16 ms·

Taskwarrior, where have you been all my life?

424 points by daveyarwood 8y ago

LeanderK 8y ago
offtopic, but I really like the fresh minimalism of the website. The colors and the choice of the monospaced font are quite unique. It captures the feel of using a terminal without being boring.
- matte_black 8y ago
  Don’t know about you but on iPhone Safari it’s terrible. No momentum scrolling makes it exhausting to scroll through, and there’s a broken horizontal scroll.
  - jasonmp85 8y ago
    Yes. It’s horrible. I opened it for like 2s and gave up. I guess if reader mode works this could be OK. Don’t override scroll behavior.
    - krrrh 8y ago
      It’s even worse than that. I actually scrolled all the way down on an iPhone and the last third of the article was cut off and only accessible through reader mode. The irony of a paean to command line tools being housed in unnecessarily compromised UX is a bit much.
    - codemac 8y ago
      Look at the HTML source - I don't see anywhere that scroll behavior is overridden. Hell, there isn't any javascript at all for Safari.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    Interestingly, macOS Safari seems to handle scrolling fine.
  - wlesieutre 8y ago
    I got to a point where the entire screen is occupied by one of the black terminal blocks quotes and got stuck. Can't scroll any further. Grabbing in these areas just makes the screen bounce instead of scrolling. Checked on a computer and confirmed that yes, there is more content past where the phone version became unscrollable. Hands down the worst scrolling override I've ever encountered. EDIT: You can grab it on the edges if you get stuck here (or you can go read some other website where scrolling works properly)
  - LeanderK 8y ago
    certainly possible, i am on a laptop (macOS Safari).
  - codemac 8y ago
    That's the iPhone's rendering of their <figure> blocks. If you look at the HTML source, there is so little going on I can't see how it wouldn't be your mobile browser's fault.
    - matte_black 8y ago
      That makes it even worse. There’s very little going on and it still manages to be a fuckup. Look at all the others who are also getting stuck in this UX tar pit. How on earth does this happen on what should be a straight forward site?
      - recursive 8y ago
        > How on earth does this happen on what should be a straight forward site? It happened because the site developer didn't work around all the bugs in safari mobile.
  - js2 8y ago
    It appears to have something to do with the web font. If I block web fonts via Firefox Focus's content blocker the page scrolls fine, but it also doesn't render with any style applied.
konraditurbe 8y ago
Task warrior is a hell of a tool - it's synced accross my devices and doesn't need proprietary software. I built a Taskwarrior app for pebble as well, so I can have the tasks that have a deadline in the timeline.
- kchr 8y ago
  Please share the Pebble stuff!
  - konraditurbe 8y ago
    https://github.com/konradit/pebble-taskwarrior https://github.com/konradit/pebble-taskwarrior
rhcom2 8y ago
I use Google Keep with pretty good success. Having one list for "To-Do Now" (daily stuff) and one for "To-Do Later" (longer term goals). The key for me is syncing across devices. If I can't add the to-do quickly when I think of it then the system wouldn't work for me.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Splines 8y ago
  I've recently been having problems with Keep losing data that I've typed in (common scenario - paste in a paragraph of text from my spouse that has a list, I line break the list to get checkboxes, then portions of that list disappear when Keep tries syncing). This seems like a pri-0 feature but Keep has become unreliable recently. Otherwise it's great but the fact that it loses data means I've shelved it for now.
- ClassyJacket 8y ago
  What makes Google Keep useless to me is that there is no 'sort by most recently edited' option, same as Google Drive and really everything google makes. I have to manually bring each note to the top every time I edit it, which kills the functionality.
  - rhcom2 8y ago
    I tag my to-do lists as "TODO" and pin them at the top. On Android I have a widget setup only to show things with the "TODO" tag.
reacharavindh 8y ago
I tried this as well. I'm yearning for a tool that lets me drag & drop an email, and it automatically creates a task based on the content. I can obviously go and edit it after setting deadline or assign to project etc. I was hoping to create this workflow with MS Outlook(on Mac) and its inbuilt Tasks, but apparently they don't support it :-( I would pay for such a feature.
- walterbell 8y ago
  iOS11 has drag-and-drop between apps, including todo apps. Bonus 4:3 screen on iPad Pro.
- dithering 8y ago
  I use a variation on inbox-zero: if it's unread, it still has to be dealt with. Sort email unread-first. Works well enough for me (I have lots of "automatically mark read" filters for noise emails).
- eddiezane 8y ago
  I recently came across https://www.moo.do https://www.moo.do. Might be what you're after.
  - desireco42 8y ago
    Wow, this is revelation, thank you, very cool tool with a lot of integrations. Need to give it a whirl, but looks very promising.
- natex 8y ago
  Outlook/OneNote combo works well for this.
- amichal 8y ago
  Don’t kno about Mac but: https://www.google.com/search?q=outlook+task+from+email&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari https://www.google.com/search?q=outlook+task+from+email&ie=U...
natex 8y ago
Does anyone use Taskwarrior with more than just a few tasks? I have about 15 projects going at once and flip between them numerous times during the day. The projects might have several sub-projects and multiple next actions. Are Projects/Subtasks implemented well?
- SEJeff 8y ago
  Taskwarrior has the concept of a user defined attribute (UDA) which you can setup all kinds of fanciness for projects / filtering with. I use one called "prio" aka priority and generally set it to H|M|L. These allow you to customize taskwarrior to an insane degree. In fact, they actually rejected a contribution from me to add priority support natively when it could be done with a UDA: https://taskwarrior.org/docs/udas.html https://taskwarrior.org/docs/udas.html Really powerful software.
- taborj 8y ago
  I do. You can define the 'project', and then use that field in a variety of ways. I use the format 'Customer.Project', as I oftentimes have many projects with each customer. Using this method, I can sort by 'Customer' to get all projects for that customer, or I can get more granular and sort by 'Customer.Project'. It's extremely versatile, and can be customized to suit your usage. I love it.
- brunoqc 8y ago
  You can have projects with 'pro:name'. You can have sub projects with 'pro:name1.name2'. You can specify that a task depends on another one with 'depends:id1'. I'm not sure how well it works with a lot of tasks. You might need to use filters a lot. tasksh review[1] might be useful too. [1]: https://taskwarrior.org/docs/review.html https://taskwarrior.org/docs/review.html
- jecxjo 8y ago
  I use to break all of my work up into smallest tasks possible. Was doing pomodoro, with two large projects, hardware and software, development and management, multiple feature and bug releases. So tons and tons of tasks! At one point I had it automated so when I was doing a bug fix I'd create a set of dependency connected tasks (Understand Bug, Create Fix, Create Unit Test, Code Review, Documentation, Push Update). I could easily have a hundred tasks in the queue at any given time.
0xdeadbeefbabe 8y ago
Why is a todo list a good idea?
- craftyguy 8y ago
  It helps some folks stay organized and manage their time effectively.
  - chiefalchemist 8y ago
    True. But it's also easy of falling into the trap of getting things done, but failing to be productive. Doing things and doing the right things are two different things.
    - tonyarkles 8y ago
      I've got a pretty massive list of stuff in org-mode. Some of it makes sense to do now to achieve goals right now, and some of it is interesting stuff that I want to think about later (or maybe never). Dumping it all into org-mode GTD style helped made me feel noticeably lighter. All of this stuff that's been bouncing around in my brain is now stored in a place that I trust to keep it. It's all organized in a relatively hierarchical fashion (projects & sub-projects), with next actions identified for most projects. Every week (usually Sunday morning), I spent a 0.5-1 hr looking at the week that has passed and looking at the week ahead. Specifically looking at "doing the right things" is the point of this. I look at my overall goals and try to figure out whether or not the tasks (and the containing projects) are what I should actually be working on. If there's tasks that I think should be done in the following week, I schedule those tasks for a particular day so that each morning when I wake up I've got a manageable list of things to accomplish that I've already decided help move the needle in some way. During that review I also give a look through the list of projects that don't currently have scheduled tasks and figure out if there's one there that should get included in the following week's schedule. I keep everything driven in there. Some of them are recurring tasks/chores (walk the dogs, clean furnace filter, call Grandma), while some are more tactical (get feature X specced out, touch base with old client X), and some are more strategic (review financial plan). The beauty of all of this is that the "doing the right things" evaluation and the "what should I be doing today" evaluations are separated but still pretty close in time. This, for me, helps me from getting too caught up in the moment and spending a lot of time doing the wrong things.
