I think “remind me of this” through siri is universal? It’s not like the apple Mail remind me option, but a reminder in the reminders app when you activate siri anywhere and say “remind me of this in [x period]“)
This isn’t working for me, but it’s a really weird “glitch”. Siri acknowledges the request, but isn’t pulling through the current email - often it’s not even the last email I interacted with, but something from maybe 10-15mins previously. I will need to explore this in more detail when I’m not meant to be doing my emails (I am terrible at replying to emails and playing with Siri is hardly clearing my backlog), but I’m mentioning it here in case you’ve come across this before and already know what the problem is.
(I was using the hotkey trigger for Siri, as I’ve never used Siri before and am not comfortable with the voice trigger - I have since tested that to see if it’s the hotkey causing problems, but it isn’t - the problem is the same however Siri is triggered.)
Edited to add: I’m talking about MacOS (Ventura). I can see @Bmosbacker is using this feature on iPad, but I’d wanted to get Mac running first before I experiment with other devices.
Things has this feature too
Really awesome reply and I absolutely agree with you, I’ve found workarounds to most of these things, however I’ve reached the point where I’ve got friction in many areas of my Things usage that just detract from the overall experience.
I need to be clear here, I want to use Things, I absolutely love Things. I’m just trying to be objective about what is more important, functionality that get’s tasks into my workflow fastest and most reliably, minimises the time spent on the app (rather managing tasks) whilst showing me what’s going on without having to flick between Today & Upcoming or setup multiple view windows on MacOS and iPadOS.
Deadlines view, yep I get it, however the kind of view I was talking about is this that shows at a glance what is going on.
On MacOS and iPad to get a unified task list of today and upcomming - open main window, set to today, put in right place. Then open second window, put beside and choose upcomming. I have automated this on MacOS using BetterTouch tool & Mosaic (to get the specific monitor target correctly and reliably), but it isn’t foolproof, this level of complexity is what I’m talking about, I just want to see a unified list of Today and Upcoming without having to use tags that add yet more friction:
Inbox
Quick entry is only one item, import from Reminders doesn’t let you save to today and using Siri will add to inbox if you don’t specify a date.
New task notifications in Today
I hadn’t noticed it going away, might need to re-test, agree this is an annoyance more than anything else, should be an option to disable.
Notifications / Deadline
Reminders doesn’t have the concept of a date for something and a notification, it’s one and the same. I think for me, a reminder on all tasks due on the day they are due is what I need. Hence the other point about having to set a due date and a deadline to get a notification (and I could be missing something).
No broader OS remind me about this and no Siri on MacOS
Yep Apple are absolutely to blame here without question, this is puzzling. I have played with the Things helper, however the workflow never quite stuck for me.
I’ve picked up a few things from your reply, so thanks for taking the time.
I fully expect this will be in my future also, I’ve fumbled from Todoist, OmniFocus, Any.Do (still have a soft spot), Reminders, Things, Microsoft Planner…and every other task management app. Without question, Things 3 has been the longest single uninterrupted period of task management app use I’ve had.
I have my fingers crossed that V4 could add some further options and Apple could open Siri on MacOS and the “remind me of this” feature more broadly.
1 Like
As did I, until a few days ago when I gave it a go, and realised it was indeed more universal than I thought. Sadly Things with Helper app with keyboard shortcut is highly limited and doesn’t work in most apps I’m using.
1 Like
I created a Shortcuts to show a unified list of upcoming tasks in Things, I use it when I do the weekly review.
I think it could help you (if I understood your needs correctly):
You can download it here:
https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/bbb43f66b26d4abbbeeaea864648751d
5 Likes
Thanks for sharing and contributing, I’m going to spend a bit of time today going through this feedback with the desire to stay with Things.
What I thought was a win with the merging of deadlines and dates something should be done, results in quite a few notifications popping up, so that might not be a benefit of Reminders.
