The ToDo List Quest: The Criteria

When you set out to do something it is best to have a plan to get it done. Since I have set out on the todo list quest and started looking at various different programs I decided I need a list of criteria to judge them against, and "ideal" if you will.

Now it is always good to have your ideal in mind when you set out to find something, but you cannot expect your ideal to exist unless you make it yourself. Since I am not a software programer I cannot make my ideal todo list program, but I want to find something that is as close to a match as possible.
Here are the important factors I have come up with so far:

iPhone app:
This probably goes with out being said, but whatever program I use must have an iPhone app, that is how I handle most of my todo list management.

Works offline:
I mentioned this as one of the killers before, I can't have a list that won't work without internet because I spend a good chunk of time without internet and still have to be able to add things to my list and check them off.

Email Integration:
One of the best features of IQTELL was the ability to manage email from the same system that managed your tasks. That type of close integration is rare in todo list apps, but I would like to find it if I could. The next best alternative is to find an app that I can add to via email. Then I can at least forward from which ever client I am using straight into the todo list.

Recurring tasks:
There is a lot that happens in life that is routine, so it is helpful to be able to make tasks that recur at given intervals.

GTD Ready:
I try to follow David Allen's "Getting Things Done" methodology even though I am not great at it. It really helps to have a system that is already ready for that. Perhaps I was spoiled while using IQTELL but it was great to have a system that already had concepts like the "tickler" and the "someday/maybe" list built int.

Nice UI
This is being picky, but it is important. When you have an app that you are going to be using a lot everyday it is very helpful to like how it looks and be able to navigate it easily. If the UI is bad you are less likely to actually use the system.

Multi tagging
This goes along with being GTD ready, in order to do the system you need to be able to tag a todo with multiple criteria such as context, time needed, energy required, etc. Along with being able to use multiple tags on a task I also would like to be able to search on multiple tags with both AND and OR functionality so I can bring up exactly the set of tasks I need at that moment.

Syncing
I work on several different machines and I like to have my tasks available on all of them, so I need syncing between devices. Obviously along with that I need a system that has apps on all devices as well.

Price
And here is the kicker, I would like something that works really well with all the features that I want, but I don't really want to pay for it. Well, that is not quite true, what I don't want to do is pay for a service I find that annoying and beyond my budget (remember I don't even have internet at my home or on my phone). I would be willing to pay a one time upfront price, but paying month by month to write down my tasks is a little more than I want to do.

So there you have it, the (current) criteria for my quest. I don't ask for much, just perfection. In all reality I know I will not find the perfect app, but I like to know what it looks like so I can aim for it. These are the items I am listing across the top of my spreadsheet. They are the functions that I think will help me to remember to live better.

App Review: Ninja Fitness

Name: Ninja Fitness
Price: Free or 99¢
Stars: 4
Type: Workout game

Some people will remember that I reviewed the Gorilla Workout app a while ago and really liked it. Well this app is from the same people over at Heckr. It is a really great app for those who are looking for workouts they can do quickly at home.

The Concept
The idea is to gamify your workout. You are a young ninja in training by an ancient and often comedic sensei, Master Old Beard. You have to buy new workouts and gear with "ninja stars" which you earn by completing workouts. You also get stat points in four different areas of training. You must achieve certain numbers of stats to get new colors of belts.

Four Areas
Where this app really surpasses Gorilla Workout is by having four areas of development which you can choose to work on. These are Strength, Agility, Endurance, and Zen.

These areas must each reach certain levels of skill points before you can advance to the next belt, and certain belts are required to purchase better gear. This encourages you to take a balanced approach to your training instead of focusing on just one area that you are good at or that you enjoy.

The strength and agility workouts cover most of the same exercises that the gorilla workout did, but the endurance and zen areas have new workouts focusing on cardio and stretching. Each workout is timed depending on its difficulty and the ninja star reward for completing it.



Your Ninja
Basically the whole point of the game is to customize your 3D ninja self with weapons and armor. You can choose whether or not you are a boy or a girl when you start as well as giving yourself a ninja name. Then you can choose the hair style, hair color, and facial structure that are most your style.

