There are a ton of todo apps, and with so many out there, the waters can seem pretty murky when looking for a new task management solution. I decided to give YellingMom a go, though, because the reminders seemed so easy and it’s got a pretty great setup for rescheduling tasks when I’ve run out of time. Add to that Evernote sync, and YellingMom seems like a pretty sweet option. I’m going to run it through its paces and see if it’s as good as it looks to be.
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Planning for Today and Beyond
All of my YellingMom todos were slotted into three categories, Today, Tomorrow and Someday. This let me keep an eye on what I had going on right now and what would be happening soon. Anything on the slate for the future is kept off of my immediate radar but is still close at hand. I headed into YellingMom’s settings to make sure that all my events scheduled for tomorrow are pushed onto my today list at midnight.
Otherwise, they’ll just sit in the next day’s list forever, and while this could have utility for some people and may even bring a strange satisfaction to chronic procrastinators, I liked having my events automatically stepped up without any effort on my part.
There are lots of great ways to add tasks, and they’re organized by Today, Tomorrow, and Someday.
The default YellingMom list is Reminders, a sort of blanket catch-all for anything upcoming, but it was easiest enough to add more lists to sort out all of my todos. Tap the menu icon in the upper left and hit Create New List. From there it’s a simple thing to name it anything, from Household Chores, to Work, to Party Planning. Any new lists will come with the same categories, Today, Tomorrow and Someday, so the tools are still there to easily plan and schedule any todos.
Create a new todo in YellingMom by dragging down on any list. The todo will automatically be added to the active category, or in the combined view, the todo is added to . There are some great reminder options included in todo creation, but these are available when editing a todo, too. Reminders can be set for every hour, every three hours, or for a specific time and date. I added a task to the wrong category, but it was a simple thing to shift it over.
Plan events you can’t set a timeframe on.
There are a series of gestures used to control todos. Swipe a task to the right to check it off of the list. Keep swiping to the right to reveal options for pushing it out to tomorrow or further or even move it to another YellingMom list. Swipe a todo to the left to mark it as important; it can now be found in the starred tasks list. Pull it further to the left to lock the todo so it can’t be edited at all. I loved how easy it was to work with tasks, but I wasn’t fully on board with locking my todos, because I’m not really sure how useful that’s going to be.
Controlling Procrastination
I don’t think I can say enough about the alarms and reminders in YellingMom. I set a reminder and expected it to just tell me it was time to take care of that todo. If it turns out I’m not ready, though, I’m sort of out of luck. The app says it’s time, and if I happen to disagree it usually takes some effort to reschedule tasks. Not so with YellingMom.
Create reminders and reschedule a task with ease.
When an alarm sounds for a task, mark it as done or reschedule it for sometime in the future. The defaults range from 10 minutes to 3 hours, or just push it to the next day and forget about it until tomorrow. The only bummer is that the task doesn’t actually move to the Tomorrow list. It’s sort of stuck in Today. The reminder is reset for the next day, though, and that’s all that matters, I guess.
Final Thoughts
I really liked YellingMom a lot. It’s got a great look that makes it simple to get to all of my tasks. The lists are a nice way to manage my different todos, and I like being able to see what’s on deck for the next day or so without being overwhelmed with everything I have to do. It even has Evernote sync, so I could access all of my tasks away from my phone.
Add more lists for extra organization.
Really the best thing about YellingMom, though, is how easy it is to reschedule my tasks and set reminders. Moving todos from one day to the next keeps anything from getting lost. I’m able to manage everything I need to do, and nothing falls through the cracks. YellingMom always makes sure I’m on the right page and that I get my todos done.
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