I have recently started to use Things in a last ditch attempt to keep a track of upcoming tasks and To Dos in 2009.  Over the years I’ve tried every conceivable method of handling To Dos including, but not limited to, some of the following:

• Pen & Paper – from simple notepad through Moleskine to full-blown Filofax (sad as that is)
• Basecamp
• Ta-da List
• Vitalist
• and countless others…

All of these options had plenty going for them but for one reason or another they didn’t stick in the longer term.  I do use Basecamp daily for work however I was looking for a To Do/task management app where I could detach myself from work at weekends and so forth.  Also I had found myself in enough situations where having my tasks available offline was a major requirement – so I needed a Mac app preferably with an iPhone option – enter Things.

I’m currently running the latest release candidate although the final version is due for release in a couple of days.  So far it’s been great out of the box as has the companion iPhone app (£5.99 but seemingly well worth it) however the major problem for me came with the fact that there was no obvious way to sync across multiple machines other than a cumbersome iMac->iPhone->MacBook->iPhone arrangement.

The simple answer to the problem came from Dropbox – an online service for storing and syncing files which I’m also using.  Dropbox creates a special folder on your Mac which is then constantly sync’d with a repository stored by Dropbox.  It works seamlessly with multiple Macs and I’m currently using it for day to day files I need to work on on different machines and it’s largely replaced MobileMe’s iDisk which has always rendered my Macs anywhere from slow to unusable.

To sync your ‘Things’ data file, first quit ‘Things’ and then copy the ‘Things’ folder from ~Library/Application Support/Cultured Code to your Dropbox.  This will make a copy of your latest data file and it will very quickly be backed up to your Dropbox.  This has the advantage of backing up your Things data file and also ensuring we leave your original file in place – just in case the next steps go horribly wrong.

Now, open ‘Things’ by holding down the ‘alt’ key and launching the application either from Finder or your dock.  ‘Things’ will present you with a box titled ‘Choose Things Library’ – you’ll be familiar with this if you’ve ever used multiple libraries in applications like iPhoto.  Click the ‘Choose Library’ option and navigate to the ‘Things’ folder now stored on the local copy of your Dropbox.  Now click ‘Open’ and ‘Things’ will open up using the data file from your Dropbox folder.

Now all you need to do is to log on to other machines which also have Dropbox installed, ensure they are sync’d and then launch ‘Things’ holding down the ‘alt’ key so you can select the Dropbox version of your data file.  You only have to hold down ‘alt’ the first time you select a new location for your Dropbox file on a specific machine – after this ‘Things’ will automatically open the new version.

The usual warnings apply – specifically remember to give Dropbox time to sync your files after you finish using Things to ensure the latest version is available when you pick up another machine.  Also it’s probably not a great idea to keep Things open on more than one machine simultaneously – that’s likely to be messy.

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