Problems
While I like the app a lot, and it seems to be very stable, there are a few things I wish would be improved.

The first is that there is no audio playback during workouts, I alway like to listen to music or podcasts while I do cardio, but I can't do that and have the ninja workout run at the same time because if you leave the app the workout will pause. This seems like a major oversight and a gap in market research since many people listen to audio while working out. Audio playback in other apps is totally possible in iOS so I do not know what the excuse for this is.

My second complaint is that while it is fun to level up my ninja, the ninja doesn't actually do anything and the store selection is small for ninja gear. I think there should have at least been some type of mini game that the ninjas could engage in so that their armor, weapons, and stats actually matter. This would give greater motivation to completing balanced workouts.

My last problem with the app is that unlike gorilla workout there is no offline instruction on how to do the exercises. Gorilla had written instructions in the app and video instruction online, but Ninja Fitness has only the online videos and the app freezes if you click on one of these without an internet connection, making it impossible to complete any exercises you are unfamiar with.

Well other than those few problems the app is very good and well put together. It makes it fun to workout (well as fun as a workout can be anyway) so I encourage you to check it out. Their is a limited free version, but I would suggest using this to check it out and not to spend too much time on it because your stats, gear, and ninja stars will not transfer to the full version.

Anyway, let me know your thoughts on this or other workout apps below and also let me know any questions you might have. Thanks for reading, and remember, live better.

New Year's Resolutions: Living Better with an iPad

Hello everyone, I am back from the holiday break. I had a great time with family the past couple weeks celebrating the birth of Christ and the New Year. I hope you did as well.

Well, as you might expect given the fact that I write this blog, I took some time on New Year's Eve with my wife to solidify our goals and resolutions for 2014. I think I have told you in the past how much I use to hate making New Year's resolutions. It is one of those things my mom made me do that I dreaded that I am now extremely grateful was instilled in me. Goals are a painful, but a cleansing process.

Naturally many of the goals I have set for this year have iPad or iPhone components to them, I thought I would share some of these with you and I hope you will share yours in the comments below. I set goals in the four major areas of life: Mental, Physical, Spiritual, Social. I use the Evernote app to write down all my goals for the year and the Lumen Trails app to track them.

Mental:

• Typing using Dvorak keyboard layout: for about two years I have been experimenting with using the more efficient keyboard layout known as Dvorak instead of the traditional Qwerty. This year I have finally decided to use it in all of my personal typing. On iOS you cannot with the touch keyboard to Dvorak so this has held me back, for Christmas I got a bluetooth keyboard and case(which I will blog about soon) from my brother. External keyboards can be set to Dvorak so now I am good to go on the iPad mini.
• Reading 52 books: I sometimes read books on my iPad using several different apps. I also use the Goodreads app to track what I am reading and what I want to read.

Physical:

• Losing some weight: like many people this time of year I am involved in a biggest loser competition with my family. For this I will continue using the Gorilla Workout app, the app My Fitness Pal to track myself, and the podcast app while running.

Spiritual:

• Scripture Memorization: I will be using the app LDS Memory: Scripture Mastery to memorize scriptures.
• Reading the New Testament: I will be using the Bible Gateway app to read side by side translations of the New Testament.
• Journal: I finally completed an entire year of journaling without missing a day in 2013 and now I hope to make my journal writing more meaningful using the GridDiary app.

Social:

• I hope to use twitter more this year and I will be using the official Twitter app to do so for now. But I am open to other app suggestions if you have them.

That is not all of my goals this year, but it is most of the ones that involve iOS. Please share your goals and apps for 2014 with me in the comments or on twitter (@halduauthor). I think it is going to be a great year so long as we remember to live better.

Preparing for New Year's Resolutions

We are now quickly approaching that time of the year where we will need to set our New Year's resolutions.

Make an idea list now
As soon as you read to post you should begin to make an idea list of the goals you may want to accomplish next year. If you wait until New Year's Eve or Day when you have sat down to actually commit to those goals then you are going to have a heap of trouble coming up with them. Great ideas seldom come to us when we force them. So have some way of keeping track of ideas as they come to you so that when you do sit down to set goals you will have a list of options in front of you to choose from.
In my series on goals and iPads I have a post dedicated to writing goals down: click here to read it.