I’m going to run in parallel for a while and see how it goes, with an open mind and see where I can up (I’m still hopeful for Things 4 
Lots of good thoughts in the posts. FYI, I use both Reminders and Things. I stopped Omnifocus many years ago and never looked back.
-
I use Reminders for reminders, e.g. scheduled (date and time) for things I want to be reminded about, e.g. “Pick up Kids at School” every weekday at 3 p.m, or “Take Pills” every day at 6:30 a.m., or … it’s a relatively short list, but I get a gentle reminder on Macs and iPhone which I appreciate.
-
I use Things for things todo. That list is longer and sometimes has more complex notes or whatever. I use most of the features the app provides in terms of view, lists, target dates, deadlines, etc. Sometimes I put in un-dated things that I’d like to “remember”, e.g. a hotel recommendation for a city I often visit–the result being I build lists of things to remember but as undated they don’t show up on “Today” or “Upcoming”. I’d fail using Reminders this way, and putting “reminders” in Things just clutters it up.
Works for me.
6 Likes
I like your distinction here. I sort of do that, though I didn’t realise that was what I was doing until I read your comment.
My task manager is NotePlan, but if I want an alert for something I stick it in Reminders. I used to keep lots of other lists in Reminders (e.g. films to see), but I’ve moved a lot of that to dedicated notes in Notes, because I didn’t need to see it cluttering up Reminders and it certainly doesn’t belong in my task manager (I maintain a tag called “list” now in Notes, to find all my lists). I still have lists I don’t like in Reminders, but haven’t decided what to do with them yet (e.g. YouTube things to watch - the iOS sharesheet is just soooo easy for adding a URL to a Reminders list and formats it with a nice title, so I’ve not made an effort to find a better home for these types of lists yet).
Occasionally Reminders is my non-work task manager for the day as well. Like today is Sunday and I’ve accidentally ended up with a lot of tasks to complete, so I just dumped them all out my brain and into Reminders where I can tick them off as I go (or ignore them and loiter in the MPU forum instead…). Sometimes I make an Apple Note with the same function - just a quick list of a day’s tasks that I can delete after, but I like that Reminders can split them into morning, afternoon and evening, and I have a Today Reminders widget on my iPhone so I don’t need to do anything extra to keep the list visible all day.
5 Likes
Me, too … NotePlan for tasks, except I use the Due app instead of Reminders to alert me when something is due (
) which may or may not be a task. I don’t use the Reminders app at all but appreciate NotePlan’s integration with the Apple Calendar app. (NotePlan would integrate with Reminders, if I used Reminders.)
@karlnyhus @Pupsino Do you use Noteplan’s other features, for note-taking and PKM, or do you strictly use it as a task manager?
Sure do. The Daily Note is where it is at for me! But I also spin up project notes and I keep a simple set of GTD notes.
1 Like
You can short-circuit this a bit by just telling Siri, “Remind me in Omnifocus blah blah”
1 Like
Thank you!! This has been a big win for me as I’ve been trying to find a way to integrate Outlook with Reminders ever since migrating from Spark a few months ago.
I’m not a big fan of talking to Siri on my Mac, so have enabled ‘Type to Siri’ within accessibility and enabled a text replacement (;rem to quickly write ‘Remind me about this’) so that it’s a little like using a keyboard shortcut to get a link to an Outlook email in Reminders.
The main problem is that the name of the Reminder is always just ‘Read email’ so I need to change that manually each time. Unless anyone can think of a better way to capture a specified Reminder name in the instruction I give to Siri?
I’m going through a similar transition. I used OmniFocus for many many years (back when it was kinkless) and moved to Things a few years ago. I’m currently trying Todoist and really enjoying the natural language input. Pair it with the Raycast plugin and it gets even better. I have a situation where my team use ClickUp but I can’t stand it for task management, imagine a task manager that doesn’t allow you to set a reminder on a task and getting stuff into it is awful. I need to be able to capture stuff assigned to me in ClickUp and Todoist makes that pretty easy.
