I know i’m not alone in struggling to find a good way to manage my project lists, everything from the big ongoing stuff to the daily to-do.
I know I’m not alone because I’ve read endless articles about getting organized. And tried dozens of methods, from Outlook to….
See? I’m so scattered: just writing about Outlook sent me down the rabbit hole once again. In between paragraph 2 and 3, I read three articles about productivity software. Found a few new ones to try. But you really don’t want to read a list of the many methodologies i’ve dated and abandoned. Oh, the apps I adored for ten minutes and 99 cents!
Alas, at the end of the day, I always end up back where I started: Moleskin notebook (quadrille paper, I’m fussy) and handwritten cards that I transcribe over and over, making myself little boxes to check off.
Until Beesy. I read about it first as a preferred companion to my beloved @Evernote. I used to try pretty much anything recommended by @Evernote. But my loyalty was not always rewarded. Like the LiveScribe pen? Expensive and awful. And now Beesy, which turns out to have nothing in particular to offer Evernote users.
But still! With all its flaws, Beesy brought me to a new milestone. Three full months and my Moleskin is getting dusty.
So despite my complaints, Beesy is the best I have found. Consider this an A, in a class graded on a curve, and everybody else failed.
Here is what we need to fix:
1. Make it easy. You need a long plane flight or snowy weekend (like this one!) to get the hang of Beesy. I admit, had I not had my iPad and the distance of NY – SF between me and it, I would have given up immediately. And that’s its worst characteristic: like a Microsoft product, Beesy offers way too much functionality, too many buttons to nowhere.
2. Make it sync. I work in lots of different places and devices and each version of Beesy tells me a different story. I even upgraded for the princely sum of 5 Euros/month, and found little improvement.
3. Make it pretty. The app is decent but the Beesy web interface is DOS-ugly. Really, go look at it right now and you’ll wonder that I am taking the time to write about it. Superficial me was briefly in love with iThoughts, only because it was so handsome.
4. Projects can only be assigned to one individual. Life is about teamwork!
5. With all those features, where is an optional date stamp? (I have the same complaint about Evernote btw — you can search by “date created,” which is available in the “i” field, but you can’t add it automatically to a note. Nor can you automatically number your entries within a notebook. But I digress.)
So if anyone would like to collaborate with me on Son of Beesy, I’m ready. We can make history!
Hey! I just heard about some new to-dos! I’m off to try Todo7, Wunderlist, and Workflowy…..
