Fed up with your bank’s hidden fees and customer service? Before you make the often time-consuming switch to another institution, consider checking out BankSwitcher. The web app (in beta, of course) asks you to grab the financial data from your old bank in the popular Quicken or Microsoft Money formats, then upload it to BankSwitcher. The site generates a list of everything you’d want to do to keep your same set-up—automatic payments, transfers, bill pays, and the like—at your new financial digs. The site repeatedly assures users that it keeps secure servers and doesn’t commit unnecessary information like passwords or account numbers to the hard drive, erasing them from memory after the list is generated. If that’s good enough for you, it could help you get up and running with a new bank and saving yourself money and headaches. Thanks, Keith! BankSwitcher
For the next week and a half, readers are submitting their best life hack for a chance to win an autographed copy of our new book, Upgrade Your Life. Reader Denis wanted to embed a to-do list on his Windows desktop, and came up with a no-install solution:
Lifehacker reader and mental state blogger Luciano writes about his main problem with creating a master task list, in the style of Getting Things Done: The “giant blob of threatening commitments” they can become after awhile. To keep a level head and get a daily feeling of accomplishment, he recommends the following: Take your to-do list and pick a few tasks that you will do the next day: not tasks that you want to do, or tasks that you think you might do — but tasks that you wholeheartedly commit to do. Replace your long list of intentions with a short list of commitments.
One stumbling block when you’re trying to get things done is getting in the habit of using a to-do list. The list can’t help you if you don’t check it.So how do you get in that habit of checking in with your to-do list so you stay on top of tasks and deadlines? First up I’d recommend that you set aside a few minutes at the start (or end) of each day to check in with your to do list. If you already have a morning ritual, it can make it easier to set up another habit at the same time. For example, if you have a cup of coffee first thing every morning, make that the time you ‘check in’ – soon you’ll be in the habit of checking in with your to-do list and setting your course for the day.But how do you get in the habit of using and checking the calendars or to-do list you’ve chosen to use?If you like to work from a homepage, you can embed your Google Calendar or a simple To-Do gadget app on your home page. But admittedly although I’ve got those things set up on my home page, I very rarely *see* my homepage unless it occurs to me that I want to check in. So that’s not a lot of help if you aren’t in the habit of checking in with your to-do list.Using a to-do list or calendar which pings you with reminders could do the trick – such as Google Calendar or Remember the Milk. Another option is I Want Sandy, a program which acts like a robot PA – you email it when you need to add an appointment or task to your to do list, it emails you tasks lists and reminders when appropriate. If you don’t habitually check your email (or you turn it of while working) then 43Folders had a suggestion today which might help you keep I Want Sandy front and centre – by using Fluid to create a site specific browser for Sandy, meaning it has a home on the desktop and will display on the Dock (if you’re a Mac user) to ensure it’s always visible and available. (A commenter noted that Windows users could use Prism for a similar effect.)
So how do you keep your to-do list in your face? If it’s a favourite calendar or reminder service, or just pinning your to-do list to the desktop, please share in comments.
Remember the Milk users, to keep your task list in the sidebar while you surf, bookmark the skinny, sidebar friendly RTM iGoogle module. Bookmark it (link below), and then from Firefox’s Organize Bookmarks dialog, select the new bookmark, open its Properties, and check off “Load bookmark in sidebar.” When it’s loaded in your sidebar, you can edit, complete, and schedule tasks on a reverse chronological list. Remember the Milk newbies, here’s how to get organised with RTM. Thanks, Cork!
Remember the Milk iGoogle moduleMac OS X only: New task manager Things, now in alpha testing, is a promising new option for Mac users looking to get organised on the desktop. Structurally, Things categorises tasks in a very Getting THINGS Done way (get it?), with an inbox, projects, and “next” (or Next Actions) view, as well as support for contacts to whom you may delegate tasks and tags (which you can use for context.) After the jump, check out some screenshots of the alpha version of Things.
Mac OS X Leopard only: Despite its unfortunate name, task manager Anxiety is a slick, good-looking, lightweight way to keep track of your to-do lists. Since Leopard now includes a “calendar store,” or central repository of tasks from both iCal and Mail.app, Anxiety taps into those lists and displays the items on your desktop. Add, change or check off a to-do in Anxiety, iCal or Mail? And the info updates across all three applications. Neat. Anxiety is a free download (donations encouraged) for Mac OS X Leopard only.
Anxiety [via Hawk Wings]Windows and Mac OS X: Task manager Sciral Consistency tracks to-do’s that don’t have hard and fast deadlines, but need to be done on a regular basis. Keep on top of when it’s time to clean out the fish tank, balance your checkbook, get a haircut, an oil change, a teeth cleaning, or simply when too much time has passed since you called Mom with Consistency, which creates a time-based horizontal grid of days. You enter a task and the minimum and maximum amount of time that should pass between each time you do it, and Consistency marks which tasks need doing and which you’ve still got time on for a given day. Sciral Consistency is a free download (with limited use) for Windows and Mac OS; a licence will set you back $25.
Sciral Consistency [Sciral via 43F]If you live out of your inbox and don’t have the luxury of a human assistant, check out newly launched webapp Sandy, an information tracker you interact with via email. Register for a free account and you’ll get an email address you can send your to-do’s, contacts, bookmarks, notes, and appointments to in keyworded messages. Sandy receives the email, parses, stores, and organises the information, and emails you back reminders and agendas only when you need ‘em.
Windows only: Free-for-now to-do list application Tudumo is styled for those aiming at Getting Things Done and geared to keyboard shortcut enthusiasts. All the basic to-do features like tags, due dates, action descriptions are present, but hitting one shortcut (Ctrl-Windows-T) from anywhere to add a quick item is a nice way to keep your list front-and-center. Tudumo also features quick as-you-type search and drag-and-drop tagging. Tudumo is a free download while it’s still in beta for Windows XP, 2000 and Vista and requires the Microsoft .NET 2.0 platform be installed.
Tudumo [via the How-To Geek]
