March 31st, 2007 in Productivity

HiTask is My New Favorite Organizer

I have been between organizing systems for a little while. I’ve tried a bunch of things: Google Calendar, Stickies (the built in Mac program that makes little Post-It notes), and a few easily forgettable PIM software apps. I’ve used Backpack in the past, and a few of the various To-Do software products that so many readers of Lifehack.org write or support.

But my new favorite is HiTask.

First, it’s clean and shiny. Second, it’s a web app. Third, it’s got drag-and-drop functionality that takes away most of my typical complaints about organizing software (that it’s too much of a bear to use easily). Then comes the cool stuff.

  • Projects-You can group by project, so that takes the basic “to-do” and gives me a project-level application. Usually, I get one or the other. In BaseCamp, everything’s project-centric. In Tadalist and several other to-do apps, there’s nothing (simple) to let me group things into projects.

  • Friends- If your friends or colleagues want to join HiTask, you can drag and drop tasks and reminders and other items onto their icons and immediately assign them tasks (or do group tasks).
  • Useful Calendering- I mean to say that some calendering software is just too annoying. This is pull, drag, shape, and move-around simple. It feels very “slick,” if that means anything. And it exports an iCalendar feed. Now, if only my Google Calendar would accept that feed. (does it?)

I haven’t used HiTask long enough to determine if I think it’s going to work for me in the long term, but right out of the gate, after messing with it for 30 minutes, I really like what I see. Give it a shot.

HiTask- [I saw it on Download Squad, who credit Mashable with finding it. Call it a group finding.]

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ChrisBrogan

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Comments

  • Mike says on March 31st, 2007 at 1:08 pm

    What a GREAT app! Thanks for bringing it to my attention. BTW, Lifehack.org just gets better and better.

  • Andrew White says on March 31st, 2007 at 1:52 pm

    HiTask link at the bottom is missing the href!

  • Leon says on March 31st, 2007 at 9:33 pm

    Thanks, the link is fixed.

  • Pascal Venier says on April 1st, 2007 at 1:56 am

    HiTask sounds good.

    Have you, by any chance, also tried Highrise the new solution by 37Signals.

    It is intended as a contact manager, but can also be used as a task manager.

    If this is of interest, please have a look at my post on “Highrise for GTD”
    http://pascalvenier.com/blog/?p=276

  • hew says on April 1st, 2007 at 5:11 am

    Cool. Thankyou.

  • Mike says on April 1st, 2007 at 10:17 am

    Hitask seems like a great app, with a very simple design that takes no time to get to grips with.

    $12 for more than 10 projects/ tasks seems like a fair amount. Although immediately after purchasing a premium account the site went down for the rest of the day.

    However, after playing much more it looks like an application that is much more flexible in comparison with what I was previously using: GTDinbox.

    It seems the ability to add tasks really quickly is essentially to this sort of an app. Adding actions with Gmail and adding labels for projects became rather unwieldy and time consuming - especially in the early stages when I was trying to fill out the app with my tasks.

  • dave says on April 2nd, 2007 at 3:32 am

    Only 5 tasks in the free account? come on!

  • Nick says on April 2nd, 2007 at 4:47 am

    You have “messed” with HiTask for 30 min, don’t know whether it will work for you in the long run, BUT it has become your favourite organizer? Good Lord, that must have been one of the shallowest things I have read in quite a long time. I mean how much more trivial can one get?

    More substance, please, next time, if you want to be taken seriously.

  • Jordan says on April 2nd, 2007 at 3:42 pm

    My biggest complaint about Hitask is that you can’t attach a reminder to a task. Instead, you have to create a SEPARATE reminder and move it into the same project as the task. This seems totally counter-intuitive to me.

    Take a look at Todoist, for example, which is obviously much less feature-packed than Hitask, but is also more intuitive. Each task has a date attached directly on the task itself, which is displayed on the main view. That way, it’s much easier to prioritize the tasks.

    On the same vein, having tasks have a “start” and “end” date is just weird to me. A task “ends” when it ends! When it’s done! I think it’s more intuitive to have the function I mentioned above, which is more like “next action date,” than an end date.

  • Ben says on April 3rd, 2007 at 9:18 am

    Anyone have an invite that they can send me?

  • Mike says on April 3rd, 2007 at 12:47 pm

    Email me Ben

    mikesmithmikesmith at gmail

  • John says on April 3rd, 2007 at 3:02 pm

    Would it be alright if I got an invite from you as well Mike?

  • Steve says on April 4th, 2007 at 9:15 am

    HiTask site seems to have been down again most of today. I have registered and am keen to try it properly, but the free version is far too limited - even for a trial.

  • Ben says on April 4th, 2007 at 10:48 pm

    Steve, I’m sorry to hear that. I haven’t even gotten registered yet and I want to jump in and test it out. How much does the pay plan cost?

  • Michael says on April 6th, 2007 at 5:47 pm

    If you’re looking for a more GTD-like task management tool - you may give Nozbe a try at http://www.nozbe.com

    Please let me know how it compares :-)

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