Task Management

Asana is a great task manager for individuals and teams. I’ve used it on the job, to help me track new issues. The main feature I miss is the ability to save all your tasks to a local file. Asana’s built-in export truncates the output at 500 records. This limits your ability to work with the data in other applications, or switch to another service. Fortunately, you can export all your entries using the Asana API and a bit of Python.

David Allen’s Getting Things Done struck a chord with compulsive organizers as well as people struggling to bring order to their lives. The book was written at a time when Day Planners, paper and index cards were still common business tools. However, its principles haven’t become obsolete. Just google “GTD” and you’ll find many products and services claiming to implement it. For me, the value of Allen’s system – it’s more method than a strict methodology – lies in a few common sense concepts to put you in control of your agenda: