The desktop app is clean, slick, easy to use, easy to learn. Very short learning curve. Screen real-estate is used effectively. No other application puts collection lists, the calendar, and a detail view all on the same screen. I can see what I need to see, all in one place.
Juggling my schedule and that of three young learners — plus all their extra-curricular activities — isn’t easy. I need to be able to look at a calendar and tell who needs to do what (and who needs to be where) at a glance. To stay organized I use Chandler, an app so feature-rich that I don’t even use it to it’s fullest capability. I love the way it color codes whatever I throw at for easy sorting and retrieval. It also keeps a running to-do list for me, and it’s a snap to create new events, messages, and tasks.
The single greatest thing about [Chandler] is the core idea of the confluence of tasks, emails, and appointments as simple items which can interact and be managed with one other. It is SO TRUE that separating these items into hard categories with totally different interfaces makes organization more, not less, difficult. Allowing them to be listed and managed together is a huge leap forward. It has definitely already added value to my life.
I started using the Chandler Project a while back and I really liked it. It gives you tickler alarms for things you need to do plus a space for notes. So instead of a calendar where once the date is past, the event is gone, it’s a recurring reminder. It’s like a Jack Russel Terrrier, always jumping around and wanting attention. And every little thing can get recorded in its entries so when the reminder goes off, the appropriate info is at your fingertips.
The hardest thing with organising ’stuff’ is picking out the immediately important things, whilst keeping track of the things that don’t need to be done yet without wasting too much time on them. It’s here that Chandler just sort of works the way that I do...
I’m using it every day. I can’t think of a better endorsement.
Last July my life changed dramatically with the birth of not one but two babies!...
I used Chandler when I was looking for a nanny. I kept dates of phone and in-person interviews and lists of associated tasks. I manage packing lists for trips, questions for my next doctor’s appointment and an endless stream of errands...
Because I have very limited time, I use alarms for everything and set them for times when I know I will have time to act on something. I set alarms to call about appointments and activities for first thing in the morning. For items I buy or research online, I get pinged after the kids go to bed. The alarms in Chandler are not just pop ups, when an alarm goes off, the item moves to the top of the NOW section in Chandler. When I sit down at my computer, I can easily scan my NOW section and see what things I can be working on.
The first is something he calls a “Bucket” item: "…to capture those random thoughts and bits of information that appear during the day."
The second is a GTD Projects List. Andre consults this list repeatedly throughout the day. In his words, "This saves me the trouble of having to leave the Chandler item I’m working with, find the GTD Projects List item, and then find my way back to the original item."
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I have been using Chandler about 9 months now. I have a collection named “Contacts.” Each contact is a Chandler note titled after the name of the contact using a Last Name, First Name nomenclature...
It is simple and context dependent. I always have the contacts I need for a particular project sitting in front of me. In practice I seldom use my global contacts list - I use the collection-associated contacts frequently.
CDTF maintains a Contacts collection...Most of the contacts are people I have worked with or have been introduced to through colleagues and friends. So I have endeavored to write up a short description of each person, how I know them, how much we’ve discussed CDTF and why and how they might be interested in what CDTF is up to. As Grace and I continue to develop these relationships, we revise and update the Notes for each contact.
We manage the CDTF Contacts collection like a task list. It's almost always sorted by Triage Status. We have a small set of NOW - Contacts, people we are actively talking to (7 currently). An ambitiously long set of LATER Contacts (46), people we really should get in touch with or need to have follow-up conversations with.
I use Chandler daily/ heavily to coordinate projects and tasks within my team. The reasons why I have taken up Chandler:
- it is important that tasks are assigned to time slots in the calendar...this prevents overloading and helps with time management issues when people really have too much to do.
- tasks need to be persistent until marked as done. Just using a calendar slot for task/ time management is no good, since the task will automatically expire once the time/ date has passed, even if it is not completed. The current version...solves this beautifully (with the “Dashboard”).
…I have to say that Chandler (in its present incarnation) has proven an excellent solution.
One scenario Chandler can be useful for is pulling together meeting agendas and maintaining a log of meeting notes.
Meetings are the perfect example of how calendaring and task management are inextricably intertwined. It is a problem area that highlights Chandler’s ability to cross boundaries and integrate information by letting you manage events from a task list and vice versa, manage tasks with a calendar.
One of the better worked out routines we’ve established is around collecting, and developing ideas for our blog. We have 2 blog collections. 1 for brainstorming. It has close to 200 ideas...Ideas that are either time-sensitive or have somehow gelled into a clear point are promoted to a second, more closely guarded “Blog Queue” collection...
As it’s turns out, we’ve been doing most of our work in Chandler and only use email to communicate news and information that doesn’t require follow up. Who would’ve thought!
One of the more useful things we share is a packing list for our monthly migration. We just keep reusing the same list. We just keep amending it and cycling back and forth between the NOW and LATER sections. The list has now also expanded to include a checklist for the handful of shut-down and chuck-out tasks we need to do to make sure we don’t run up heating bills and start a mold farm in the fridge while we’re gone.
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