fsiefken 8y ago
Taskwarrior is very nice, but I found org-mode combined with the mobile client orgzly even nicer. Export to ical, sync to server and you have it in your watch or mobile calendar as well.
- codemac 8y ago
  Do you struggle with orgzly's sync management though? Things seem to get out of sync a lot with syncthing, so I've stopped editing lists on my phone (which... is starting to defeat the current iteration of the setup). Or do you use dropbox? With WebDAV on MobileOrg, I never really had these problems.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    I use Dropbox, and it generally works a-ok with Orgzly. That said, I rarely find myself using Orgzly - but it's invaluable when I'm on the go and need to check some info stored in my org files. It used to have issues, but after couple iterations it seems to be working quite well now. Some time ago scheduled tasks even started to generate notifications on the phone, so now I find myself syncing more often just so that I can get those reminders when I expect to spend a lot of time away from my computer. The only thing problem I had with it is that if I delete a file locally, and then sync Orgzly, it'll restore the file on Dropbox instead of picking up the delete. After having to re-delete some files couple of times I now remember to watch out for it, so it's not really a problem anymore.
  - bambataa 8y ago
    I use beorg to get my org-mode lists on my phone. It works with WebDAV and Dropbox. The developer has also recently added the ability to edit documents on your phone (previously it was pretty much read-only). To be honest I only really use org-mode and similar organisers in order to dump something out of my head ('close the loop' as I believe it's called in GTD parlance). Do you find it easy to update progress etc as you go?
ibnishak 8y ago
Is there anyone who used org mode and taskwarrior to get a compare and contrast?
- ealhad 8y ago
  I guess Org mode is better for someone who is already an Emacs user; and does anyone use Org mode without Emacs? Taskwarrior is probably a fine piece of software though.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    I agree. Org mode will be more efficient and definitely much more feature-rich if you already keep Emacs open all the time, and especially if you bother configuring it properly. Taskwarrior looks like it can work better "out of the box" and definitely more useful for someone who isn't Emacs-proficient. Org-mode, for better or worse, is flexible enough to support lots of different kinds of workflow. It's cool if you know what you want to do, and the defaults will be enough for simple GTD workflow, but if you aren't sure how to properly organize yourself, you'll find yourself searching a lot for ideas from other people. My current org-mode config looks like this: https://github.com/TeMPOraL/conffiles/blob/master/emacs26/.emacs.d/elisp/init-org-mode.el https://github.com/TeMPOraL/conffiles/blob/master/emacs26/.e.... You can think there's lots of stuff in it, but frankly, this is mostly on the lower end :). Most of the code is for tweaking tasks, clocking and agenda views to better fit my workflow. It's by no means finished - living in org-mode is very much about slowly discovering your ideal workflow and molding Emacs around it :).
  - eadmund 8y ago
    > does anyone use Org mode without Emacs? Well, I use Orgzly on my phone, but I use emacs on my desktop & laptops. Orgzly is okay, but not great — and it has some weird bugs. It's definitely not a complete port of Org mode, or even a port of most of Org mode. For what it is, though, it's better than nothing — and better than the current alternatives. I really wish that there were a good touch-aware port of emacs on Android.
    - 8y ago
jecxjo 8y ago
I use to use Taskwarrior, using all its features until one day my work life lost all complexity. At that point I felt like all the key features of Taskwarrior were lost because I just didn't have enough complication to track. Now I just use todo.txt and that seems to cover everything I need.
- tonyarkles 8y ago
  How did your work life lose all of its complexity? I long for a single todo.txt, but have settled on a directory of org-mode files :)
  - jecxjo 8y ago
    At one point I was the sole engineer on two very large hardware/software projects. Projects that often didn't have dedicated marketing, sales, tech support, internal/external training. So I was wearing a LOT of hats, and I needed a way of figuring out how to be one of the most productive people in the company (for my own reasons) while also only doing the bare minimum of work. Then one day the company decided they would completely change direction, dropped all future development on current products and moved everyone to their next gen product line. Turns out my two major projects wouldn't have next gen work for 3 to 5 years so I was "demoted" to a "gun for hire". I went from doing way too much work, to filling in the gaps when a team needed to complete a sprint on time. None of my work more than a few days, had no blocking dependencies and had no correlation to what I was going to do next week. No more burn down, no more charting, no more task management. That is when I decided to change jobs. Now I' have some complexity, but its all easily managed in todo.txt.
    - tonyarkles 8y ago
      > That is when I decided to change jobs. I was really hoping that was going to be the conclusion, for your sake :). That sounds like an incredibly demoralizing experience.
      - jecxjo 8y ago
brightball 8y ago
Years ago I used Remember the Milk and then hopped between multiple "other" solutions over the years. Decided to give RTM another look last month and was really impressed. In hindsight I should have never left it. IMO Dropbox needs to purchase them to integrate with their growing offering.
spott 8y ago
I run into this every once in a while, but the sticking point is always the mobile picture. If I want to add a todo item using my phone, what are my options? Anyone have any experience with this?
- ISL 8y ago
  Taskwarrior's mobile app is sufficient, though configuration for use of a taskserver is fiddly. There are cloud taskservers (I use https://inthe.am https://inthe.am, but you can host your own, too.)
- zeroxfe 8y ago
  I use Google Tasks for this and I love it. It's super simple and lightweight and I really hope they don't kill it.
  - brunoqc 8y ago
    I wish they would add more features. I would love a full featured free TODO app from Google.
    - kchr 8y ago
      What features do you need?
      - Slackwise 8y ago
        Not the parent commenter, but... - Add a time to reminders, as they're currently only due date reminders. (Nearly useless, really, other than appearing on your calendar.) - Merge Tasks remidners with the Google Assistant reminders, and the Google Keep reminders. Three different places to have Googley reminders, all separate. - Re-arranging the task lists. (You can only re-arrange tasks on a list, but not the lists themselves. This is a basic feature that is surprisingly missing.) - Add a widget for the Android home screen so you can keep a specific list in full view all the time. (This is kinda' a personal wishlist item.) - Add Google Assistant voice command support to create tasks, review tasks, etc. (Super useful while driving and remembering something.) - Add tagging to list items, and a search function so you can have "meta-lists" like "All Items Due Today" without having to maintain items across lists. (This would allow you implement the GTD methodology.) - Add minimal per-list collaboration of some sort, similar to Keep. (I guess it's already available for Keep, so maybe not super relevant.)
rayiner 8y ago
Why doesn’t this site do inertial scrolling properly on my iPhone?
- hartator 8y ago
  Author has too much time in his hand now, and decided to reimplement scrolling.
  - JustSomeNobody 8y ago
    What would be the point of doing this?
  - bitexploder 8y ago
    I actually become intrigued why anyone would do this on a simple personal site that seemed to at least prioritize minimalism. The amount of junk Disqus loaded is nuts. 109 requests. And, as far as my quick skimming can tell, the only JS on the site is Disqus. So it must be some CSS thing or Disqus that causes this behavior.
  - Slackwise 8y ago
    I don't see any actual¹ JavaScript on the page, so how would this have been accomplished? Some fancy but broken scrolling manipulation CSS...? 1: The only JS on the page is an IE conditional comment adding an HTML5 shim script, and the Disqus comment embedding script. Then there's the Google analytics that gets pulled in from font references and I guess Facebook JS via the Disqus embed.
    - svnsets 8y ago