Review: IQTELL (GTD app)

There has been an update to this app and my review of those updates can be found here. This article still has my feelings on many of the other features.

Note: This review is for the universal app IQTELL for iPhone and iPad, it is not a review of the complete IQTELL System which involves a web app.

Name: IQTELL
Price: Free
Stars: 4
Type: Productivity




The IQTELL app is an app based on the GTD method originally conceived by David Allen (you can read my review of his book here). It was the first app to come out to claim to be a complete GTD system. Of course I was excited when I first heard that a company was actually going to release a GTD app, but I always have some initial hesitation at switching to a new system when you already have a working one in place. I was very happy with my Todo list manager Producteev, so I did not download IQTELL right away.

Switching Over
Not long after the IQTELL app was released Producteev came out with a major new update. Unfortunately they released a little too soon and they did not migrate users fast enough, as a result after updating I was unable to access my account or even use features offline.

Well I couldn't be without a todo list so I decided to give IQTELL a trial spin while I needed something anyway. I really enjoyed it. The app lacks a little personality; it's pretty bland and flat in style. What it lacks in visuals it makes up for in functionality though.

Everything in one Place? Almost.
The IQTELL motto is "Everything in one place" and it almost is, on the web app they are really almost there. On the iOS app however there are still some features lacking:

• Email integration
• Calendar integration
• Evernote integration
• Contact integration

Once it has these features it will work very well. As you can see from the screen shot there are a lot of different options for how to mange your lists. That is a good thing but it can be a little bit of overkill and David Allen would probably say take the one or two that work for you and ditch the rest, don't get hung up on the system. You can us the configure button (red arrow) to remove most of  these options from your screen, but unfortunately on the iPhone version it does not seem  to stick once you close the app. Hopefully this will be fixed soon.



The IQTELL Team
Let me just say a word about the IQTELL team. They seem like great developers who really want to make the best productivity app out there. They are responsive to emails and really want to make the experience better. I expect to see a lot of improvements to the app in the near future.

The Good

• An app that is really based on  the GTD system
• True someday and tickler options to get stuff off your mind
• Correct use of context and projects
• Responsive developers

The Bad

• Current lack of integration (this is suppose to be fixed soon I am told)
• More robust than some people need or want
• Hard to get each of the sub apps arranged the way you want them on the page
• Slow loading time and sync
• Very tied to the web app (I wish they would just make a native mac app)

Overall the app is very good and has a lot of potential. I recommend that if you want to be using the GTD system that try out this app. It is free, so the barrier to entry is much lower than an app like OmniFocus which has been pretty much the only option in the past. I am excited about the way this app is going and expect some big updates to come soon.

What is your favorite To Do List app? Share it with us in the comments section below.
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Thanks for reading, and remember, live better.

Things I Loved Today

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that in life bad things will happen.

For those of you who follow me on twitter or are friends with me on Facebook you know that at the end of everyday I post a tweet and status that start out things I loved today. I do this for a simple reason, because even though it is true that bad things happen every day it is also true that good things happen everyday, things worth loving.

Why?
I noticed that there is a lot of negative expression in social media, plenty of expressions of despair, disappointment, and discord. At one particularly negative point in my life I realized I was a contributor to this part of social media and I realized that it was probably not healthy. Even though I felt really bad about life at the time, it did not help to reinforce the negative. I realized I could lift myself and others by choosing to accentuate the positive things in life.

This gave rise to my first round of things I loved today postings which I did for a couple months and now have recently returned to as I again found myself facing a negative outlook.

Social For Good
For me it was not really even about the social aspect, it was about doing something simple everyday to improve my attitude and recognize my blessings. I was surprised at the positive response I received from my Facebook friends, many of them liked the posts and would comment on what a wonderful thing they thought these posts were and how they lifted their lives as well.

It was not until later that I realized that many of their news feeds were probably full of the same negative updates that mine often was and that I had contributed to. Because of this, a post focused on the positive appeared as a breath of fresh air to them. I think each of us can use social media to have a positive impact on ourselves and others, if we choose to.

