Make To-Do Lists And Manage Tasks On Mac OS X With

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I’ve done it a lot of times, but never been able to get it right. I note down, “GO AND GET THAT FAULTY A/C FIXED” but never actually come around to look at that note again because it gets lost. Managing to-do lists and tasks is difficult. Anxiety helps you make it simple.

Anxiety is a small freeware utility for Mac OS X that allows you to make lists and check stuff off those lists. You can use it for to-dos, or to manage the tasks involved in a project, to archive the steps involved in a process; any work where lists are involved.

A first look at Anxiety, and you will fall in love with its simplistic and beautiful interface.



This is the small window which contains your list. Just press Enter to add a new item to the list.



Click on the check box to the left side of a list item to mark it as ‘completed’ or ‘done’. As soon as you click the check box next to an item, it turns green and fades out of the list. That way, you see only the tasks you have left, stuff which you haven’t done.

The basic functionality and minimalism of Anxiety is amazing. However what makes Anxiety stand out of the crowd is the thought and details that work behind the scenes to make managing tasks for you as easy as it gets. I’ve highlighted a few features of Anxiety here -

1. Calender Store – Calender Store is the database used by iCal and Mail to store events with dates and times. Anxiety uses the same Calender Store database, which effectively means that all of these remain synchronized. If you delete or check off a task from iCal (that you originally created using Anxiety), the task would be gone automatically from Anxiety too, without you having to worry about anything. Anything that you add from Anxiety also will automatically show up in iCal and Mail.
2. Menu Bar Icon And Presence Settings – By default, Anxiety sticks to your workspace, and will ‘float’ on top of any application that you are using. You can change this behavior from the preferences, so that as soon as you switch to another application, Anxiety fades out in the background. If you want to see the app window again, just click on the menubar icon to bring it up. From the preferences, you can also choose to start Anxiety on system start.
3. Support for Multiple Lists – Instead of just 1 to-do list, you can make as many lists as you want, by creating a ‘new calendar’. By default, you have 2 calendars – Home and Work. This flexibility is provided by iCal, and helps you manage different lists separately.

Anxiety is very, very lightweight, you can barely notice it running at all. It takes a few megabytes of memory, which can vary depending on the number of tasks that you’ve added to your lists. It is available only for Leopard and Snow Leopard.