Tada!

Getting things done is an elusive concept, especially for people who just can't wrap around their heads the concept of simply having too much to do with too little time avaliable. Getting things done for me also gets ridiculous when you waste way too much time understading the GTD concept... time probably better spent doing something else more productive. But anyway, I know little about GTD and David Allen would surely prove me wrong, with one of his hands tied to his back.

In any case, one concept I am constantly going back to is the ancient thing called a TODO list. I've gone through a lot, from a simple piece of paper to a full fledged online organizer, with a bazillion reminders and what not. iCal works quite well for most things, especially for remembering things happening in a mid-term future, but the proverbial right tool for the job for me right now is 37Signals' TadaList. It's a simple TODO list web app that lets you create very simple lists with very simple operations to act upon them. You can add, edit, remove items and thankfully you can also easily reorder items inside a list by simply drag and dropping, which I use to re-prioritize tasks on a whim.

So far I've been using it for a few days and it's working like a charm. No bells, no whistles, I simply look for the top of the list to see what's really pressing right now. Long-term, not so important tasks right now are buried in the bottom, sometimes off screen due to the list spanning more than a single screen page. Perfect.

See it for yourself.