Sometimes, you might have a feeling that you will never finish your to-do list. And you know what? It might be true. It might be entirely possible that your to-do list is indeed impossible to finish. This happens when you place non-tasks on your to-do list.

You see, there are two types of items that might appear on your personal organizer lists: tasks and non-tasks.

Tasks are actionable. Tasks are actions you decided to do.

Non-tasks are non-actionable. Non-tasks are ideas, notes, thoughts, reference-material and information.

It is very important to understand the difference between “actionable” and “non-actionable” (tasks and non-tasks), because if you don’t, it will be absolutely impossible to finish your to-do lists.

You should never place non-tasks on a to-do list among tasks. Why? Because you can’t “do” non-tasks, so they just sit there cluttering your to-do list, making it cumbersome to read – and impossible to finish!

To-do lists are for tasks you can do. Non-tasks belong in a separate list or place.

Since we all have both tasks and non-tasks, I strongly recommend having at least 2 separate lists.

1. One or more to-do lists with tasks (actions)
2. One or more lists with non-tasks (ideas and information), and as many collections of notes, memos and reference material you need. Again, all this should be kept separate from your to-do list with tasks.

Note: Ideas are not tasks because you’ve not yet decided to do them, so they are not yet actionable. But if you decide to take action on some idea, it becomes a task.

How to separate tasks and non-tasks in Swift To-Do List

I will now show you how you can separate your tasks and non-tasks in Swift To-Do List.

Just do this -

1. Make sure that you have an “Ideas List” created in the to-do list tree. You will be moving all non-tasks into it. To create it, use menu Tree – Add To-Do List, and in the Add To-Do List window, check “List“. Then name the list “Ideas List” and press OK.
2. Now, go through all the tasks you’ve captured up to this point, and whenever you encounter a non-task, move it to the Ideas List. You can simply select the non-task and using mouse, Drag and Drop it to the Ideas List in the to-do list tree. Or, you can select it and press Ctrl+X to cut it, then click the Ideas List, and press Ctrl+V to paste it. Tip: You can do both these operations with multiple items at once.
3. Now back to the information you put into “Ideas List”. If you have lot of non-tasks, you might want to create multiple “Ideas Lists” and categorize them by project or topic if possible. (You can just Drag and Drop items to other lists or to-do lists in the tree.)

And that’s it! Congratulations! You’ve separated your tasks and non-tasks. Isn’t that better? Now, it should be actually possible to “finish” your to-do list.

Also, here is an important distinction: At times you will have information, reference material or notes that are directly connected to a specific task. You want this information handy when you look at the task and ready to do it. Put this information into the Notes section of that particular task, instead of keeping it isolated on the idea list or somewhere else. This way, when you work on the task, you will immediately see the important related information, and it also won’t unnecessarily clutter your Ideas List.

Related Posts:

• How to keep your to-do list useful, short and motivating
• 30-second check: Do you get the maximum from Swift To-Do List?
• Endless to-do list
• How to separate work and personal tasks
• Swift Mind Freedom released!
• 3 easy techniques to instantly stop procrastinating

Is your to-do list impossible to finish? is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

Download the latest Swift To-Do List here.

So, what’s the big news? Well, compared to 7.3x, the new Swift To-Do List 7.46 brings you:

Creation of tasks from HTML-only emails

You can now Drag & Drop emails that only have HTML content into Swift To-Do List to create tasks from them. The HTML content will get properly processed and inserted into the task notes, retaining the formatting. See a quick video how to create tasks from emails.

Numbered lists in notes and memos

You can now create numbered lists in task notes and memos, not just bullet lists. There is a new toolbar button that you can use for this, shortcut for it is Ctrl+Shift+N. You can also use the Ctrl+Shift+L shortcut to cycle between list styles (including Roman and alphabetized list style).

Drag & Drop from Word, OpenOffice, WordPad, etc

You can now Drag & Drop stuff from Word, WordPad, OpenOffice Write etc. You can even Drag & Drop tables inside Swift To-Do List now!

Export notes and memos to PDF, DOC, DOCX, ODT, MHT

It is now possible to save (export) notes and memos to PDF, Word 97-2003 (DOC), Word Document (DOCX), OpenOffice (ODT), Web Archive (MHT), as well as into the previously supported Rich Text (RTF), Plain Text (TXT) and HTML formats.