The Challenge
So you can probably guess where I am going with this, I want to challenge you to try using social media for an intentionally positive purpose, to see the goodness in your day and brighten the digital sea you swim in. So here is the challenge, its as simple as 1, 2, 3.

1. Try posting 1 "things I loved today" to a social media site once a day
2. Continue to do this for 2 weeks
3. In each post try to name at least 3 things you loved that day

And that is it, that's the challenge, not very hard. just see if your attitude toward life is improving at the end of it. If you are using twitter use the Tweet #Thingsilovedtoday. If you choose to take the challenge please leave a comment letting us know.

Counting your blessings to improve you attitude is nothing new, this is just a different take on it for our social media world. Just give this a try and see if it can benefit you. If you would like to see examples of these posts just Follow @halduauthor. 

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Thanks for reading, and remember, you can live better

Goal Apps: Accomplishing

The entire point of goals is to accomplish them, obviously, that's why you set them. Just as the iPad and iPhone could be useful in writing down, tracking, and communicating goals, it can also be helpful in the accomplishment of some goals.

The goals it can help with are many, the reason is that there is app for almost everything.

Lets just take a look at a few of the things I'm working on. One of my goals has to do with writing this blog, and what do you know the iPad helps me accomplish this goal with several apps:

• Blogger
• Posts 
• Cooliris
• Skitch
• Diptic 

And there are others as well. All of these apps help me accomplish my goals with the blog.


Now, blogging is something of an extreme example, of course it is a goal that is aided by the iPad. But other goals not so directly related to the internet can be as well. For example I have a goal of in the physical aspect of my life to work out everyday. This goal is tied specifically to the Gorilla workout app. The app gives me a new workout to do everyday, that helps me to accomplish my goal. I have done a full review of the app here.

Another area where a lot of people, including me, have goals is finances. In this case the goals are called a budget. This is an area where the portability of the iPad or iPhone can really be helpful. You can track your expenses as soon as they happen. There are a lot of budget apps out there, the one I use is called ExpenSense. It is fairly simple a straight forward for tracking budgets and accounts. There are a lot of other options for financial goals including apps from most investment firms and banks to track your accounts through their website.

An important area to set goals in is knowledge. We should constantly be learning. One of the best ways to do that is to read. One of my part time jobs is as a digital reading specialist, so I have a real interest in this type of goal on an iPad. The iPad can be very helpful in this regard because it is with you a lot of the time so you can take advantage of short moments to read a little of an ebook.

Here are some reading apps worth looking into:

• iBooks (Apples own ebook reader)
• Kindle (great if you also read on kindle, your books will sync across)
• Adobe Reader (my full review here)

Another aspect of reading can be spiritual, if you are religious chances are there are a plethora of apps for your religion. I am a Mormon and these are a few of the apps that help me with my spiritual goals:

• Gospel Library (allows you to download all the scriptures and Sunday School manuals)
• Bible Gateway (Lets you read from hundreds of bible translations and do side-by-side comparison)
• Ensign (The LDS church's official magazine)
• LDS Memory (Helps you memorize key scripture passages)

The possibilities for apps that could help you with your goals a endless. If you have a goal chances are that there is app that can help you in some way. And you really should have a goal, several in fact.

Let me know what you goal is and if you have an app that helps you or if you are looking for one. Tweet to @halduauthor  or leave a comment below.

Here's the summarygram.


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That's it for the goal apps posts, I hope they've been helpful to you. Now go set some goals and remember, live better.

Goal Apps: Communication

This aspect is probably the simplest part of goal apps on the iPad, but one of the most difficult parts of goal achievement generally. The ending to President Monson's quote from my last post is this:

"when performance is measured and reported back the rate of improvement accelerates" 

This probably makes sense to you, you are much more likely to exercise if you know you are going to have to tell your friend how much you exercised. This is in fact one of the concepts that every 12 step program in the world is based on, and it has proved very successful for those who do it.

