Task Management Hack: Captio to Asana

It has been a while.  I have been a bit busy with our company Tellagence.  Because life is a bit crazy I'm always looking for ways to be more efficient.  I have always looked at task management systems and I have currently settled on Asana.  It is a good system that is improving consistently but one area that is lacking is the speed that I can enter a task on my phone.  They have decided to build the application using a mobile site which requires it to reload every time.  Not good for the need. 

My memory sucks.  If you have to wait more than a second to enter a task it becomes an issue.  I know that sounds crazy but when you think of a task you need to get it out of your head and captured.  Many times you are doing something that you don't want it to distract you from for more than a second or two - like talking with someone.  

One of the blogs I read is by Brad Feld.  He recently blogged about a task took he uses - Captio.  It is a great little app which allows you to email yourself a task very quickly.  Because I apply GTD as my methodology for organization another email does not do me much good.  I don't use my email inbox as a task list (bad idea).  

Asana allows you to email tasks but the email that comes from Capito is a standard email address so I had some concerns about someone else doing the same thing.  Then I might get other people's tasks and vice versa.  So I needed to auto forward any email to my gmail account from Capito to Asana.  I couldn't figure it out very easily so I used my favorite tool on the internet - IFTTT.  

I created a task that hooked to my gmail and forwarded any email from Capito to Asana.  Now I have a quick task hack.  You can use my recipe here.  

Apple Continues to Push the Retail Experience

I had to run into the Apple store today in downtown Portland like I have many times before.  I am always amazed at the number of people that are in there ALL the time - which may be why they have proposed to the City of Portland to build an amazing store downtown.  

Apple has always been great at making the shopping experience something you desire at most other stores.  Most of the store employees can check you out with their iPhone but today there was a new twist.  

If you walk in with your iPhone, have on wireless and location services you can use the Apple Store app to check yourself out for any item that does not require someone to get it out of the back.  It was cool and easy.  You open the app, put the camera over the bar code (just like a QR code reader), enter your apple password and you are done.  It works just like if you bought an app or a song.  

The guy that was helping me said that they are suggesting it to all users.  If you walk in and need a cord or headphones or anything on the shelves you can scan it yourself and walk out.  No help required.  If you get stopped at the door you show your receipt on your phone - otherwise it is on the honor system.  

I found it amazing.  You can get the app here if you don't have it.  Nice job Apple.

A Video Every Entrepreneur Should Watch.

A friend passed this on to me last week.  This is an amazing video that supports that without passion you are missing a critical element of trying to achieve anything.  

How to Make Sense of the Explosion of Productivity Apps

Over the years I have been in search of a great application that will help me stay organized and be productive.  I need that compensating factor for who I know I am.  For years the digital options have been lacking.  A trend I have noticed over the past year is a resurgence in taks management, collaboaration and project apps.  There have been significant developments on this even in the past month.  Here is a post about my thoughts as well as some upcoming posts I'm working on. 

Here are links to some of the sites I mention.

Omnifocus, Things, Toodledo, Action Method, Strides, Basecamp, Asana and Do.com

Tellagence Startup Update

Here is a post that I originally posted over on The Study of Social.

It has been an interesting 7 days.  We moved in a very positive direction that has seemed to have unlocked a bunch of things we needed to figure out.  Now the only issue is that we have to go back and redo some work on assumptions we had made around the business.  Enjoy and let us know what you think.