I was fortunate enough to be a part of a beta test group for the new ZenDone.com productivity tool. The goal of this task manager is to be the best GTD tool that integrates with Evernote. I am a huge fan of Evernote and use it daily so I was excited about testing out a time management tool that is closely integrated.

My goal is to give you a simply review of ZenDone without getting bogged into the details of what it does and doesn’t do. I will share at the end the areas that I hope the tool improves in.

ZenDone – 3 Simple Areas of Focus

The beauty of the entire system is that everything is summed up into three buckets. These three areas of focus have different purposes and different roles.

Process – this is the inbox of the system. It works as the collection bucket for all things. There are three primary ways that you can enter in new tasks. The first area is by submitting new items into your main notebook in Evernote. My main folder in Evernote is called “inbox” and it collects all of the new tasks, emails and references files that I want to keep.

Secondly, you can collect new tasks with the yellow sticky note in the top left hand corner of the screen. It is designed to just go into your process bucket for later processing. Finally, there is the quick add toolbar at the top of the interface. This serves two purposes. One, you can can collect new tasks. Secondly, you can process them at the same time.

What I like about the process section is that you can only edit the top task while the rest are grayed out. This forces you to decide what to do with each item. If an item can be done in under 2 minutes you are to do it right then. If it is going to take longer, you can classify it as “actionable.” If it is a reference item, you can easily pick which evernote folder to store it in. This has helped me to be more disciplined at clearing out my inbox folder in Evernote.

Review & Organize – This is the area that all your “actionable” tasks go to. This is the 10,000 foot view of your tasks inside of Zen Done. You can tag your tasks into different context if you would like. I tried to keep it simple so I only have 4 context: @Personal, @Blogging, @Church, and @Someday/Maybe.

Depending on the area of context I am in I can hit that tag and cause all of the other areas to disappear. This is a neat feature. The goal of this area is to review which tasks you need to do next. Those that I want to tackle for the day I hit the asterisk next to the task and it goes into the “DO” category.

Do – The Do Section of ZenDone is the next actions list. It shows you a shorten list of what needs to be done next. I also like that the evernote file stays with the tasks. So, if it is a part of the email it is still there as a reference. This area is all about taking action. Simple and sweet.

My Final Thoughts

Overall, I have really enjoyed using ZenDone. It has helped me to be more productive with Evernote and I like that. I love that it is integrated with Evernote. Many other online to do list programs claim that they are, but in reality, Evernote is just tacked on. With ZenDone, they built the system around Evernote and I like that.

There are two areas on concern for me at this point. The first one has to do with price point. Sounds like this is going to be a monthly subscription time management tool. It will be interesting to see where the monthly price falls.

Maybe I have been using the free awesomeness of Wunderlist too long, but cost will play a factor for me. I also wished there was a way to use it on the iPad. I use the iPad a lot and I cannot even get ZenDone on my Safari Browser. Thus it hampers me when I am away from my desk. It is nice to be able to capture tasks wherever I am.

While the Beta continues, I still plan on using Zen Done. We will just have to wait and see what type of improvements they make over time. It is still a thumbs up in my book.