So here is where we are at in using iPads to set goals:

1. Write down goals and details
2. Track progress on goals
3. Report that progress back

In order to do this you will need an accountability partner. There are three qualifications I think you should look for in an accountability partner:

1. Someone you can help with their goals
2. Someone you have great respect for their opinion
3. Someone who loves you enough to be brutally honest

Number 1 is important because this is a partnership, you should both be in it together. You may have another person that you report back to like a mentor or a coach who is not sharing their goals with you. That is a good thing, but you should also have an accountability partner.


The nice thing about keep track of your goals on an iPad (or iPhone/iPod) is that you already have the communication right there. All you need to do is decided how best to communicate it. Some tracking apps of communication built directly into them through the share button (arrow). This is particularly useful if you want to share your progress with the world because it normally links you directly into Facebook and Twitter, for more private sharing it will also give you access to the mail and messages apps.

Essentially any communication app will do that lets you tell your accountability partner what you have accomplished: Here's a list of some useful ones:

Messages: this is just sending an iMessage to your accountability partner letting them know how you are doing. If they aren't using and iDevices you won't be able to use this option but there is a whole slew of other messaging apps (such as Facebook Messenger) that you could use.









Mail or another email app like Gmail or Mailbox can be very helpful in sending detailed information about your goal, this is especially useful if you can access it from the tracking or accomplishing app and send a report directly.








Facetime or Skype: at regular intervals you should have face to face contact with your accountability partner. This gives you both a chance to report to each other. If you can't actually get together a Facetime or Skype call will be helpful.








The important thing is that you regularly report your progress or lack there of. If you are doing goals on an iPad this does not really require anything beyond the stock apps that come with it, unless you want it to.

If you find this post helpful you can or if you think it can help others you can Tweet it to share.

To give you a simple way to remember what happened in this blog I've created what I call a summarygram of it.


Please share your thoughts on communicating your goals in the comments below.

That's all for now, and remember, live better.

Goal Apps: Tracking

President Monson has said "When performance is measured performance improves."

I can say I truly believe that. There is something motivation about a graph or calendar or a journal you know you are going to have to face that encourages you to push harder. We've talked about why the iPad can help us with goals, and about apps for writing down goals, now its time to talk about tracking those goals.

Tracking is extremely important if you are setting good goals because you should have some kind of measurement attached to it, but if you are not tracking it, then you are not really measuring it, and you will have no idea when you have achieved it.

There are two types of apps in this field:

1. generic tracking apps
2. goal specific tracking apps 

First Generic tracking apps, I've been looking for a good one of these for a while now, so I've tried out several. I will highlight three here.


Simple Goals
This app is just what it says, it is a clean and simple goals app. You type in the name of your goal, and then every time you do it or don't do it you mark it down. The app lets you know how many times you have accomplished your goal activity this week and this month, so it gives you a nice time table to work in.
It is a really easy to use app and the full version is now free. This app also has the feature that if you shake your device it will give you an inspirational quote to give you an added push.

Way Of Life
This app is more robust than Simple Goals. You put in your goal and then you tell the app is the item is good or bad for you. This allows you to effectively track goals about breaking bad habits as well as positive goals.
Way of Life also has the feature of graphing your goal progress for you in several different ways which can be really helpful in putting you goal in perspective over a long period of time.
You can also add notes your entries in case there is some particular reason you missed a goal or had to skip it and you want to remember. The app does allow you skip days of a goal, so that if, like me, you have a goal to play the piano three times a week, you won't be penalized for the four days you don't.
One of my favorite feature of this app is that it has an alarm you can set to remind you every day to track your goals. It can send you a notification which you can then just tap or swipe to send you right into the app.
I really like the way this app is set up and works. What I do not like about this app is that they give it to you for free and then when you want to set up more than three apps they want to charge you 5 dollars. I just think companies should be straight up with you if they are giving you a lite model.

