I am extremely bad at being organized. When I say “extremely bad”, put double emphasis on extremely and you may understand me better. I have this natural tendency of “oh I will remember to do that” when assigned a task/work; when there are only a couple of tasks to do, this isn’t a problem. However, when the tasks list grows and the work is due at later dates, I find it harder and harder to remember what I need to do and when I need to do it. To force myself to become better organized – after a horrendous experience of completely forgetting to turn in an assignment – I tried to use Rainlendar, an excellent tasks/todo list manager for Windows. For the longest time I made use of Rainlendar as the tool to force me to write [type] things down. However, I eventually stopped using Rainlendar – and reverted back to my old ways – because using Rainlendar is a bit inconvenient; I don’t always have access to my laptop and having to remember tasks until I can input them into Rainlendar sort of defeated the purpose of me using a tasks manager.

Thus, recently after shifting to an Android phone, I have decided to once again punish myself by making myself use a task/todo list manager to better organize my life. As I am sure you all know, I am fairly picky when it comes to software and with so many options out there, I was not about to settle for a bloated to hard-to-use task manager. In a flurry I installed 5-10 task managers, evaluating each one for convenience, looking for one that made me excited to use a task manager (ha-ha). After the first few ones, I was fairly disappointed because it seemed like I just couldn’t find an app that is very user-friendly. Then I hit upon MyTasks and my heart melted (okay, I am hyperbolising a little bit).

As the name implies, MyTasks is – drum roll please – a task/todo list manager:

There are two main reasons MyTasks is such an attractive package:

• MyTasks is extremely easy-to-use. Some tasks managers error on the simplicity side: They make it extremely easy to add a new task but make it inconvenient to customize the settings requiring users to manually go into task settings after creating the task to do things like set due date, priority, etc. (i.e. Astrid Task/Todo List). Other tasks managers bombard you with settings: When going to add a new task, you have the ability to add name, time, date, reminder, sync, etc. (i.e. Checkmark Todo Manager). MyTask, on the other hand, does not make it inconvenient to customize task settings nor does it bombard you with settings for each task. When creating a task, you are presented with an organized, clutter-less screen:

If you want to add priority status, due date, and/or notes to a task, you simply click the checkbox next to the respective setting and add it:

(The “Due date” can be set to “In 5 minutes”, “In 15 minutes” ,”In 30 minutes”, “In 1 hour”, “In 1 day”, or users can set a custom date and time.)

When you are ready to save the task, simply hit the menu key and select “Save” and the task is created and will show up on the main screen of MyTasks.

• MyTasks is beautiful: The animations are smooth, the color scheme is easy on the eyes, and the UI is aesthetically pleasing.

Once a task is created, you can “complete” it by clicking the checkbox by it (the checkbox turns green – screen the first screenshot), press and hold on the task to access menu that allows you to view, edit, delete, or e-mail the task…

…and view full details about the task by clicking on it:

If you want to delete tasks in mass, you can do so via the – button:

Other handy features of MyTasks include:

• The ability to filter tasks by their status or priority level:

(Click on eye located at the bottom bar to access the filter menu.)

• The ability to search tasks:

(Click on magnifying glass located at the bottom bar to access the filter menu.)

• Backup/restore tasks:

(Click on down arrow located at the bottom bar which will bring up the new bar at the bottom, that you see in the above screenshot.)

All backups are stored locally (i.e. on your phone) and restoring a backup does not do a “complete” restore per se. Rather, it just adds in all the tasks from the backup to your current tasks list. In other words, doing a restore will not delete/remove the tasks you have currently.

• The settings:

Now, as much as I like MyTasks, the program still has its fair share of cons; these are critical changes which I would like to see made to MyTasks:

• Add the ability to set a custom date based off a calendar as opposed to having to input the date. Having to input a date makes it very inconvenient for those that don’t know, for example, what the date of next Tuesday is.
• Add a widget. Having a widget on your home screen that tells gives you quick access to tasks is extremely, extremely useful. Not having a widget is potentially a deal-breaker for many people.
• Add the ability to sync with calendars (Google Calendar, Android’s calendar, etc. While I personally don’t miss the lack of sync capability (I wouldn’t use it even if it was there), I know many people would like this feature added.

In addition to the critical changes, there are a few other changes that should be made to MyTasks, but I don’t consider them to be overly critical:

• Add the ability to notify a user of a task X minutes/days before the due date. This ensures that people that forgot about the task have the ability to be reminded before it is due.
• Add some ability to organize tasks into groups, either by tagging them, creating categories, etc. The ability to organize tasks would make MyTasks more user-friendly, making it easier for users that work to do for more than one job/class/etc.
• Make the up/down arrows when selecting a custom date/time larger. Currently the buttons are so small (especially for us large fingered people).
• Instead of making the user have to press the settings key to bring up the save button – when creating tasks – make the save button always show at the bottom. This saves the user an extra step of having to press another key.

All in all, though, without a doubt MyTasks is one of the best and most easy-to-use tasks/todo list managers you will find on Android. Yes it has its shortcomings, and I really hope the developer makes the changes I mentioned above because that would make MyTasks the best as opposed to being one of the best; but it is an app that you will thoroughly enjoy using – and that is the main attraction to this program.

Last but not least, MyTasks is free but if you want to support the developer you can purchase the donation version for $2.95. (The free and donation versions have the exact same features.)

To grab MyTasks, search the Android Marketplace for “MyTasks”, use your bar code scanner on the QR code (found below), or load up this page on your Android phone and click on the following link:

Version reviewed: v1.9.2

Price: Free with a donation version

MyTasks