Import notes and memos from DOC, DOCX, ODT, HTML, MHT files

You can import (load) notes and memos from Word (all versions), OpenOffice, HTML (including images) and MHT web archive files now, as well as from the previously supported Rich Text (RTF) and Plain Text (TXT) files.

Paste images into notes

It is now possible to paste images into task notes or memos using clipboard. Just make sure that you have disabled “Paste plain-text using Ctrl+V” in File – Options – Notes. If it’s enabled, you can still paste rich text and images using Ctrl+Alt+V.

Previously, you could insert image only from files using the Insert Image notes toolbar button.

Images in notes and memos are now being printed/exported

One previous limitation in Swift To-Do List was that images in notes or memos were not included in HTML export or printing. This has now changed! All exports and printouts properly contain images inserted into notes.

Smarter default notes font

When the default notes font is changed in File – Options – Notes, the new font will be applied to all notes that use the old default font. So it’s now possible to change the font (name & size) for all your notes that use the default font in just 1 step.

This wasn’t previously possible – already created notes retained their fonts even when you changed the default font.

Move lines up/down in notes and memos

You can move lines up/down in notes with keyboard shortcuts: Alt+Up and Alt+Down. Yes, these are the same hotkeys that you can use to move tasks up/down!

I personally love this feature and use it often. Especially if you work with bulleted or numbered lists in your notes, this will make your day.

Much better Find/Replace window

It supports direction (up/down), and can be left open while you continue working with notes in Swift To-Do List. It also informs you when the search has reached the end of document.

Both Print and Print Preview for notes and memos

The older versions had only Print Preview for notes, but you can now directly print the notes or memos. Additionally, the Print Preview dialog for notes and memos has been greatly improved. It looks great and the preview is sharp. We will improve the main preview dialog for tasks export in the near future, too.

New “Remove Formatting From Selection” notes/memos action

There was just “Remove Formatting From Notes” action, but now you can also remove formatting just from selection. This is useful if you paste some formatted text and want to get rid of the colors or different fonts. There is also a new hotkey for the removal of formatting from selection – Ctrl+Alt+R.

Drag & Drop of text and images inside notes and memos

You can now re-arrange text and images inside your notes and memos just using your mouse – drag & drop.

Better indenting and outdenting in notes and memos

You can now use Tab to indent text or to insert tab character, and Shift+Tab to outdent text or to remove preceding tab character.

Better selection in notes and memos

You can now see text colors and text background colors behind the selection:

That’s not all though!

Other smaller improvements regarding notes and memos -

• Better font dialog which allows you to change only certain font properties
• “Clear Notes” action is now undoable
• “Remove Formatting” action in notes is now undoable and preserves selection
• “Import” and “Append to notes” actions are now undoable
• Hyperlinks can be visited using the Enter key (when the caret is inside them)
• Hyperlinks can be specified for any text (like in Word)
• Hyperlinks can be created for local files, too (but the Attachment feature use more appropriate for this)
• Address of hyperlinks can be easily copied from the right-click menu of the hyperlink
• When task note or memo is exported to HTML, the title tag will now include the task/memo name
• Faster of inserting images into notes and displaying of notes with images
• Improved printing of notes and memos (better formatting)
• Improved behavior of “Insert line” command in notes/memos
• When you create a bulleted list, all lines will automatically get the same indent
• When exporting to HTML, the length of notes is no longer limited
• Nicer task notes/memo panel border

What’s next?

We are still working hard on the online sync feature. It is in beta and the development is going well.

Why is it so important? Well, it allows you all the following:

1. Synchronize Swift To-Do List 7 for Windows between computers
2. Invite other people to collaborate
3. View and edit your tasks using mobile devices; all smart-phones and tablets are supported, including iPhone, iPad, Android devices, BlackBerry, etc.
4. View and edit your tasks using web browsers (like Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, IE) from Windows/Mac/Linux; so you can work with your tasks even on computers where Swift To-Do List 7 is not installed.
5. Merge multiple databases into one
6. Remotely backup your Swift To-Do List data

If you would like to try it, contact us and we will tell you how to enable it.

Other important things that are coming: Sub-tasks, calendar, custom columns (fields) and more. Stay tuned! Year 2012 will be swiftly great.