Lumen Trails 
I mentioned Lumen Trails in my last post as well. This app can do a lot of things. One of the things it can do is track your goals. It is the most robust app I am mentioning today, as such it also has the highest learning curve.
You can set up a category in the app to do whatever you want. For goals you can have it be simple and track yes or no answers, or you can enter a number amount, which can be a simple number or an amount of time, or money. It even has a stop watch feature so you can record the amount of time spent on you goal right from the app (that would be for like an exercise goal or something).
Like Way of Life, Lumen Trails also lets you keep notes for individual entries and also allows you to see a graph of your progress.
By far the versatile goal app I have used it scales to your needs. My favorite part is that you can pick little icons for each category or goal you have.
Last I checked(the day I wrote this) the full version of Lumen Trails was 99cents, but it does seem that the price goes up and down. I've seen it as high as $9.99 and recently at $2.99 as well. I happened to get it the day it was free :) There is also a free Lite version which I definitely recommend checking out before you invest in the full one.

There are lots and lots of other apps that work similarly in the app store. Unfortunately this is not an app  space dominated by quality free apps so most of them involve some money.

Well that's it for today folks. I know tracking your goals will make you far, far more likely to achieve them. Let me know what apps you are using and goals you are tracking, use the comments below or just Tweet to @halduauthor.

If you like this post or Tweet it to help others find it, especially your friends who need to remember, to live better.

Goal Apps: Writing Them Down

Now that we have talked about how the iPad can help with goals I want to get into specific apps that can be used to do that. I'll deal with simply writing goals down and then in latter posts I'll talk about the three categories I discussed last time (communication, tracking, achieving) that we used before.

Writing Down your goals: This is the most important step in the goal process, nothing else happens in a consistent way if this does not happen. For an app to do this for you there are only two things needed:

1. You can enter text (either typed or hand written)
2. You will see it often

The second is obviously the hard one in this set. There is no shortage of apps that you can enter text into, but actually seeing that text so it is useful is something else. In order for that to happen you either need:

• some kind of an alarm system in the app
• or you need to have a built in habit to check your goals (like a daily/weekly review).

The good news is that you do not have to get any new apps to do this if you do not want to, your iPad or other iOS device already comes with the notes app, and the clock app

You can use the notes app to write down your goals, either in a single note or a separate one for each note depending on you level of organization and detail. Then use the clock app to set a recurring alarm to remind you to review your goals every so often. Because you can not stick a note made on your iPad to the fridge you have to have some way of remembering that you are working on goals.

There are literally thousands of apps that you could use to keep track of your goals, I am going to highlight three more because I have used them, not because they are necessarily better than others.

Sticky Notes

This is an app I have used for a long time, its a good solid way to make sticky notes on your iOS device. You can select different colors of notes and other options such as size. One of the nice things here is that you arrange all your sticky notes on a cork board and then you can save it as a photo to the camera roll, if you then set that photo as your lock screen it is the tech equivalent of the paper on the fridge.

There is the option to upgrade for .99 cents, and then you can give note specific alarms. So you could also use that as your reminder.

Evernote

This is the app I personally using for my goal setting write now, the flexibility of Evernote allows me to do pretty much whatever I want. I am to keep my goals accessible across all my devices. I am able to make a chart of the four areas of life (Physical, Mental, Spiritual, Sociemotional) and keep current goals in each of them. I also like the ability to put check boxes next to goals for when I have finished them. I gave a full review of Evernote here.

Lumen Trails

Lumen Trails is an app I will talk more about in the tracking section because that is what I am currently using it as. But it also has the capability for full notes synced across devices. It is an extremely robust app with a bit of a learning curve. As far as just notes go it is fairly simple though and can function like Evernote, you can set up a notebook for your goals and determine whether you want all your notes in one note or in separate notes. It uses iCloud to sync across all your devices

I only recommend using Lumen Trails for writing down your goals if you are also going to use it for tracking or accomplishing goals or some other function. This is because the price for the full version is 9.99, I was fortunate and got it on a free day. 

You might know of other apps you like for writing goals down, if so tweet them to Tweet to @halduauthor

Now you may be wondering why this writing goals down is different than tracking, after all you will have to write down the goal wherever you are tracking it as well. I do not do them in the same place for several reasons:

1. I want to put them in the box, as mentioned earlier
2. I like to write down more information and have them all together (you may have heard of the S.M.A.R.T. goals concept) its hard to have this much information in a tracking program.
3. I like to have future goals also written down in the same place so I can add them to my current goals when I am ready.

