By Princess Jones
Early one Sunday morning I received an email from a man named Omer Perchik. My first thought was that it was SPAM. But SPAM will never get my unusual name correct. It always starts with “Hey Freddie” or “Sally, please answer this urgent message.” But this email started with a “Hi Princess” and the following photo:
When I read the email, I realized that this Omer Perchik was the founder and CEO of Any.do and that this photo was of the team. Any.do is a to-do app that has been around since late 2011 and has been praised by, among others Technical crunch, ForbesAnd Fast company. I had been using it on and off for a few months but had recently stopped using it completely.
“I’ll get to the point so I don’t waste too much of your time,” the email said. “I’ve been racking my brains trying to figure out how to ask you to give Any.do a second chance and finally decided the best way is to be honest and ask you. Our small team has honestly worked day and night to build a new Any.do that is ten times better than what you were using before. I know it’s annoying, but if you update your current version, or re-download Any.do from the App Store, you’ll see that the app is completely different now.”
To be honest, I left Any.do when Google released Inbox for beta. Inbox contained reminders and synced with my Google Calendar. But Inbox leaves a lot to be desired in terms of email and task management. Without a standalone app or even a web calendar integration, Inbox reminders were lost in a sea of email noise.
Omer’s email reached me. Maybe it was the simple, honest way it was worded. Maybe it was the fact that Inbox had lost its luster. Whatever it was, I was inspired to give Any.do another try. Here are my thoughts:
Loves
It is beautiful. No one wants to live in an app that looks like 1992. Any.do has a beauty and simplicity that makes it a joy to use. My favorite is the date display. It divides tasks into Today, Tomorrow, Upcoming and Someday, which is a very intuitive way to think about tasks.
It’s everywhere with everyone. Mobile. Web. Desktop. For those of us who work on different machines all day, it’s necessary to have a task app that goes where we go. You can also assign tasks to others, giving you the power to collaborate with your team.
The Any.do moment. The Any.do moment is a pop-up notification that appears at your desired time of day. You’ll be prompted to review your tasks for the day so you have time to review, organize, or edit them as needed.
Wishes
Integration with Google Calendar. I would like to see my calendar and tasks in one view. Currently it integrates with AnyCal, Any.do’s sister calendar product. But while AnyCal is a strong competitor, it isn’t anywhere strong enough to replace Google Calendar.
Kiip rewards are irrelevant. Any.do includes Kiip rewards, which are discount coupons when you complete a significant number of tasks. I understand that they are a better alternative to mobile ads, but they seem unnecessary. As a serious task organizer, I’m here to get things done. I don’t care about 20% off coupons. I’m glad there’s a way to disable them, but I think it’s a waste of space overall.
Shaking to clear all completed tasks is useless. Even after shaking, you must confirm the deletion. On the other hand, if you don’t acknowledge, imagine how many times you’ll lose all your entire tasks if you accidentally shake your phone. The real question is: why are deleted tasks still on the list anyway? They should go into a completed tasks folder and never be seen again unless we specifically ask to see them.
The verdict
Having spent another month with Any.do, I can confidently say that this is the task manager that Google wishes I had thought of first. It’s fast. It’s stylish. It is everywhere. Best of all, it understands how we organize tasks intuitively.
If I were to live out my fantasy, Google would buy Any.do and integrate it into the Google ecosystem so it would work with my other main productivity tools. I would like to open my Google Calendar for the day and see my Any.do tasks listed next to my appointments.
But if you’re looking for a feature-rich cloud app for tasks that makes it easy to get things done, try Any.do. You can thank me later.