Remember the Milk is web-based task management app.

It’s been a month since I made Remember The Milk (RTM) part of my daily life. At this point, I’d go through massive withdrawals if I had to “Forget The Milk”.

Tips:

• It’s not very obvious that you can edit multiple tasks at the same time by pressing ‘m‘. This is really useful, because I often find myself wanting to tag or schedule several related tasks to reduce repetitive keystrokes and mouse gestures.
• There is a huge list of advanced search options. You can convert any set of search results into a dynamic Smart List. For example, if you search for “dueBefore:tomorrow” you can create a list which will always show the current and overdue tasks for today. Just click the “Save” tab to the right of the results. This gives you a list you can work on until it’s empty, instead of the default lists which will always have future tasks at the bottom. It’s far more motivating to work toward an empty “to do” list!
• Make your lists “Getting Things Done” contexts like @Errands, @Home, @Office and @Study.
• Your lists sort on priority by default. If you change the sorting drop-down to due date it will still sort each date by priority. This makes it easy to spot the occasional high priority task that’s overdue, which you generally want to handle before today’s tasks.
• If you’re like me, it’s a hassle to try to find a specific browser tab when you have 100 tabs open across 15 Firefox windows. Try firing up RTM in a separate browser (IE, Opera, Safari). This makes it a lot easier to jump around the desktop taskbar throughout the day while being productive.

Surprises:

• I originally looked at RTM for the Twitter integration, but I find myself adding tasks through their web interface more often than I use the IM->Twitter->RTM functionality.
• We set up our entire team on RTM so we can share tasks, but with RTM is always reminding me about the next productive thing I should be doing I rarely find myself dwelling on what other people are doing.

Likes:

• Reoccurring tasks are my favorite feature. These help ensure I’m making constant progress on our business objectives (“reply to forum posts every weekday”, “reply to blog comments every weekday”, “assign project tasks every Monday”, “audit the backups every Sunday”), as well as the mundane household things I often overlook (“drag trash cans to curb every Thursday”, “make credit card payments every Friday”).
• The iPhone interface is very convenient, especially if you have context lists like @Errands.
• The flexibility on date entry is fantastic (e.g., “every other Thursday at 5pm”).
• Being able to send a single task to multiple contacts (without having to duplicate it) is a big time-saver.
• $25/yr for the Pro features is quite the bargain.

Peeves/Wishlist:

• It’s a little annoying that the current task remains checked after I save an edit. This forces me to habitually press ‘n‘ (select none) when maintaining my lists.
• I wish I could make my to-do & completed lists public so my contacts could see what I’m working on.
• It would be amazing if my contacts could be notified (by e-mail, Twitter) when I finish a particular task that they’re waiting on. That would be easy to pitch as the killer Pro feature.

If you aren’t using RTM yet, check it out!

Related reading:

• Lifehacker readers vote for Remember The Milk as the best web-based task manager.
• Remember The Milk now integrates with Gmail!