Thats it for writing down your goals on the iPad or iPhone. If you like this article or Tweet it to share it with others.

Thanks for reading, set some goals, next time we will learn how to track them.
And remember, live better.

How an iPad can help you achieve your goals

Setting goals is one of the most important steps in productivity. No matter what area in your life you want to be productive in you need to set goals to become more productive. However setting goals is not enough, you have to actually do them. That does not require an iPad or specific apps, but they can be helpful. In this blog I will cover how the iPad can help, in my next blog I'll cover some specific apps that can enhance it.

Many people think they are setting goals when they simply think in their head "I would like to read more" or "I want to be better at handling email." That, however, is NOT goal setting.  The old saying goes:

"A goal unwritten is merely a wish"

Just the act of writing or typing a goal will make it more real in you mind and more likely to be accomplished. It at least makes you accountable to yourself. Ideally that goal will be written down somewhere you will see it often. That's where you iPad can come in handy, if you happen to see your iPad often, and I'm guessing you do, it can provide an excellent place for keeping your goals.

At its most basic level the iPad is good for goal setting simply because things can be written in it, this in and of itself will move your goals out of the wish category. But I want to highlight several other reasons the iPad is a productive tool for goals:

• Communication: The iPad is, of course, a connected device. Writing down you goal is one thing, sharing that goal is something else. You may want to share it with just one person, like an accountability partner, or all your friends via facebook, or the whole world via twitter. Sharing your goal is guaranteed to make it more likely to happen, and when you accomplish it or make progress you can share that too, yeah, that feels good.
• Tracking: gone are the days when you had to use excel or numbers to set up your own goal tracking method, the iPad contains apps (which we will get to next time) that will track your progress. Tracking your progress will make you more likely to achieve your goal.
• Accomplishing: lastly the iPad can actually be the means, or part of the means, to accomplishing certain goals. For example, one of my goals is to blog at least 2 times every week, the iPad helps me do this by making my blogging tools available everywhere I go, allowing me to take advantage of little moments that can help me towards my goal.

Tweet to @halduauthor which of the three things you are using to iPad to help with, Communication, Tracking, or Accomplishing.

Of course, the most important thing the iPad can do for you goals is help you to remember to live better. The three items talked about above are really just a means to that end.

In the comments below tell me one goal related action you would like to be able to do with your iPad, we'll see if we can find an app for it. You can also tweet it at me Tweet to @halduauthor

In the next post I will get more into specific apps I use for setting and accomplishing goals.

If you found this post helpful Tweet it, or share it however you like with the buttons below.

And remember, live better.

Review: Producteev

Name: Producteev
Type: Todo list manager
Price: Free
Stars: 4

Producteev is the best todo list app I have ever used and believe me I have used a bunch of them. Producteev is great because it lets you do exactly as much as you want with your tasks. There are a bunch of metadata options, but you don't have to use all or any of them if you don't want to. There is only one problem with Producteev and that is the fact that they have not developed a native iPad app for it. In order to use it on the iPad you either have to use it in mini mode, or 2x mode. It is not too bad, since it is just a task manager the graphics aren't super important but it would be nice to have a dedicated or at least a + app. However, one of the nice things is that it syncs seamlessly across devices and so when I create a new task on my iPod touch it automatically appears on my iPad, my Macbook, or even on the web.

Lets look at the different options for setting up a task. Click the add a new task button (red arrow).

Then you will be shown the following screen. First you enter the name of your task (orange box), and that is the only thing required to create a task, you can then click add and it will appear in your list. But if you like to have some other information you cans as well. Personally I usually set a star for priority (yellow arrow). Sometimes I also set a date if there is a specific day the item is due (green arrow). The other two buttons I never use but they allow you to assign the tasks to different people and add tags to your task.

You can go into your task later and change anything and also add a reminder via push notification or email for a specific day or time. Anyway its a great app to keep you on track and I hope we see an dedicated iPad app for it soon.

That's all for now and remember, live better.

Apps used in this post: Producteev, Skitch, Blogger