If you are new to 1MTD and MYN, or if you have drifted away from it, here is a 4-minute video that will help refresh your understanding of the urgency zone concept, and how urgency zones work in both systems.

And for a downloadable 1-page PDF summary of this entire video, a “Cheat Sheet,” go to this link.

I’ve just created a cheat sheet for 1MTD and MYN users who need a review or introduction to the system basics. Mostly, it shows how the Urgency Zones work in a quick overview.

You can download a free printable PDF of this cheat sheet at this link.

Also, the brand new free 4-min video I just made walks you through all the points on this cheat sheet, so you might want to watch that too.

Michael

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.