Personal Development

Just in time to celebrate Nozbe‘s 6 years in business, a new Nozbe client for iOS devices (iPhone/iPad) is available as of today!

I’ve just downloaded the app and must say I’m impressed:

• it feels snappy enough on my rather dated iPhone 4 – scrolling through the lists is very smooth 
• there’s fully-featured comments support: checklists, etc! Wohoo! :)
• sync is faster and less visible, just the way it should be
• design makes the most of the available space – in addition to labels, some contexts are shown using icons
• both screen orientations are supported, I haven’t decided yet which one I like most
• best of all: the new Nozbe app is FREE! This means you can now fully test whether Nozbe is the right tool for you without having to pay anything – free accounts have enough features to be useful. Register here!

All in all, it’s a great and welcome start.

Well done Nozbe!

Welcome to 2013! :)

I’m really excited to be giving Nozbe another try this year! I’ve been using the much earlier version of the product about 14 months ago and gave up after a few weeks. This time around I am planning to spend at least 2 months using Nozbe, so will be sure to post my findings in the coming weeks.

My requirements for a productivity software

Thanks to the past year of using Remember The Milk Pro, the expectations are quite high. If you haven’t used RTM before, here are just a few things that are implemented so incredibly well that I’ve grown to take them for granted:

• super-easy yet very flexible way of quick tasks entry – for both web and iPhone
• recurring tasks support with multiple notes – this is critical for me as I use it for tracking
• quick and very useful search through your tasks and notes (including the ones I have completed)
• web/iPhone/iPad clients for the solution
• API so that there’s a potential to develop your own software based on the solution

Simply put, Remember The Milk is so elegant and efficient that it’s really hard to walk away from it. For lists-based productivity system this solution is simply perfect. But because I would like to get organised even more I thought there won’t be a better time to try a new solution than first thing in the new year.

My reasons for trying Nozbe

Projects support in Nozbe

I think it’s once again this part of my life that I would really like to get my projects organised. Nozbe has quite flexible support for projects, and after Remember The Milk I think I will benefit a lot by simply having an opportunity to put my tasks into respective projects.

A fairly recently added projects template support sounds like a very interesting feature – I have quite a few projects that are repetitive, so any way of automating their lifecycle will be a benefit.

Nozbe Desktop client

Although online solutions can match desktop app’s feature set and performance quite easily these days,  I still find that native OS integration helps. In case of productivity systems, the desktop version is important because I can use it when traveling. I’ve been flying almost every weekend for the past few months and it will be really nice to finally have an opportunity to work directly with the tasks and projects rather than create temporary copies in Evernote with a view to later import them (copy-paste or type all over again) into web-based solution.

Review (Calendar) functionality in Nozbe

I’ve been a long-time fan of the review functionality found in Remember The Milk, especially the daily reminder you can set up – I get a list of my tasks at 9am every morning and it has done wonders for improving my awareness of the tasks coming up on the day.

Nozbe has a very neat Calendar function in desktop version, it shows you overdue, current (today’s) and future tasks which seems a good way to review things and to get certain tasks completed and out of the way.

Integration with Evernote and Dropbox

I have close to 5000 entries in my Evernote account, and although I’ve been working hard on reducing this number in the past months, I still find quite a lot of information to be put into Evernote almost daily. Not all the things are tasks or projects – there’s quite a lot of reference material that may be used in the future.

With Nozbe’s integration I plan on fully utilising my Evernote account and automatically hooking reference material up with relevant projects.

The same goes for Dropbox – being my primary storage for ebooks and manuals and various cheatsheets, I love the way Dropbox syncs everything seamlessly between my devices. Being able to attach files to my projects or tasks in Nozbe is something I really look forward to. It makes a lot of sense and will potentially make for a very flexible productivity system that relies on various tools for what each one of them does best.

Rich Comments for tasks

Last but certainly not least, comes the comments support in Nozbe. As I mentioned earlier, multiple comments is a must for me because I’m using them for tracking progress within a task. This is especially true for recurring tasks I have for multiple habits I’m working on.

With Nozbe I found that it’s quite easy to add comments. I also notice that there’s a way to turn comments into checklists which may find its place in my workflow, so we’ll see in a few weeks.

Are you a Nozbe user?

If you are a seasoned Nozbe user, please take a few minutes to leave comment and let me know how you’re finding it so far. I’ve tried quite a few solutions in the past few years, so the last thing I want is to try and use Nozbe in exactly the way I’ve learned with some other software.

If you have time-saving tips or simply features that you absolutely love about Nozbe – mobile, web or desktop version – I sure hope you’ll find the time to share with me and other readers.

Not a Nozbe user yet? Register here and see how it can help you become productive!