      It's some not-even-fancy CSS. The site has "overflow: auto;" on the body :/ RIP iOS users https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/momentum-scrolling-on-ios-overflow-elements/ https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/momentum-scrolling-on-io...
      - aidenn0 8y ago
ISL 8y ago
I use taskwarrior, and it makes my life better. Two things I wish I could configure it to do (stating here in case someone already knows how): 1) A view that surfaces only the next task for each project, with a little annotation like: Write chapter 1 (First Novel) Make grocery list (Juliet's Party) Collate transactions (Month-end reconciliation) Without that culled list, a comprehensive task-list is overwhelming. 2) Integration with a calendar (Google Calendar, etc.), where adding events to the calendar automatically adds them to Taskwarrior. Thank you, Taskwarrior team! ( I was about to ask for a donate link, but I finally found one. Thanks :)! )
- daveyarwood 8y ago
  Re #1, my strategy is to make `task ready` my "home base" of sorts. `task ready` shows you only tasks that aren't blocked or scheduled for the future. In other words, tasks that are ready to be done ASAP. My daily flow is to try and clear my plate, i.e. reach "Inbox Zero" with my `task ready` view. Every task in that view needs to either be completed or rescheduled for a time that I think I have a chance at completing it. As for projects with tasks that block other tasks (e.g. write chapter 1 is "next," and it is the blocker for anything else, like writing chapter 2), you can tell Taskwarrior to hide them from your `task ready` view by using the `depends` property. For example, if "write chapter 1" is task 42, then I might add a task like `task add 'write chapter 2' depends:42`. Until I mark task 42 (writing chapter 1) as done, "write chapter 2" won't show up in my `task ready` view and I'm free not to think about it.
hartator 8y ago
I didn’t knew FollowUpThen, it seems very handy.
flavor8 8y ago
Since nobody has mentioned it, ToodleDo is a good tool with a slightly dated UI and a terrible name. It has mobile apps, 2FA, projects / subtasks / scheduling / optional alarms, and a variety of other related features. There's a free restricted version, also a paid version, which is reassuring.
- dwightgunning 8y ago
  I'm a long time user and have paid the ~$20/year, subscription for >5yrs. It's been rock solid the whole time. I find it's got the right out of GTD without being too bloated and/or cumbersome to use.
lawn 8y ago
While technically awesome I've tried using it several times but always end up dropping it. I find it difficult to maintain and over time it's left to rot until I finally give up on it. For me I don't actually need the complexity. A simple text based todo list would basically do the same job. The main issue is actually maintaining it. This is why I like habitica more: https://habitica.com/ https://habitica.com/ It's basically a gamified todo list which is perfect for me. It's also awesome with helping establish new habits. The incentive of not wanting to break a streak is surprisingly strong. Nothing else has been remotely as successful.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 8y ago
  I tried it yesterday while looking for an app that would track "on a scale of 1-5 how well did I do X today". I settled on KeepTrack, but it doesn't have habitica's style. Maybe habitica encourages taking the habit seriously without taking myself too seriously.
  - schrodinger 8y ago
    I like https://www.askmeevery.com/ https://www.askmeevery.com/. It just sends you an email and you reply. And if the reply is numerical, it'll generate a plot and statistics for you.
- tjr225 8y ago
  I find a physical notepad and a pen to be perfect for prioritizing and recording to-dos. Not sure why it needs to be "optimized" any further.
  - vinceguidry 8y ago
    You have to carry it around if you want your task list to be anywhere but in just one spot.
    - zwkrt 8y ago
      from my perspective, as soon as my todo list is digitized it is hidden from me. And as soon as it is hidden I forget to maintain it.
dbecks 8y ago
Not sure if this helps, but I made a little iOS app a while ago to help with my workflow. Check it out: HiFutureSelf (http://hifutureself.com http://hifutureself.com) HiFutureSelf is a super fast way to send messages to the future as reminders. You can set a time or location to trigger the message. It's completely free and maintained for fun :)
- yig 8y ago
  I use calendar events. Then I can also allocate time to do the task.
  - dbecks 8y ago
    Totally! I do too! Maybe it's just me.. but somethings just don't fit into the calendar. Like when I pull up to the gym I get a message to do my 100 squats for the day (AND NOT ACCEPT LESS). Or when I arrive to the grocery store to pickup shampoo. Or when I leave the office today to go by the pharmacy to pick up a prescription...
platz 8y ago
http://mgsd.tiddlyspot.com/demo3.html http://mgsd.tiddlyspot.com/demo3.html TiddlyWiki powered GTD system
- neves 8y ago
  I loved it, but does it still work with modern browsers? I stopped using it since it started to fail at each browser update.
- knight17 8y ago
  mGSD is based on TiddlyWiki Classic, here is GSD5, a new project, built on the current version, TiddlyWiki 5: http://gsd5.tiddlyspot.com/ http://gsd5.tiddlyspot.com/
  - platz 8y ago
    I find tw5 a step backwards in terms of usability. Not a fan of design aesthetics which decrease information density.
psychedelic 8y ago
Am I the only one still using a #2 pencil and a piece of paper for my 'to do' lists???
- jvehent 8y ago
  Yes, I upgraded to a fountain pen a while ago!
- bsg75 8y ago
  I'm not too far off with the TaskPaper format.
- daftao 8y ago
  I carry a Mead memo book and a pen in my back pocket at all time, it's great for taking notes, recording stuff I don't want to forget, doodling, etc.. Added bonus: I can take it out to write a to-do and not accidently spend 20 minutes on Twitter or HN. Beats any other productivity app I ever tried in that regard.
  - aidenn0 8y ago
    After having a mead go through the laundry, I switched to a rite-in-the-rain with a fisher. The notebook can survive 2-3 trips through the laundry before it becomes hard to read.
joe-collins 8y ago
I know Google's scary, but having task management/scheduling built into and up-front in their Inbox is wonderful. When I saw that, I ditched the old gmail interface and haven't looked back.
sp332 8y ago
If you just want to schedule emails without involving too many third parties, you can do this in the Outlook mobile app by swiping right on any email. For the desktop app, right-click an email and use the "Follow Up" menu. You can also do it in Google's Inbox app, but you have to swipe left instead. The Inbox website lets you schedule emails by hovering over an email and clicking the clock icon.
pmarreck 8y ago
Was immediately turned off by his devotion to the ridiculously overrated Inbox Zero. Inbox Zero is a gross waste of time and essentially OCD masturbation. Using tools (like filters, or a better email client with smart prioritization such as https://sparkmailapp.com/ https://sparkmailapp.com/) to prioritize important emails is far superior and has zero ongoing maintenance cost in time: https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/worlds-dumbest-time-management-technique-inbox-zero.html https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/worlds-dumbest-time-manag... If you want to actually get productive, get RescueTime: https://www.rescuetime.com/ https://www.rescuetime.com/ There is a very good reason why the Spark iOS app doesn't even bother showing your unread count.
- WaxProlix 8y ago
  Sounds a lot like the Getting Things Done approach, which is a little culty as a community but has some reasonable advice. One of those nuggets is "touch it once," using the "four Ds" - Do, Delete, Delegate, Defer. I've been basically using it as an approach for a while and it's great when I stick to it. It's not in opposition to using filters and such though afaik; all of my build/jira/notifications/updates/forum posts/etc email goes to various buckets and is immediately forgotten.
- sametmax 8y ago
  I am more productive with zero inbox than other tools. And since neither of us can prove we are right, let's accept it's just an opinionated tool, and it's a matter of taste.
  - pmarreck 8y ago
    > And since neither of us can prove we are right Actually, that's false. Use https://www.rescuetime.com/ https://www.rescuetime.com/ and compare with people who don't use this system, divide by the number of incoming emails per person, and you'll know in short order. Empirical data is a wonderful tool to find truth.
- enraged_camel 8y ago
  Agreed on Inbox Zero. I used it for a while, until I realized that there is tremendous value in being as responsive to emails as possible. Most people don't expect replies to emails, so they tend to be delighted when you respond immediately. It's a great way to set yourself apart from your coworkers or competitors. So now I have my email inbox open in its own monitor, and I glance at it when a new email arrives. If it requires a response, I respond right away, even if it is something like "OK, let me look into this and get back to you." People really, really like knowing that you are 100% attentive.
gtt 8y ago
Awesome. Could someone recommend note-taking tool with the same spirit?
- kchr 8y ago
  vim.
Izkata 8y ago