Related Posts:

• Swift To-Do List 8 launched!
• Coming Soon: New Swift To-Do List 8 with subtasks!
• New Swift To-Do List 7 Ultimate edition released
• Swift To-Do List 10 with scheduling calendar released!
• What we are up to in 2016: Swift To-Do List 10 is coming
• Introducing Swift To-Do List subscription plans

What’s New in Swift To-Do List 7.46 is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

You might not realize it, but preserving knowledge is actually more important than acquiring new knowledge – what is all the new knowledge good for when you can’t retain it and put it to use? Even if you forget only half of the important things, your learning will be two steps forward, one step backward. You can do better.

However, you can’t just fully count on your brain when it comes to remembering. Your brain constantly purges your memory from irrelevant, outdated and obsolete information to prevent you from going crazy. Do you remember what you had for breakfast on May 24, 2001? Of course you don’t. And that’s actually a good thing. In fact, a certain rare condition related to memory exists – people suffering it can’t forget even the most useless things that happened to them a long time ago. They usually end up insane, because the information overload is crushing.

What can you do to remember the important information

The problem is that your brain can’t differentiate between useful and useless information on its own. What is important for your brain might not be important for you. (and vice versa)

Here is the secret: You can tell your brain: “Hey, this is important, don’t forget this one, OK?” There are multiple ways how to communicate the importance to your brain (eg. repeating it in your mind), but the absolutely easiest way is by writing the information down. When you write something down, your brain automatically knows that it is important.

Most importantly, writing information down has double benefit:

• First, because you’ve communicated to your brain that the piece of information is important, you will be able to remember it more easily and much longer.
• Second, since you have the information written down, you can look it up whenever you need. Even if you forget it, you can always easily retrieve it.

Swift To-Do List support for notes and memo combined with hierarchical tree, task management and reminders makes it ideal for a simple personal knowledge base. It is easier than ever before to establish habits that will allow you to never forget anything important again. All you have to do is to store the vital knowledge in Swift To-Do List.

Related Posts:

• Keeping logs and simple records on your computer
• New “Memo” feature: Organize not just tasks
• Meta Productivity released! “Dramatically Increase Your Productivity”
• Is your to-do list impossible to finish?
• Swift To-Do List Review by Elius Levin
• Swift To-Do List Review by Darryl Benjamin

Preserving knowledge and retaining information is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

So, the question is – how can you paste just the plain text into the notes area? It is very easy:

Use Ctrl+Alt+V to paste anything as plain text into notes. You already know that Ctrl+V will paste the text with all formatting, but Ctrl+Alt+V will always paste just the plain-text without any formatting. You can also use the right-click menu:

Have you already pasted the text?

If you already have the notes with formatted text or some broken tables etc, you can easily convert the whole notes to plain text using the notes toolbar as shown below:

This will remove all formatting from the notes, and remove any objects, tables or images, etc. It will also set the default font and font color for the text.

Related Posts:

• Is your to-do list impossible to finish?
• What’s New in Swift To-Do List 7.46
• Turn emails into tasks – just drag & drop them into Swift To-Do List!
• What’s New in 7.25: Import Wizard, better Batch Edit, more
• How to attach emails from Outlook to tasks (Video)
• Swift To-Do List 7.10 released: Embedded file attachments, attach emails to tasks, and more

How to paste plain text in notes is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

STRESS = TOO MUCH STUFF IN YOUR HEAD

Worries, tasks, details that must be remembered – all these cause stress – but only when they are stored in the wrong place: your head. It is extremely hard to remember and organize everything only using your head. You need to use another approach.

How to resolve stress?

It’s simple: Put the stuff from your head somewhere else! For example, you can put it into our task and notes management application “Swift To-Do List”. It has been designed especially to help you get organized easily and quickly. You need to write task lists, take notes, and organize them nicely. Swift To-Do List allows you to use 144 different icons that make organizing fun.

When you move the the stuff out of your head into your computer, you will free your mental resources. You will be able to focus. You will be able to work, and more importantly, enjoy your work again. Do it today.

If your computer can remember it instead of you, it should!

You can learn more about the benefits of writing things down in a previous post “How to upgrade your brain“.

Writing things down also does wonders when you are struggling with procrastination.

Related Posts:

• Swift Mind Freedom released!
• Is your to-do list impossible to finish?
• Why you can’t sleep
• “Why should I care about being organized?”
• How to murder your productivity
• Deal with procrastination with 100% success

What is stress? is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

Swift To-Do List 7 is a great notes management tool and is equipped with many useful notes shortcuts. This is a thorough overview of all notes shortcuts and hotkeys that you can use.

