One service I have been trying to implement in my daily life and help me complete and organize tasks at home, work, and on the web is Remember The Milk. I think it is a great service that if used right can be a powerful tool to keep things flowing.

Recenly on the Remember The Milk blog Doug Ireton did a guest post where he outlined a really nice system you can use for yourself to help you keep things organized with an advanced approach.

I thought he had some great ideas and felt I wanted to share the link to you the readers to check out one the service and two Doug's thoughts.

Hope you find it as useful and informative as I did.

[RTM Blog - Guest Post: Advanced GTD with Remember The Milk]

Two services I use to keep my daily activities and tasks organized are google calendar and remember the milk which I integrate with gmail and my mobile device to have it on the go as well.

Now of course anyone who reads this blog knows I use twitter on a daily basis as well...heck these days who doesn't so I wanted to share with you two services that allow you to add dates/tasks and retrieve information from services like remember the milk and google calendar.

The first we are gonna look at is Twittercal which of course allows you to send a direct message via twitter to the services twitter bot which in turn posts your information to your calendar...easy as that. You of course have to be following them and likewise but it is a free service so that is always a plus. An example of a message you might send would be as follows : d gcal meeting with fred on monday, 25th of june at 9am

The second service we are gonna look at is the remember the milk one which actually comes straight from remember the milk and this one has a ton of features you can use to add, get info, or complete tasks.

First you will want to follow RTM on twitter. Then you can use commands from the following list to do what you need :

Command list

You can direct message the following commands to rtm. You may receive a confirmation or info back via a return direct message.

Adding tasks

pick up the milk adds a new task with the specified name to the Inbox

call jimmy at 5pm tomorrow adds a new task with the specified name and due date to the Inbox

return library books in 2 weeks adds a new task with the specified name and due date to the Inbox

Sending tasks

@username pick up the milk sends task to the specified Twitter username (this person must be set up with Remember The Milk too)

Updating tasks

!complete call jimmy completes the specified task (shortcut: !c)

!postpone call jimmy postpones the specified task (shortcut: !p)

Getting tasks

!today gets tasks due today (shortcut: !tod)

!tomorrow gets tasks due tomorrow (shortcut: !tom)

!getdue friday gets tasks due on the specified date (shortcut: !gd)

!getlist personal gets tasks from the specified list (shortcut: !gl)

!gettag call gets tasks with the specified tag (shortcut: !gt)

!getlocation office gets tasks at the specified location (shortcut: !go)

Setting up

!on enables task reminders

!off disables task reminders

!confirmon enables confirmations (task actions, such as adding tasks via Twitter, will be confirmed)

!confirmoff disables confirmations (task actions, such as adding tasks via Twitter, will be confirmed)

!help gets help info

!tips gets a list of commands

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One of the kool things about the remember the milk twitter service is you can also setup reminders to be sent to your twitter account so you dont forget that task that is maybe due in 30 min or so.

Overall these are two pretty simple ways to use twitter to help you stay organized and on top of all those meetings or tasks you have coming up in your near future. For me stuff like this is what makes having all these kool apps and services that integrate with each other awesome. It allows you to take the technologies and such you enjoy tinkering with and put them to use in real world scenario's.

Hope you discover something new you start using and as always if you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

Another service I use as you may know on a daily and sometimes hourly basis is twitter which I think pretty much any geek knows what that is by now

What is kool now is you have the ability to send direct commands to both services via your twitter account. First all you have to do is of course have a google calendar or rtm account...subscribe to them on twitter which for remember the milk is rtm and for google calendar is twittercal or gcal on the twitter service.

After you have that all setup it is pretty simple in that you just have to send direct messages to those twitter accounts which in turn will add the information to the respective account.

ie for twittercal - d gcal meeting tomorrow at 2 PM.

good sources of info:
twittercal page
remember the milk on twitter info

Also feel free to shoot me an email or twitter message if you have any questions.