I use taskwarrior daily at work primarily for its dependencies and recurring tasks. For example, when I pick up a case to work on, I'll immediately add it: task add project:team.kanban case-1234 Add the frob Then as I inspect and think about the parts that need to be done, I'll add a bunch more pieces as sub-projects: task add project:team.kanban.case-1234 Query backend for the data task add project:team.kanban.case-1234 Send ajax call/store in redux task add project:team.kanban.case-1234 Add to UI task add project:team.kanban.case-1234 Use the new widget for filters task add project:team.kanban.case-1234 Make filters work Then I go back and decide which pieces here I want to do before the others. If, in order, the above tasks were IDs 1-6, then: task 3 modify depends:2 task 4 modify depends:3 task 6 modify depends:5 task 1 modify depends:2,3,4,5,6 So at this point, only tasks 2 and 5 are unblocked and can be started on. It externalizes the state of the case, so I don't really even have to think about what to do next (hence the name of the default report, "next") or how far done I am. A good way of thinking about how I choose this breakout is, what could I commit without breaking the build? If you also use vimwiki, there's another plugin that works on top of it called taskwiki [0] that lets you use use a taskwarrior filter to show a set of tasks in the wiki, that auto-update. It even shows dependencies as indented todolist items (though the above example wouldn't work because tasks 2, 3, and 5 each have two tasks that depend on it; this and a few other things has me writing my own vim plugin for vimwiki that'll handle handle the above, plus a few other differences). [0] https://github.com/tbabej/taskwiki https://github.com/tbabej/taskwiki
- kchr 8y ago
  Nice workflow, thanks for the tip.
- amerine 8y ago
  Awesome write-up of your flow. Thank you.
toastking 8y ago
This seems really cool but I can't imagine using a task manager that doesn't also have a mobile app.
- ISL 8y ago
  Taskwarrior has a mobile client: https://taskwarrior.org/news/news.20160225.html https://taskwarrior.org/news/news.20160225.html
  - Grumbledour 8y ago
    The play store link seems dead, though?
    - ISL 8y ago
      Hm. The taskwarrior app I use daily is gone from the Play Store. The author now offers something called TaskwarriorC2 that may have similar functionality, with a different UI spirit. Edit: I just installed TaskwarriorC2 and got it working (by hand-copying my hard-won profile configuration from original taskwarrior (pem files, taskrc, etc., the whole profile directory)) from kjv.task/files/ over to the com.taskwc2/files/ directory on the phone. Editing the taskrc file is currently broken for me, so if I hadn't already had one, configuration would have been daunting. Now that TaskwarriorC2 is working: If you're a taskwarrior poweruser, the interface is awesome. If you'd never used taskwarrior before, it would seem inscrutable.
      - wingtask 8y ago
        I was never happy with the Taskwarrior client you linked so I'm launching a mobile client alternative for taskwarrior: https://wingtask.com https://wingtask.com
        ISL 8y ago
        Awesome. <Picard>Make it so!</Picard>
synthmeat 8y ago
I’ve used taskwarrior for 3-4 years exclusively, and can state that if you have a complaint about it, it’s highly likely that you haven’t considered the problem scope as deeply as its devs did. But then I stopped being a lone wolf dev and it simply doesn’t work for teams. Yet.
- kchr 8y ago
  Even if you work in a team, surely you take on individual tasks based on what team has decided?
rconti 8y ago
It always blows my mind when people who claim to have issues with focus or task management then go on to talk about how they've automated tons of trivial tasks. That sounds like the OPPOSITE of someone who has issues with focus.
- bdcravens 8y ago
  I think some people just need to put the work into something they enjoy (and hope that doesn't become just a distraction) Myself, I suck at budgeting. So naturally I'm building a Rails app to do it for me ...
- karmajunkie 8y ago
  "focus" problems very often are "hyperfocus" problems where we can get really zoned into whatever we're doing but make poor choices about where that focus lies. Think of it as a difference in executive function rather than a focus issue.
- aidenn0 8y ago
  There are people who are so task focused that they waste a lot of energy worrying that they're not working on the right task! If you're at all like me, then this is a foreign concept. The introduction to GTD hints that it is specifically targeted at people like this to reduce their anxieties. It also caused me to stop reading the book because, as I said, that concept is mostly foreign to me (I have observed it in others, but my empathy is insufficient to truly understand it).
  - jecxjo 8y ago
    There are also people w/o the anxieties, who live their lives as firefighters. Every day take on the emergencies! That was me for a long time. When you have a job that is constantly filled with fires you can survive for a long time doing this. The problem is that sometimes a non-fire tasj can start out as low priority but eventually become the most important thing you have to do today all based on a due date. Unless you are good at managing your future tasks, you'll often miss them. I never had anxieties about getting things out the door, mostly because my bosses were constantly chopping down one or two of the legs of my stool (money, time, resources). But it was easy for me to keep pushing a low priority task to the bottom of the list because its not due yet, totally forgetting about the fact that eventually it will be due.
keslert 8y ago
Shameless plug for https://heyhabit.com https://heyhabit.com (I'm the dev). It's meant to be used as a chrome extension that takes over the new tab in Chrome, but you can try it from the website. I've been using it for ~2 years now and it works really well off and on. I've discovered that it's really helpful for getting me back on track when I fall off the horse. Because the calendar maintains what a "successful" week looks like for me, it eliminates some of the mental energy required to regroup.
city41 8y ago
Google essentially implemented FollowUpThen and Taskwarrior in Inbox via snoozing and reminders. I can honestly say Inbox has significantly changed my life. I have to use email every day already, so overlaying task management has been a huge boon. I have a recurring reminder every Sunday night to take out the trash. I set up reminders to go off in 1 year (like when I sign up for something and don't want it to auto renew). I basically setup a reminder for everything I have to do. And since I have Inbox open all day long anyway, I never forget anything anymore. Hey Google, thanks for making Inbox!
- sammorrowdrums 8y ago
  I was searching the comments for someone saying this. Snooze / archive to achieve inbox zero is life changing. I have one simple rule. If I can't do something right now, I snooze it until I think I will be able to deal with it. The knowledge that it will not be forgotten is very cathartic and my inbox doesn't fill with emails I intend to deal with but haven't yet. I think what people forget is that time is often a better folder system than folders, as it doesn't place the responsibility to check again on the user. I've tried to evangelize and I can't understand why it hasn't resonated as much with others.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
    > I've tried to evangelize and I can't understand why it hasn't resonated as much with others. Perhaps it's a trust thing? It only works if you're 100% sure that a snoozed email will come back every time and no later than you told it to. Is it reasonable to trust Inbox to do that? Probably, but people have to be convinced of that. And note that for some of us, trusting the magical AI-enhanced black box that Google tends to build is a little on the hard side.
    - Myrmornis 8y ago
      I think people think it means leaving gmail behind. Even if you tell them they can carry on using gmail, I guess they think it will leave a mess of duplicate emails or conflicting state between the two.
atrexler 8y ago
I'm currently using Asana for task management. I guess the only upside is that I can share tasks with my wife, but its clearly not really meant for just single person management. Has anyone tried both taskwarrior and asana? Any obvious pros/cons? taskwarrior seems much simpler and can live locally if you dont want locked in asana/whatever?
- comnetxr 8y ago
  I've tried both. I liked Asana a lot in the early days - it was simple and removed the friction of logging tasks. I especially liked that many tasks could be entered in the same way as an outline, just using enter to drop to the next line and tab/shift-tab to nest tasks. All the task properties I needed were visible at once and I could quickly tab through the task details and log what I needed. Eventually they added more features for teams and the features I liked became more complicated to use, so I dropped it. I tried taskwarrior as well, thinking that being in the command line would reduce the friction for entering tasks as I spend so much time there already. However, the friction is higher for viewing and reorganizing tasks so I would fill up a todo list and then not use it.
whack 8y ago
