It seems like there’s a new to-do list app on the market every day, and each of them tries to innovate the way you get things done by changing different aspects of the productivity process. There are apps that try to streamline the task input process, or reinvent the way you organize your tasks into lists and folders. What is relatively uncommon, however, is putting more emphasis on the way apps are prioritized. For the most part, productivity apps handle the priority issue in one of a few ways: they allow you to flag or star a task as important, or in some cases allow you to assign a priority (1-9) to each task.
Today we’re going to take a look at Any To Do, a to-do list app that focuses on providing a non-linear approach to organizing your tasks based on importance and urgency. By plotting your tasks on an innovative matrix, you can decide on-the-fly whether to tackle your most urgent or most important tasks first. Any To Do is sleek, well-designed, and loaded with features, so hit the jump and let’s get started.
Interface
I find myself partial to dark-themed iOS apps (for example, I prefer Twitterrific over the official Twitter app), and in this sense, Any To Do delivers. The interface is a gorgeous dark-tone and silver combination, with the app’s icon-shade teal thrown in as flare here and there.
The main screen gives you an overview of outstanding tasks.
The controls make it easy to input tasks with few taps (more on that later), and minimize the need to drill in and out of excessive menus, which remains, for me, the plague of the more complex and featured iPhone applications.
Inputting And Organizing Your Tasks
What sets Any To Do aside from the plethora of organizational and to-do list apps in the App Store is the way in which it organizes your tasks. As I mentioned before, you’re likely to find relatively unhelpful numerical prioritization or simple flags and stars to be standard practice as far as marking tasks as urgent or important is concerned. With Any To Do, tasks are organized into a matrix with your “important” tasks on the Y axis and your “urgent” tasks on the X axis.
To get started, simply tap the New To-Do button at the bottom of the home screen, title the task and decide whether the task is going to be urgent, important or both (or neither).
Quick entry of tasks places them into the matrix grid in order of urgency and importance.
Based on these qualities, Any To Do places your task into the matrix (which can be re-themed). This way, depending on when you have time to knock out your to-do’s, you can see at a glance which tasks require your attention most.
Any To Do is designed to be easy to use, so if your tasks are as simple as a title, then you’re completely set. However, if you like to provide a bit more detail to your tasks, the app accommodates more robust organizational habits as well.
For the more detail oriented, Any To Do has a beefy list of details for each task.
By hiding the keyboard on the main task input screen, you can gain access to a whole list of detailed settings for each app. You can move a task to another list, set a reminder or repeat occurrences, attach a location, various types of media files and notes, and you can share your task with iCal, Twitter, Facebook or Bump, all from this single screen.
In the event that you need to revisit your completed tasks or check up on any missed reminders, both screens can be accessed from the main screen, with the buttons on either side of the New To-Do button.
Revisit completed tasks or check up on missed reminders.
Settings and Extras
Any To Do sports a pretty robust Settings pane, giving you plenty of utility and customization to make the app work best for you.
Settings and Evernote sync let you customize Any To Do just the way you want it.
Of course, you can change your standard settings like the home screen icon badge, color scheme, reminders as well as your iCal, Twitter and Facebook settings, but one of the most useful features I found is the Evernote sync. By setting up Any To Do to sync with Evernote, you can ensure that your tasks are congruent between your iPhone, the iPad version of the app, as well as the web.
With the ability to share tasks via multiple outlets as well as sync tasks with an organizational system like Evernote, Any To Do shows some solid promise as a team management app. It may not be the most robust solution, but I think it makes a step toward a trend of being able to use your app of choice while still being able to coordinate team efforts among your peers.
Conclusion
Any To Do takes a unique approach to prioritizing your tasks and organizing your productivity. As its major selling point, I find that this innovative method really sets the app apart from the competition, while keeping some of the same core functionality you would expect in an iPhone to-do list app.
If you haven’t already settled in on your task management app of choice, give Any To Do a spin and let us know what you think!