For project managers
The tasks are not hard to remember. What is hard to remember is which one is sitting on a legal review, which one needs a decision that has not been made, and which one you already chased twice.
01 / The problem
The first is what is blocked and why. A due date can tell you something is late. It cannot tell you that it is late because the client has not signed, and it certainly cannot tell you that you flagged this a fortnight ago. So the reasons live in your notes app, your inbox and your memory, and the three of them disagree.
The second is what got done. On the Friday of every reporting cycle you go looking for evidence of a month you definitely lived through, and Apple Reminders has thrown away every task you ticked. You end up reconstructing the month from your calendar, which is a record of meetings rather than of work.
02 / What helps
Four states instead of done and not done: todo, doing, stuck and parked. Stuck carries a line of text about what it is waiting on, so the reason lives on the task rather than in your head, and it is still there when somebody asks in three weeks.
Finished work is kept and grouped by month, then by list inside the month, with repeating tasks folded into one line. Your status report stops being an act of recall and becomes an act of reading.
Every state change and every stuck reason is recorded on the task as a dated entry. When a delivery slips, the record of why is on the task itself, not spread across an email thread.
03 / Getting it
Free to download. The four states and the monthly history are part of the paid tier.