My ace Research Assistant, Miss Kim and I have struggled with tracking our projects and communicating our progress. For years we used the Task List in Microsoft Outlook, but we found it limited and sometimes the automatic updating was not so automatic. After reading Getting Things Done by David Allen and at the prompting of the great Michael Hyatt, I tried the Nozbe To Do app.

Like Evernote, Nozbe is web-based and works on all platforms. I have it installed in my iPhone and on my iPad, and I have it “pinned” as one of my Google Chrome Startup pages, which keeps me automatically logged in.

One of the cool things about Nozbe it that it follows David Allen’s well-thought-out GTD system, allowing the user to create stand-alone Tasks (“Pick up a pint of heavy cream”), which can be added via a Nozbe-provided E-Mail address, and Projects, which are made up of a series of Task (“Book Ideas”, “Update Website”, “Wish List”). Projects are shareable, so I created “gCo Task List” and shared it with Miss Kim.

Over time we populated the gCo Task List with our projects (“Edison Shopping Centers”, “Holmdel Office Market Rent Analysis”) and gave them due dates. In Nozbe’s Calendar view we can easily see what to work on next.

One of Nozbe’s best features is that you can add Comments to any Task. I am often out of the office and in the past Miss Kim would have to wait until I returned and gathered my thoughts to get direction on a project. Now she simply adds a Comment like, “The seller in the Piscataway sale was under threat of foreclosure. Do you still want to use the sale? We have five other sales we can use.”

Click on the Comments icon and you can see all recent posts. Even better, Nozbe sends an e-mail every so often to keep you up to date.

All in all, Nozbe is a great tool for staying productive and in touch. Nozbe offers a free trial, so I recommend that you give it a try.

What apps help you stay productive?