Chrome, Gmail, Google Tasks and Do It Tomorrow Streamline Tasks

Ever been just plain jealous of people who seem to get all their to-dos done on time, or even by the end of the day, and they can kick back and relax knowing they haven’t forgotten anything important. And that sense of jealousness become especially poignant when you can’t even remember all the s#*t you have to do. Well, have I got a solution for you. I call it the new ancient Japanese art of shittodo (pronounced shi-tōdō which translated means “jealousness”). That’s right, you read all the letters in shittodo. And if you separate it into three English words by adding a space between the two “t”s and between the “o” and “d”, you see that the English version plainly describes the list of the things on your agenda that need to get done. However, at least for me, the pronunciation of the Japanese version makes the whole experience much more palatable, even acceptable in normal conversation.

At some point most of us have tried keeping a shittodo list. We’ve tried various apps, paper, cards, more android apps, iOS apps, and so on and so forth. Some have even molded their own habits and behaviors around the functionality of some app or another and they actually make it work. I’ve seen some apps intrusively interrupting the user to remind them of a task at the worst possible time in that person’s day. Queue the eye-roll.

For me, I’ve generally found it difficult to maintain a consistent way of checking the list if it’s any more that one click away from where I’m at, and especially if I added it via my phone, but can’t see it now because I’m on my PC.

So, everyone may have their own favorite shittodo app, and for me it has been “Do It Tomorrow”. Why? Well, it’s just plain simple. “Do It Tomorrow” looks and kinda feels like a hand-written note. To cross an item off the list you simply touch it, and a nice satisfying line is drawn through the task. And that wonderful coffee mug stain on the right hand page, mmm, you can almost smell the aroma of the freshly brewed cup o’ Joe.  If you don’t finish a task that day, then the task automatically moves on to the next day, hence the name, Do It Tomorrow. Overall it was a very satisfying app to use as a shittodo list. But the problem still existed that I had to open the app itself to see the list, marginally nullifying the pleasurable features of the rich handwritten text and the audible scratches striking out a task well done. You could see your shittodo list on your PC, but only via a few clicks on your browser to go to the Do It Tomorrow web page.

Enter the Do-It-Tomorrow Chrome Extension. Enter the New Gmail. Enter the new era of my shittodo being on the same page as my Gmail and just one click away! Hallelujah! (wait, that’s not Japanese.) It might have been on my Gmail before I upgraded to the new Gmail, but I didn’t see it. On the new Gmail It’s off on the right-hand side in a little blue icon labeled tasks when you hover over it. Clicking the icon brings up my shittodo list, and lo and behold there are all the tasks that I had entered in my Do It Tomorrow shittodo list on my phone.

Each has a little check circle next to it, and when I check it off It goes into the archive and a line is drawn through it on the Do It Tomorrow app on my phone. How cool is that! Furthermore, in the Do It Tomorrow app on the phone or browser, once an item was crossed off the list, the next day you could not go back and look at the tasks that you completed the previous day. That was always a bit annoying. However now the Google task list does let you can go back in the archive and see which tasks you have completed. Score! So, there we have it, the nicely unobtrusive, yet always ready at one click, shittodo list.