I wonder why no one has mentioned using Google-Calendar as a task-management tool. I too use (starred) emails to remind myself of tasks that I have pending. But for anything that's time specific, I just put it on my google-calendar (or any online calendar really). Eg: Mow my lawn on Sunday? Ok, I'll create an all-day event on Sunday to mow-my-lawn. And once I'm done, all I have to do is delete it. I can then periodically check my calendar from my phone/laptop/tablet, and see everything I have to do that day/week. If I want to get a head-start on anything that's coming up next week, it's all there on my calendar too. If I need a reminder, I can just have it send me a push-notification at a specific time. Best of all, I never have to be at my computer to get all these info/alerts. As long as I have my phone nearby, I can check my tasks, and get reminders for anything I've forgotten about.
- rndstr 8y ago
  There are also reminders that string along as long as you don't check them off.
- veidr 8y ago
  Yeah; basically any calendar app. Every OS/device comes with one built in; they can sync across all your devices; they expose the database via SDK or API so you or others can augment them with additional tools (though I don't find it necessary). For me, this has been a solved problem for many years. It's one of those things where everybody's different, I get that. But using an email system to manage your tasks seems only one step less goofy than calling yourself and leaving yourself voice mails. You can make that work, I guess, but that's not what the tool is for. I think modern calendars are one of the great software success stories, actually. They are rock solid reliable, based mainly on hackable open standards, and work everywhere. I don't delete things from my calendar, I just leave them in there as a fossil record of my life. (What was I doing ten years ago on this day? I just checked; apparently I helped my girlfriend sell her car, bought my sister a plane ticket, and worked on software for most of the day.) This data has moved with me from platform to platform and will be accessible my whole life. This is how computers are supposed to work! (But seldom do...)
- delcaran 8y ago
  IMHO it should be more integrated with tasks, and tasks should be much more powerful. Some examples: - Here in Italy I can donate blood every 3 months. So I want to set a task "Now you can donate blood" on say June 1st and set it to repeat itself 3 months after the day I actually donate blood and in the meantime being shown on top of calendar in a special "to-do" section. And if I donate blood on June 5th, the next donation should be automatically set on September 5th. I achieve this with an external app that syncs to tasks, but being it integrated in calender would be wonderful. - A task can have more dates to be set. An example is taxes: from April 1st I can review the documentation the governament send me, from May 1st I can submit the correct documents and at May 31st I must have submited the documents. Of course during this period the task should always be visibile on my calendar. Thing is I have the feeling that todo lists, calendars, tasks and time-tracking should ALL be integrated in the same software. And as far as I know this software is emacs' org-mode... one day I will learn it.
zwischenzug 8y ago
I wrote a post on this some time back: https://zwischenzugs.com/2017/12/03/how-i-manage-my-time/ https://zwischenzugs.com/2017/12/03/how-i-manage-my-time/ if there's one takeaway, it's that you have to find your own way of getting what's in your head into a place you can trust, and there's no objectively right place for that. Just keep looking until you're comfortable with one and stick to it.
- tra3 8y ago
  > you have to find your own way of getting what's in your head into a place you can trust That's definitely #1. I'm surprised I had to scroll so far down to find it. :) For a long time I was looking for a system that would auto-prioritize tasks for me. I'd dump things in, and it would tell me what I had to do today, this week and this month. Long story short, it turned out to be a silly expectation. So #2 rule should be, review your tasks periodically. Basically, an 80/20 productivity system should be: #1 write everything down #2 review and cull your list every day #3 do things off your list
  - zwischenzug 8y ago
    > #1 write everything down #2 review and cull your list every day #3 do things off your list That's pretty much the 'Getting Things Done' book in a sentence! Though the advice is every week, not day in the book, and latterly changed to 'whenever works' with the advent of web systems to track tasks.
deleted 8y ago
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foo42 8y ago
Wish I'd seen this a few weeks back before building my own command line app, it seems I've taken an almost identical approach to them in everything I've implemented, though obviously they're much farther along! Still, part of the motivation for building my own was to trick myself into getting the habit of checking the list every day since I'd be keen to dogfood it - that's worked out pretty well so I can't complain!
- fenwick67 8y ago
  Me too, I just wrote a quick CLI app for logging my work on Monday
romanr 8y ago
Hitask (https://hitask.com https://hitask.com) does everything, has Google Calendar sync and Chrome extension. iOS, Android apps, team sharing and many more.
davidcamel 8y ago
I got really excited about Taskwarrior and set up a server and accounts for all of my teammates. But we quickly found that we were spending more time logging our tasks than we were actually consulting TW for what to do next. Example: task add project: support_customer_migration priority: H -- support#XYZ - analyze dependencies for customer X - github.com/repo/issue/number
- kchr 8y ago
  I think a common misconception of planning is that you wish to avoid logging and the "hassle" it means. For me, logging what I have done is the only way to keep track of the project status and let my team members know what have been done.
ademars94 8y ago
The way this article scrolljacks on mobile makes it unreadable.
mikedilger 8y ago
I find invariably that if I write something down anywhere, it falls out of my head, after which point I stop thinking about it, I lose motivation, and unless I permanently slave myself to the task manager it does not get done. There is a lot of value in keeping everything in your head.
bshanks 8y ago
The todo.txt file format supports extensions, and some of the extensions include start date, due date, recurring tasks. The Simpletask todo.txt Android client supports these, and can filter by things that are past their start date, sort by due date, etc. Todo.txt also supports projects/contexts/lists/tags and Simpletask can filter by them. i don't know which todo.txt commandline clients, if any, can do this but i bet some can (topydo maybe?). Simpletask supports Lua scripting, i dunno if this is sufficent to allow dynamic prioritization of tasks, but it might be. I don't think Simpletask supports dependencies but topydo does. todo.txt is a file format. The nice thing about todo.txt-based tools is that the todo list is stored in a plaintext file in a relatively readable and editable format, with one line per task. This allows you to edit it using ordinary text editors, grep it, and sync it using utilities (resolving conflicts on a line-by-line basis).
- shakna 8y ago
  I have a cheap startup task in cron that greps my todo files (generally one per project, and an everyday one) for any scheduled tasks and adds them to my calendar. Which syncs across devices. If I modify times then the calendar events get killed and reinserted. (Diff checks for changed todos for me) Finally, the feedback loop gets closed by email. I can send an email with a task, and it gets pulled down to insert or modify todos.
- mpcjanssen 8y ago
  One big area where taskwarrior shines compared to solutions like todo.txt or org mode is synchronizing between devices using taskd. Although it is a bit involved to set-up, once it works, it works very well. I am slowly trying to add task identities to Simpletask to get closer to this ideal (at the cost of 'ugly' meta data in the Todo file)
el_cid 8y ago
Like the author I went through too many solutions to organize myself. (Evernote, iOS Reminders app, OneNote, emacs/org-mode, Google apps, iOS Calendar, Omni tools & many more). I've settled down on using Apple Notes & Things 3. Things 3 is expensive, but it's simple & has a beautiful UI. It structures tasks in the same way I think about them. I really like the Quick Entry feature on the Mac, where I can quickly add a to-do from a web page or an email... The app seems to be well maintained and I am glad they didn't choose the subscription route. My biggest wish, a web API. I really like Notion (https://www.notion.so/ https://www.notion.so/), and I am sure I could do a great GTD system in it! However, I don't feel comfortable with subscriptions on apps where I keep MY data. Maybe because I grew up relatively poor, I always have the fear at the back of my mind, that maybe in the future I won't be able to afford it and what a big hassle that would be.
anotherevan 8y ago
This 30 minute video from the recent Linux.conf.au may also be of interest. https://youtu.be/zl68asL9jZA https://youtu.be/zl68asL9jZA Manage all your tasks with TaskWarrior