I’m using Reminders for quick and recurring reminders but this thread has me thinking I should give it another look and see if it can handle everything I need.
Hi Mitch, sorry for the slow reply, lots of deadlines at work presently (NotePlan is definitely earning its keep at the moment!).
NotePlan isn’t my “official” PKM. I use DevonThink for that (which I love and it’s probably not hyperbole to say it changed my life). In fact, I archive old notes from NotePlan into DevonThink. I’m not sure that’s a normal user behaviour, but e.g. I only have calendar notes from the last couple of months in NotePlan, the rest have all been archived in DT. I do this so that the search function in NotePlan only shows current, recent and pending tasks/notes. (This is really easy to do as the notes are just text/markdown files in an iCloud folder with a standard naming convention. I drap and drop!).
I have a template set up for my daily notes (templates are easy to create and amend, I tweak mine a lot!). One tool I found very valuable in NotePlan is the ability to import calendar events as a list, which I do every day. Then I have a list of all my meetings and their times. Mine are set up to import as H3 in markdown. Then I can add notes for meetings under each header for things I need to remember for specific meetings that day. Another good thing about templates is they don’t install by default, and you can add them to a note at any time. I tend to only set up templated days a few weeks in advance, and it doesn’t erase existing notes when you add a template later. (This is good because I might already have notes in a day a few months from now, but I probably haven’t added a template for that day yet. When I do, I can then just move my notes to the right headings).
I do use the folder & note structure in NotePlan (only for work-related items) and have notes other than calendar notes (I think the available calendar notes are daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual. You can tick which you want to use - I only use daily, weekly and monthly currently and am thinking of dropping the weekly view). I have folders based on my main areas of work, and within each I have what are basically project notes that sit outside the calendar note structure. I mostly keep meeting notes, thoughts, and scribbles to myself in those alongside actual tasks - one note per project. I also have a folder just with notes for how to do some tasks that I have at work, so it is a PKM for stuff very specific to my job (e.g. how to upload an image to our image library correctly, etc.). I archive project notes in DT once a project is complete and has no use in NotePlan any more.
I mostly live in the daily note but I try to be diligent about creating a project note for bigger pieces of work and keeping most tasks in that note instead, just so it’s all in one place (you can link to notes, so in my daily note my task might just be “work on project X” and I can go to the project X note to see pending tasks and thoughts.
NotePlan works for me because I want to write notes alongside tasks, and that was often why other apps failed for me (it took me a long time to realise that’s what I needed). I often don’t just write “Send email to X”. I also have “here is X’s message about subject A.”, “Here’s a comment from Y about subject B which I think X also needs to know about”, etc. I want to be able to add these notes alongside the tasks and I really dislike having tasks isolated from my thoughts about the tasks. To me, this is as close as I’ve got so far to mimicking a paper diary where you could scribble little memos to yourself along the tasks and meetings you had.
4 Likes
Thanks, @Pupsino , and no worries about the delayed response.
By odd coincidence, I’ve been moved to blow the dust off DevonThink in the past 48 hours, and thinking of using it as an Obsidian complement or replacement. So if you care to talk about how you’re using DT, I’d love to hear it. No rush…
I started a separate topic.
If you’re free to jump in I’d love to hear what you have to say. If you don’t have the time or inclination, that’s fine too.
Given the amount of people that kindly offered input and guidance here, thought I’d report a quick update.
I’m still using both Things 3 and Reminders (however with Goodtask) as a test, and love different things about either solution.
As things stand right now I my feeing is that Things will win in the end, mainly due to the power keyboard shortcuts that I have explored deeper (and has changed how I use things, specifically with changing due dates).
@ldebritto - thanks for the tom9 suggestion for creating deadlines, this is a key step forward for me.
@wappa - thank you for the many suggestions
I’d still like to see a single list of tasks showing today and upcoming, and the option of just adding all new tasks to today by default (and getting rid of the inbox), but I think I can live with these issues, just to get the overall better design and user experience.
6 Likes