These hotkeys work in all notes panels: In the main Swift To-Do List window, in the Add/Edit task dialog, in reminders, and of course also in memos.

Please note that not every action has a hotkey assigned (eg. “Remove Formatting” or “Clear Notes” actions must be used via toolbar):

Insert date, time, separator hotkeys

• Control + D – Insert date and time
• Control + G – Insert date
• Control + Q – Insert time
• Control + J – Insert separator

The “Insert date” hotkeys work in other text fields as well, for example, you can use them when editing Task Name or To-Do List Name.

Formatting and font style hotkeys

• Control + B – Toggle Bold
• Control + I – Toggle Italic
• Control + U – Toggle Underline
• Control + K – Toggle Strike through
• Control + N – Toggle Bullet style
• Control + Shift + L – Switch bullet style. You can use this to create numbered lists.
• Control + ‘+’ – Toggle Superscript
• Control + ‘=’ – Toggle Subscript
• Control + Shift + > – Increase font size
• Control + Shift + < – Decrease font size
• Control + Alt + H – Toggle Highlight (yellow color)
• Control + Alt + K – Hyperlink
• Tab or Control + Tab – Indent text. The behavior of Tab key in notes can be configured in Options.
• Ctrl + Shift + A – Capitalize all selected letters (set all caps)

Clipboard and find hotkeys

• Control + C – Copy
• Control + X – Cut
• Control + V – Paste
• Control + Alt + V – Paste as plain text – very useful hotkey
• Control + F – Find/replace
• F3 – Find next

Editing, selection and navigation hotkeys

• Control + Z – Undo
• Control + Y – Redo
• Control + A – Select All
• Control + Backspace – Delete previous word
• Control + Left Arrow – Move cursor one word to the left
• Control + Right Arrow – Move cursor one word to the right
• Control + Shift + Left Arrow – Select word to the left
• Control + Shift + Right Arrow – Select word to the right
• Control + Home – Move to the beginning
• Control + End – Move to the end

Related Posts:

• Is your to-do list impossible to finish?
• Centralize Your Lists with Swift To-Do List
• What’s New in Swift To-Do List 7.46
• How to paste plain text in notes
• How to change the default reminder time
• How to protect your tasks and notes with encryption

Complete notes shortcuts (hotkeys) overview is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

Advantages of task database encryption

The obvious advantage is security. If you encrypt your database, no one without the password can open it, or get the data from it in any way. This is the only way to have truly secure to-do lists and secure notes.

The longer password you choose, the safer it is. Best are so called “password phrases” – long passwords that are easy to remember. For example, a short sentence with some strange word in it works great as a password. Long passwords are nearly impossible to bypass, as the attacker has to use brute force to try all imaginable combinations, and that takes extremely long time for strong passwords.

To ensure maximum security, make sure that you fully exit Swift To-Do List 7 using File – Exit or lock Windows when you are leaving your computer.

Great thing about Swift To-Do List 7 is that it allows you to remove the encryption if you decide you no longer want to protect your database. However, you need to know the password in order to remove it, of course. You can remove the encryption in Options, Encryption.

Disadvantages of task database encryption

There are also some disadvantages of encrypting your database:

1. You have to enter the password every time you open the database.
2. If you forget your password, you can not retrieve it. Your database is lost.
3. It makes some operations a bit slower (around 10-40%), but you will usually never notice this.

How to encrypt your database step by step

Go to Options (eg. using File – Options), and go to the Encryption tab. Click the Encrypt button. This will open a dialog that allows you to set the password. Enter the password twice as instructed, and click OK. And that’s it!

Once is your database encrypted, a dialog like this will appear every time you open the database, asking for password:

Related Posts:

• Is your to-do list impossible to finish?
• What’s New in Swift To-Do List 7.46
• What’s new in Swift To-Do List 7.11: Colors!
• Swift To-Do List 7.10 released: Embedded file attachments, attach emails to tasks, and more
• How to print or export a single task
• How to paste plain text in notes

How to protect your tasks and notes with encryption is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

I personally use Swift To-Do List to organize not just all my tasks and to-do lists, but also:

• All my goals (for current month and year)
• Predictions for the next year (this can be quite fun!)
• Logs of books I’ve read
• Logs of shows I’ve seen
• List of interesting and inspiring quotes
• List of things I’ve borrowed and that I owe to someone
• List of things and activities I would like to try
• List of places I want to visit
• And most importantly, my thoughts (in a form of simple journal)
• (And lots of other things, but that’s a story for another time ;-))

How to create and manage a simple log?

