Palm and Treo Hacks

Get the Most Out of the To Do List

Everyone already knows what you can do with the To Do List. This hack covers things that go a step beyond that.

This hack covers a series of tips and techniques for the built-in To Do List. Some more involved hacks for the To Do List, such as using it for project management [Hack #11] or managing school work [Hack #9] , are covered elsewhere in the book and won’t be repeated here.

Use Priorities for Grouping

You can use priorities for grouping items within a category (see Figure 1-4). For example, if you have a category like Shopping List, then you might put items from the grocery store as priority 1, hardware store as priority 2, and electronics store as priority 3. Then, each store’s items appear together in the list. When you have checked off all the items at the grocery store (priority 1), then you are done with that store. Thus, you will have more time to spend at the hardware store and the electronics store.

Figure 1-4. Using priorities for grouping in the To Do List

Priorities in Action

Here is a simple example of priorities. Let’s assume that you are going to track CDs to buy, videos to rent, and movies to watch. For this example, the items will be combined into an Entertainment category. I use priorities to distinguish different types of media within the category. Movies will be priority 1, videos 2, and CDs 3. Also, I record movie release ...