Team productivity hack: Todo list as IM status

Last week, I came up with a weird trick that's actually catching on inside of my office, so I thought I'd share it with HN. It's pretty simple: keep your TODO list in your IM status message field.

I mean it: this should be your primary TODO list, always up to date and in roughly the right order. Whatever you're working on should be at the top. Here's my TODO list: http://img.skitch.com/20100712-nkc6q1syeimrci8d56b8c9dyy4.png

I started doing this as a coping mechanism to let people know how much stuff had fallen on my plate and to make sure they knew I hadn't forgotten about their requests, but it ended up being very helpful for us to know what everyone is working on.

Try it out and let me know what you think.