424 points by daveyarwood 8y ago

offtopic, but I really like the fresh minimalism of the website. The colors and the choice of the monospaced font are quite unique. It captures the feel of using a terminal without being boring.

matte_black 8y ago
Don’t know about you but on iPhone Safari it’s terrible. No momentum scrolling makes it exhausting to scroll through, and there’s a broken horizontal scroll.
- jasonmp85 8y ago
  Yes. It’s horrible. I opened it for like 2s and gave up. I guess if reader mode works this could be OK. Don’t override scroll behavior.
  - krrrh 8y ago
    It’s even worse than that. I actually scrolled all the way down on an iPhone and the last third of the article was cut off and only accessible through reader mode. The irony of a paean to command line tools being housed in unnecessarily compromised UX is a bit much.
  - codemac 8y ago
    Look at the HTML source - I don't see anywhere that scroll behavior is overridden. Hell, there isn't any javascript at all for Safari.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Interestingly, macOS Safari seems to handle scrolling fine.
- wlesieutre 8y ago
  I got to a point where the entire screen is occupied by one of the black terminal blocks quotes and got stuck. Can't scroll any further. Grabbing in these areas just makes the screen bounce instead of scrolling. Checked on a computer and confirmed that yes, there is more content past where the phone version became unscrollable. Hands down the worst scrolling override I've ever encountered. EDIT: You can grab it on the edges if you get stuck here (or you can go read some other website where scrolling works properly)
- LeanderK 8y ago
  certainly possible, i am on a laptop (macOS Safari).
- codemac 8y ago
  That's the iPhone's rendering of their <figure> blocks. If you look at the HTML source, there is so little going on I can't see how it wouldn't be your mobile browser's fault.
  - matte_black 8y ago
    That makes it even worse. There’s very little going on and it still manages to be a fuckup. Look at all the others who are also getting stuck in this UX tar pit. How on earth does this happen on what should be a straight forward site?
    - recursive 8y ago
      > How on earth does this happen on what should be a straight forward site? It happened because the site developer didn't work around all the bugs in safari mobile.
- js2 8y ago
  It appears to have something to do with the web font. If I block web fonts via Firefox Focus's content blocker the page scrolls fine, but it also doesn't render with any style applied.

