The best task management tool is one that helps me forget.

I have been using the public beta of Things for who knows how long (probably just as long as many of you), and this week we rejoiced when Things 1.0 was officially released.

It is a rarity to find an application that marries look, feel and function all into a single, polished, top-shelf solution. I have had nothing but excellent user experiences with Things on my Mac and on my iPhone; and I use both of them every day.

Of course, then we cried as we finally had to get off our butts, pull out our wallets and pay for the software we’ve so long been using free of charge.

Ironically, not too long ago I was an advocate of good ole’ fashioned pen and paper to-do lists. Yet I now find myself eating the words I wrote just 6 months ago:

…I will never be a completely paper-free individual. My to-do list has always existed on paper. And it always will.

Oops.

At least the principle I mentioned in that article still stands true: Necessity Necessitates the Necessities. I moved away from a paper to-do list because I needed to.

Over the past 8 months more and more of my daily responsibilities revolve around sending and replying to emails. It’s a big part of the way things are run around here, and thus I get most of my action items via my email inbox.

Therefore moving to a software-based system with a task management app that had good email integration was the necessary choice for me. Though not fully embraced at first, it was actually an easy transition for me to go from tactile to digital.

I have used GTD apps before, but never with longevity (mostly because I never found one that worked or felt right to me). For better or for worse, I am a naturally organized person, and my brain is always thinking things through. Which means I don’t very much want a task management app for the sake of remembering something, but rather for the sake of forgetting it.

I need a place to dump all my ideas, projects and to-do items so I can happily live in the here-and-now rather than in the what’s-to-come. And Things’ ability to handle vast amounts of lists, notes, tags and data-mapping is better than any other app I’ve used and far better than my paper system.

I like Things because it’s finally the task management app that helps me to forget about stuff.