I’ve been using Things as my main productivity app almost since it came out, even bought a touch version to keep my tasks in a pocket. But something went wrong: since I saw The Hit List I felt in love with it. The Hit List immediately replaced Things in my Dock, and even the lack of iPhone companion doesn’t keep me from doing that (Andy says that iPhone app is in the works, and I hope it’ll be ready sometime soon). So why did I make that decision?
Things actually never felt right to me. It is a nicely built app, and the guys behind it are awesome, but…
Things has two levels for organising your tasks: Projects and Areas. While Projects contain To-Do’s, Areas can hold both. It was always hard for me to promote task to the Project level, since this makes me feel quite different about it. The Hit List has much more flexibility: it allows you to create Lists, Folders, and Smart Folders. Each To-Do item in a list can have as much subtasks as you want, and that is really handy for splitting your errands into a smaller parts.
What’s that flexibility for? Here’s an example: I wanted to have my shopping lists in Things, but couldn’t decide where to put them: I don’t consider it a Project (and it shouldn’t be finished while I’m still alive :-). Is it an Area of Responsibility? Maybe, but if I have one for shopping I’ll end up with a huge mix of different items. Eventually I got another app on my iPhone called Shopper, which I used only once or twice, actually. On the other hand, in The Hit List I only created one list, parent To-Do for groceries and subtasks for each of the food items. I can even group everything I need for making a dinner together!
Keyboard navigation in The Hit List is really powerful: you can do almost anything without touching the mouse (trackpad in my case): mark task as completed, make it repeating, set start and due dates, etc. While learning more shortcuts, I’m amazed by how much thought Andy had put into them.
When you launch The Hit List for the first time, it has a tutorial, which really does help to understand how the app works and teaches most of the navigation goodness. I don’t really know any of the keyboard shortcuts in Things even after using it for a year or so!
Things feels really boring. Let me explain. It has a lot of grayish and pale colors, nothing bright and catchy. Since I’m generally a very lazy person (I’m trying to change, and looks like The Hit List helps me with that), Things couldn’t motivate me to do anything. It stayed in my Dock, numbers on a badge grew, but I just couldn’t force myself to click that boring icon. The Hit List has much more fun in it: it uses some bringt colors (love the notebook-like backgrounds) and plays a nice sound when you mark a task as completed: “DING-DONG”! That’s like a reward for doing something!
After I wrote this (but not yet published) Andy tweeted a link to one awesome post. Nic is so right! Let me just quote him:
Micro reward is most of the time a sound or an animation. It will bring nothing new in the game but it will reinforce the player’s sense of accomplishment.
The perfect example is Peggle. From the incremental sound of the ball hitting pegs to the craziness of the last peg, the game transforms small achievement into big deal. And the result is clear, you keep playing in the same way I keep trying to complete task in The Hit List.
There are lot more nice touches in The Hit List, like it’s mighty undo capabilities and timing tasks, but I won’t go into them. I didn’t want to review The Hit List with this post, just said why I chose it over Things.
P.S. So many people seem to fall in love with The Hit List! Way to go, Andy!