It is quite simple. You can either create a dedicated memo for your log, or place it in notes of one of your tasks – for example, if you have a task “Read 10 books about marketing”, you could maintain the list of books you’ve already read in the task’s notes.

Having a stand-alone memo works best for most logs, though. This is a screenshot of simple book log managed in Swift To-Do List:

Creating log step by step

1. Create a new memo in the to-do list tree (learn more about memos)
2. Write a header for your new memo and increase its font size (optional)
3. If you want the log to have multiple sections, make a few new lines, then insert a separator (Ctrl+J), write a header for that section, make a new line and insert another separator.
4. Now you can start adding records!
5. To create a record, simply make a new line, insert date stamp (eg. using Ctrl+D) and write the record (eg. the name of the book that you’ve just read).

Some useful notes hotkeys:
Ctrl+D – insert time and date, Ctrl+G – insert date only, Ctrl+Q – insert time only.

You could also use bulleted list that Swift To-Do List supports, but the bullets are not very useful in this case, as every line is a different record anyway.

Summary

As you can see, Swift To-Do List is very versatile, and can be used to manage list of various things, including logs (lists with timestamps). Similar approach could be used for simple journaling. I will write more about that in one of the future posts.

There are many kinds of lists – and logs are one of them. I hope that this post has inspired you to create more lists, because lists are great tool not just for living organized life, but also for retaining information and knowledge.

Related Posts:

• Creating Lasting Happiness In 5 Minutes a Day
• Preserving knowledge and retaining information
• New “Memo” feature: Organize not just tasks
• Is your to-do list impossible to finish?
• Swift To-Do List Review by Elius Levin
• What’s New in Swift To-Do List 7.46

Keeping logs and simple records on your computer is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

What is a memo?

Memo is a new feature added in Swift To-Do List 7. It is an independent note that you can add to the hierarchical to-do list tree. You can now create not just to-do lists, but also memos. This brings the functionality of our Tree Notes right into Swift To-Do List. A powerful combination, indeed.

Memos are very useful, because they give you a lot more editing space than task notes. Sometimes you just need to store your notes or a text that is not related to your tasks somewhere. That somewhere can now be Swift To-Do List :-).

How to create a memo

Creating a memo is very similar to creating a to-do list. All you have to do is to open the Add To-Do List dialog, and select “Memo” in the Create box. Then just choose the name and icon, and press OK as usual..

How does memo look?

This is how Swift To-Do List looks with a memo currently selected in the tree:

As you can see, there is no task-view when a memo is selected – just the notes area, with all features enabled (formatting, saving to files, opening from files, printing, attachments, etc).

Memo tips and tricks

Some things you might not know about memos:

• Memos can be searched using the Find Tasks feature – just make sure you have Memos checked in the Find Tasks dialog.
• Memos can contain attachments, just like tasks
• Just like task task notes, all changes of memos are saved automatically. However, when editing a memo, you can also use Ctrl+S to force an immediate save and add the current state to the undo-history available from Edit menu. This trick applies for task notes as well, by the way!
• Do you have any empty to-do lists that just contain other to-do lists? You can edit these empty to-do lists and change them to memos. You can then a write short summary of the sub-lists in the memo (or anything else). That is much more useful, isn’t it?
• Memos have a special indicator in the tree (if enabled in Options), that looks like this: ●

What can I use memos for?

You already know how to organize your tasks – and memos are a great choice to organize everything else.

For example, memos are great for maintaining various list of things, because not all lists are actionable task lists. Also, memos are the best way to store your ideas.

I personally use memos for keeping various records and logs, writing my personal journal and thoughts, storing interesting snippets of information and quotes, storing my favorite website links and resources, yearly goals, ideas etc. Once the information is stored in a memo in Swift To-Do List, I know I will never lose it. That brings me true peace of mind.

We’ve substantially enhanced memos in version 7.05. You can now export and print them using the Print or Export dialog just like to-do lists. If you have not updated to the latest version yet, you can download it now from our website.

Related Posts:

• What’s New in Swift To-Do List 7.46
• Preserving knowledge and retaining information
• Keeping logs and simple records on your computer
• Is your to-do list impossible to finish?
• Swift To-Do List Review by Elius Levin
• Creating Lasting Happiness In 5 Minutes a Day

New “Memo” feature: Organize not just tasks is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog