It seems like every day, there’s some niggling little problem that obsesses me and prevents me from doing whatever it is I actually do for a living. This morning, the problem was figuring out how to organize my life with to-do-lists and calenders. Now, whenever I’ve encountered these sorts of issues in the past, I’ve said to myself, “why don’t I post the solutions to these problems on my blog, so that if anyone else is trying to accomplish the same thing, they might stumble across my blog and find some helpful hints?” And then I’m selfish and lazy and keep my information to myself.

Well, not today, friends. Here you have my first ever attempt at a primer that may or may not someday simplify your life. The jury is still out on whether or not it has simplified mine.

Please note: this helpful primer is only for people with PCs. People with Macs probably already have some simplistic solution at their fingertips that accomplishes the same task in a much more elegant and impressive way. Also, this post is bound to be pretty uninteresting to anyone who reads my blog for my heelarious stories, so I’m posting the bulk of it after the jump.

The problem: I want to be able to enter something on my calendar or to do list without having to open up Outlook and click around a bunch of boxes.

The solution: The solution to this problem is multi-pronged. The setup work will take you a good hour, but once you set it up, you will thank me for simplifying your life.

Programs needed: Launchy, which can be downloaded for free at http://www.launchy.net. cURL, which is also free right here.

Website memberships needed: Twitter (www.twitter.com, Remember the Milk (www.rememberthemilk.com), Google Calendar (www.googlecalendar.com — no need to sign up if you have Gmail or any of the other millions of things Google controls).

1. Our first step is to download Launchy and install it. Launchy is a very handy program that loads when you start your computer. Press the “alt” key and the spacebar at the same time, and a little window pops up. You can use this window to search for any file on your computer based on keywords, or to launch any program you’d like without clicking through the program menu. For our purposes, we will be using this little box to enter calendar and task list information.
2. The rest of the process I learned from reading this helpful guide on Lifehacker. Here are the basics.
3. Download and install cURL. Go to the link listed above and save the file to wherever you generally save downloads. Open the folder and extract the file named “curl.exe” to the c:\Windows folder.
4. The kind gentleman who put together the Lifehacker tutorial created these handy files that can be used to do need things with Twitter. Download them, then extract them to the C:\Program Files\Launchy\Utilities folder.
5. Now we need to set up Launchy to use the files we just downloaded. Start Launchy by clicking “Alt” + Space bar. Now click on that little cog shaped thing in the upper right hand corner. A box will come up with a few different tabs. Click on the tab that reads “Catalog” and highlight the line that says “\Utilities”. In the box underneath the “File Types” area, type “.bat” and click the “+” sign.
6. Now we must sign up for accounts at the three websites listed above. Do so in the way you would normally sign up for an account at a website.
7. I use Outlook for my calendar info, because it’s the only PC program that syncs automatically with the iPhone. If you do the same, then you’ll need to set up your Google calendar to sync automatically to your Outlook. To do so, go here and follow the instructions.
8. Now we have to get our Twitter to interact with Remember the Milk and our Google calendar. To add Remember the Milk, go to this link and click on the button that says “follow.” To set up Google calender, visit this link and do the same.
9. Almost done with the setup! The last part might seem complicated for non-computer geeks, but it’s really not that bad. We have to open up the files we added to the C:\Program Files\Launchy\Utilities folder and enter our Twitter username and password. To do this, open up Notepad. (If you’re using Vista, go to the notepad icon in your start menu, right click on it, and choose “run as administrator.” It took me forever to figure this part out. If you don’t do this step, t won’t allow you to save your files.)
10. In Notepad, go to “file”, “open,” then navigate to the C:\Program Files\Launchy\Utilities\Launchy Batch Plug-in folder. If you don’t see anything there, make sure the box in the bottom right hand corner says “All Files” and not “Text Documents”. Open the file named “gcal.bat” and where it says username:password, fill in your Twitter username and password. Then “Save As” and change the box that reads “Text Documents” to read “All Files.” Do the same thing with the file named “rtm.bat” and save.

Hooray! You made it! Now you have the power to TOTALLY ORGANIZE YOUR LIFE, right from your keyboard!

How? you ask. Well, here’s the amazingness of Launchy. If you want to add something to your task list, hit Alt+space bar to start Launchy, then type rtm, hit the TAB key, and write whatever you want to add. Say you need to call your mom. Hit Alt+space bar to start Launchy, type rtm, hit the TAB key, then type “call mom” (without the quotation marks). Press enter, and Launchy sends your task to Twitter, which sends it to Remember the Milk, and now when you look at your task list, “call mom” is now on it. And you never had to even open your browser.

Google Calendar is even cooler, because there’s a whole language created for adding items without ever having to click on boxes. You can learn more about the Google Calendar Quick Add language here. The Launchy shortcut name is “gcal.” So to add something to your Google Calendar, do the same thing you did for Remember the Milk, except type “gcal” instead of “rtm.” Using the Quick Add language, you can say something like gcal (TAB) Eat dinner next Monday at 7 pm with Marco”, and voila, when you open your Google calendar, the event will be all set up for you, pretty as a picture.

I know it sounds like an awful lot of work to get set up, but once you have it all figured out, it can really save you some time. Assuming you’re a person like me who spends the bulk of his or her day starting at a computer. If you’re not, then please be thankful for your awesome life and never waste your time attempting to do any of the things outlined above.

Update: Oh! I almost forgot! The other awesome thing about connecting Twitter to your RTM & Gcal accounts is that you can add items to both using your cellphone! First, go to your Twitter settings and make sure it is enabled to work with your cellphone. Twitter’s phone number is 40404. To add things to either RTM or Gcal, type “d” (for direct message) rtm or gcal, followed by whatever you want to add. So In the example above, you would text the message “d rtm call mom” to 40404, and it would then show up on your task list, which is viewable from anywhere on the shiny Internet.

The next step is figuring out how to actually complete all these awesome, well-organized tasks.