konraditurbe 8y ago

Task warrior is a hell of a tool - it's synced accross my devices and doesn't need proprietary software. I built a Taskwarrior app for pebble as well, so I can have the tasks that have a deadline in the timeline.

kchr 8y ago
Please share the Pebble stuff!
- konraditurbe 8y ago
  https://github.com/konradit/pebble-taskwarrior https://github.com/konradit/pebble-taskwarrior

rhcom2 8y ago

I use Google Keep with pretty good success. Having one list for "To-Do Now" (daily stuff) and one for "To-Do Later" (longer term goals). The key for me is syncing across devices. If I can't add the to-do quickly when I think of it then the system wouldn't work for me.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Splines 8y ago
I've recently been having problems with Keep losing data that I've typed in (common scenario - paste in a paragraph of text from my spouse that has a list, I line break the list to get checkboxes, then portions of that list disappear when Keep tries syncing). This seems like a pri-0 feature but Keep has become unreliable recently. Otherwise it's great but the fact that it loses data means I've shelved it for now.
ClassyJacket 8y ago
What makes Google Keep useless to me is that there is no 'sort by most recently edited' option, same as Google Drive and really everything google makes. I have to manually bring each note to the top every time I edit it, which kills the functionality.
- rhcom2 8y ago
  I tag my to-do lists as "TODO" and pin them at the top. On Android I have a widget setup only to show things with the "TODO" tag.

reacharavindh 8y ago

I tried this as well. I'm yearning for a tool that lets me drag & drop an email, and it automatically creates a task based on the content. I can obviously go and edit it after setting deadline or assign to project etc. I was hoping to create this workflow with MS Outlook(on Mac) and its inbuilt Tasks, but apparently they don't support it :-( I would pay for such a feature.

walterbell 8y ago
iOS11 has drag-and-drop between apps, including todo apps. Bonus 4:3 screen on iPad Pro.
dithering 8y ago
I use a variation on inbox-zero: if it's unread, it still has to be dealt with. Sort email unread-first. Works well enough for me (I have lots of "automatically mark read" filters for noise emails).
eddiezane 8y ago
I recently came across https://www.moo.do https://www.moo.do. Might be what you're after.
- desireco42 8y ago
  Wow, this is revelation, thank you, very cool tool with a lot of integrations. Need to give it a whirl, but looks very promising.
natex 8y ago
Outlook/OneNote combo works well for this.
amichal 8y ago
Don’t kno about Mac but: https://www.google.com/search?q=outlook+task+from+email&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari https://www.google.com/search?q=outlook+task+from+email&ie=U...

natex 8y ago

Does anyone use Taskwarrior with more than just a few tasks? I have about 15 projects going at once and flip between them numerous times during the day. The projects might have several sub-projects and multiple next actions. Are Projects/Subtasks implemented well?

SEJeff 8y ago
Taskwarrior has the concept of a user defined attribute (UDA) which you can setup all kinds of fanciness for projects / filtering with. I use one called "prio" aka priority and generally set it to H|M|L. These allow you to customize taskwarrior to an insane degree. In fact, they actually rejected a contribution from me to add priority support natively when it could be done with a UDA: https://taskwarrior.org/docs/udas.html https://taskwarrior.org/docs/udas.html Really powerful software.
taborj 8y ago
I do. You can define the 'project', and then use that field in a variety of ways. I use the format 'Customer.Project', as I oftentimes have many projects with each customer. Using this method, I can sort by 'Customer' to get all projects for that customer, or I can get more granular and sort by 'Customer.Project'. It's extremely versatile, and can be customized to suit your usage. I love it.
brunoqc 8y ago
You can have projects with 'pro:name'. You can have sub projects with 'pro:name1.name2'. You can specify that a task depends on another one with 'depends:id1'. I'm not sure how well it works with a lot of tasks. You might need to use filters a lot. tasksh review[1] might be useful too. [1]: https://taskwarrior.org/docs/review.html https://taskwarrior.org/docs/review.html
jecxjo 8y ago
I use to break all of my work up into smallest tasks possible. Was doing pomodoro, with two large projects, hardware and software, development and management, multiple feature and bug releases. So tons and tons of tasks! At one point I had it automated so when I was doing a bug fix I'd create a set of dependency connected tasks (Understand Bug, Create Fix, Create Unit Test, Code Review, Documentation, Push Update). I could easily have a hundred tasks in the queue at any given time.

0xdeadbeefbabe 8y ago

Why is a todo list a good idea?

craftyguy 8y ago
It helps some folks stay organized and manage their time effectively.
- chiefalchemist 8y ago
  True. But it's also easy of falling into the trap of getting things done, but failing to be productive. Doing things and doing the right things are two different things.
  - tonyarkles 8y ago
    I've got a pretty massive list of stuff in org-mode. Some of it makes sense to do now to achieve goals right now, and some of it is interesting stuff that I want to think about later (or maybe never). Dumping it all into org-mode GTD style helped made me feel noticeably lighter. All of this stuff that's been bouncing around in my brain is now stored in a place that I trust to keep it. It's all organized in a relatively hierarchical fashion (projects & sub-projects), with next actions identified for most projects. Every week (usually Sunday morning), I spent a 0.5-1 hr looking at the week that has passed and looking at the week ahead. Specifically looking at "doing the right things" is the point of this. I look at my overall goals and try to figure out whether or not the tasks (and the containing projects) are what I should actually be working on. If there's tasks that I think should be done in the following week, I schedule those tasks for a particular day so that each morning when I wake up I've got a manageable list of things to accomplish that I've already decided help move the needle in some way. During that review I also give a look through the list of projects that don't currently have scheduled tasks and figure out if there's one there that should get included in the following week's schedule. I keep everything driven in there. Some of them are recurring tasks/chores (walk the dogs, clean furnace filter, call Grandma), while some are more tactical (get feature X specced out, touch base with old client X), and some are more strategic (review financial plan). The beauty of all of this is that the "doing the right things" evaluation and the "what should I be doing today" evaluations are separated but still pretty close in time. This, for me, helps me from getting too caught up in the moment and spending a lot of time doing the wrong things.

fsiefken 8y ago

Taskwarrior is very nice, but I found org-mode combined with the mobile client orgzly even nicer. Export to ical, sync to server and you have it in your watch or mobile calendar as well.

