I've just finished my Masters by Research and have found that RTM was the single most useful piece of software for keeping me on track throughout the year!

I had a lot of different aspects for my project including experiments, writing, reading, outreach events and seminars to attend. RTM's ability to quickly and efficiently organise my time so I didn't forget anything was invaluable.

I have one main list (Uni - Master) which all my uni tasks were kept. Then I had several smart lists which were entitled Next actions, Lab, Report, Statistics, PhD Apps and Outreach.

The Next Actions list contained every action due in the location @University in the next couple of days so I had a good overview of what I was aiming to accomplish in the short term. The other lists correspond to a series of tag (The Lab list contains all tasks that are tagged #lab for example) showing the longer term aims (such as writing a chapter of my thesis) as well as the steps I needed to take to meet these goals. The smart lists were great as they provided easy access to what needs to be done in certain areas allowing batching of tasks for greater efficiency.

For example, if I had set up a PCR to run then I knew I had three hours to kill, so by checking my smart lists I was able to see that I needed to read a paper or write up an experiment, which enabled me to get down to something productive rather than wasting time finding something to do. The ability to have tasks repeating automatically was also really useful as there was a lot of routine work involved (feeding animals etc) so not having to rewrite a to-do list every week made things a lot easier.

Thanks RTM you made my Masters way more efficient!