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What do Lists do that Tags+SmartLists don't?

traycerb says:
Honest question: Total n00b, just started with RTM and I'm doing an initial sweep (ala GTD, which I also just learned) and am trying to figure out if I need lists or not.

Benefits of Tags: Adding new tags is easier, autocomplete suggestions make adding older tags easy, can hav multiple tags on a given task, smart lists give me any list I could dream of, etc.

Where do lists fit in? Is there some subtle behavior I'm going to be regretting not having? Is there an upper limit to how many smart lists will display on the tabs (looks like I'll have ~100 projects, just a dozen complex ones, but many smaller ones)?

One concern is every task needs to belong to a list (i think). In that case I'll just need some catch-all list right?

My other concern was how lists v. tags would affect syncing with my PDA, but unfortunately, my PDA is too old (Pocket PC 2003) to use with MilkSync. I need Outlook to sync my PDA, and the official dogma is that Lists correspond with Outlook categories, and tags are either ignored or just stored (unhelpfully, IMO) in Outlook's Notes section.

If I'm abandoning Lists, then it makes more sense to use my Tags as Outlook Categories, so I crufted together some scripts of my own to 1-way sync tasks (RTM->Outlook) and now my RTM tags are Outlook categories. This works great as both Outlook and my PDA (with the help of Pocket Informant) can sort by categories, so I can see groups like "+next", "@computer", etc. It doesn't have the same "Smart List" capability, but neither does MilkSync from what I understand.

Any thoughts on any of this?
Posted at 7:38pm on September 25, 2008
traycerb says:
oh one other thing, I plan on using RTM (heavily) with the Firefox Gmail addon. How will the Tags v. Lists affect that?
Posted 15 years ago
traycerb says:
well, partially answered my own question when I came across the following post (which, BTW, I would have seen before ever starting this topic if RTM's forum search worked properly, eg searching for: "smart lists" (using the quotes) produces zero results. i needed to use google to get any results):

http://www.rememberthemilk.com/forums/help/5289/

no, non-smart lists don't add anything, and it looks like smart lists show up in gmail as well, so that's the road I'll go down.
Posted 15 years ago
erik says:
I think one of the only real drawbacks is that you cannot share smart lists. If you don't share then I would say stay in a single list with lots of smart lists.
Posted 15 years ago
traycerb says:
it's odd i'm having this conversation primarily with myself, but in case anyone else is reading, a (big) deficiency of tags is that they cannot include spaces or even capital letters. see: http://www.rememberthemilk.com/forums/ideas/3161/

This really hampers the ability to use them (easily) as project names, as underscores/hyphens are the only (kludgy) workaround. I'll stil give it a go and see how it turns out...

Posted 15 years ago
jamexcel says:
Traycerb,

1) Can one create a script to transfer the RTM tags into WM6+ "Tasks" Categories (RTM -> directly to WM6.PDA) ??

...and if not with the original WM-Tasks manager, how about using Pocket Informant, but still "directly onto the PDA", without going through Outlook?

********

When you say that "non-smart lists don't add anything": are you saying that because you go via Outlook+Scripts? Because I thought that smart lists will not directly-sync with a PDA, where as the non-smart lists will be synched as WM-Task categories.
Posted 15 years ago
This topic has now been closed automatically due to a lack of responses in the past 90 days.