codemac 8y ago
Do you struggle with orgzly's sync management though? Things seem to get out of sync a lot with syncthing, so I've stopped editing lists on my phone (which... is starting to defeat the current iteration of the setup). Or do you use dropbox? With WebDAV on MobileOrg, I never really had these problems.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  I use Dropbox, and it generally works a-ok with Orgzly. That said, I rarely find myself using Orgzly - but it's invaluable when I'm on the go and need to check some info stored in my org files. It used to have issues, but after couple iterations it seems to be working quite well now. Some time ago scheduled tasks even started to generate notifications on the phone, so now I find myself syncing more often just so that I can get those reminders when I expect to spend a lot of time away from my computer. The only thing problem I had with it is that if I delete a file locally, and then sync Orgzly, it'll restore the file on Dropbox instead of picking up the delete. After having to re-delete some files couple of times I now remember to watch out for it, so it's not really a problem anymore.
- bambataa 8y ago
  I use beorg to get my org-mode lists on my phone. It works with WebDAV and Dropbox. The developer has also recently added the ability to edit documents on your phone (previously it was pretty much read-only). To be honest I only really use org-mode and similar organisers in order to dump something out of my head ('close the loop' as I believe it's called in GTD parlance). Do you find it easy to update progress etc as you go?

ibnishak 8y ago

Is there anyone who used org mode and taskwarrior to get a compare and contrast?

ealhad 8y ago
I guess Org mode is better for someone who is already an Emacs user; and does anyone use Org mode without Emacs? Taskwarrior is probably a fine piece of software though.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  I agree. Org mode will be more efficient and definitely much more feature-rich if you already keep Emacs open all the time, and especially if you bother configuring it properly. Taskwarrior looks like it can work better "out of the box" and definitely more useful for someone who isn't Emacs-proficient. Org-mode, for better or worse, is flexible enough to support lots of different kinds of workflow. It's cool if you know what you want to do, and the defaults will be enough for simple GTD workflow, but if you aren't sure how to properly organize yourself, you'll find yourself searching a lot for ideas from other people. My current org-mode config looks like this: https://github.com/TeMPOraL/conffiles/blob/master/emacs26/.emacs.d/elisp/init-org-mode.el https://github.com/TeMPOraL/conffiles/blob/master/emacs26/.e.... You can think there's lots of stuff in it, but frankly, this is mostly on the lower end :). Most of the code is for tweaking tasks, clocking and agenda views to better fit my workflow. It's by no means finished - living in org-mode is very much about slowly discovering your ideal workflow and molding Emacs around it :).
- eadmund 8y ago
  > does anyone use Org mode without Emacs? Well, I use Orgzly on my phone, but I use emacs on my desktop & laptops. Orgzly is okay, but not great — and it has some weird bugs. It's definitely not a complete port of Org mode, or even a port of most of Org mode. For what it is, though, it's better than nothing — and better than the current alternatives. I really wish that there were a good touch-aware port of emacs on Android.
  - 8y ago

jecxjo 8y ago

I use to use Taskwarrior, using all its features until one day my work life lost all complexity. At that point I felt like all the key features of Taskwarrior were lost because I just didn't have enough complication to track. Now I just use todo.txt and that seems to cover everything I need.

tonyarkles 8y ago
How did your work life lose all of its complexity? I long for a single todo.txt, but have settled on a directory of org-mode files :)
- jecxjo 8y ago
  At one point I was the sole engineer on two very large hardware/software projects. Projects that often didn't have dedicated marketing, sales, tech support, internal/external training. So I was wearing a LOT of hats, and I needed a way of figuring out how to be one of the most productive people in the company (for my own reasons) while also only doing the bare minimum of work. Then one day the company decided they would completely change direction, dropped all future development on current products and moved everyone to their next gen product line. Turns out my two major projects wouldn't have next gen work for 3 to 5 years so I was "demoted" to a "gun for hire". I went from doing way too much work, to filling in the gaps when a team needed to complete a sprint on time. None of my work more than a few days, had no blocking dependencies and had no correlation to what I was going to do next week. No more burn down, no more charting, no more task management. That is when I decided to change jobs. Now I' have some complexity, but its all easily managed in todo.txt.
  - tonyarkles 8y ago
    > That is when I decided to change jobs. I was really hoping that was going to be the conclusion, for your sake :). That sounds like an incredibly demoralizing experience.
    - jecxjo 8y ago

brightball 8y ago

Years ago I used Remember the Milk and then hopped between multiple "other" solutions over the years. Decided to give RTM another look last month and was really impressed. In hindsight I should have never left it. IMO Dropbox needs to purchase them to integrate with their growing offering.

spott 8y ago

I run into this every once in a while, but the sticking point is always the mobile picture. If I want to add a todo item using my phone, what are my options? Anyone have any experience with this?

ISL 8y ago
Taskwarrior's mobile app is sufficient, though configuration for use of a taskserver is fiddly. There are cloud taskservers (I use https://inthe.am https://inthe.am, but you can host your own, too.)
zeroxfe 8y ago
I use Google Tasks for this and I love it. It's super simple and lightweight and I really hope they don't kill it.
- brunoqc 8y ago
  I wish they would add more features. I would love a full featured free TODO app from Google.
  - kchr 8y ago
    What features do you need?
    - Slackwise 8y ago
      Not the parent commenter, but... - Add a time to reminders, as they're currently only due date reminders. (Nearly useless, really, other than appearing on your calendar.) - Merge Tasks remidners with the Google Assistant reminders, and the Google Keep reminders. Three different places to have Googley reminders, all separate. - Re-arranging the task lists. (You can only re-arrange tasks on a list, but not the lists themselves. This is a basic feature that is surprisingly missing.) - Add a widget for the Android home screen so you can keep a specific list in full view all the time. (This is kinda' a personal wishlist item.) - Add Google Assistant voice command support to create tasks, review tasks, etc. (Super useful while driving and remembering something.) - Add tagging to list items, and a search function so you can have "meta-lists" like "All Items Due Today" without having to maintain items across lists. (This would allow you implement the GTD methodology.) - Add minimal per-list collaboration of some sort, similar to Keep. (I guess it's already available for Keep, so maybe not super relevant.)

rayiner 8y ago

Why doesn’t this site do inertial scrolling properly on my iPhone?

hartator 8y ago
Author has too much time in his hand now, and decided to reimplement scrolling.
- JustSomeNobody 8y ago
  What would be the point of doing this?
- bitexploder 8y ago
  I actually become intrigued why anyone would do this on a simple personal site that seemed to at least prioritize minimalism. The amount of junk Disqus loaded is nuts. 109 requests. And, as far as my quick skimming can tell, the only JS on the site is Disqus. So it must be some CSS thing or Disqus that causes this behavior.
- Slackwise 8y ago
  I don't see any actual¹ JavaScript on the page, so how would this have been accomplished? Some fancy but broken scrolling manipulation CSS...? 1: The only JS on the page is an IE conditional comment adding an HTML5 shim script, and the Disqus comment embedding script. Then there's the Google analytics that gets pulled in from font references and I guess Facebook JS via the Disqus embed.
  - svnsets 8y ago
    It's some not-even-fancy CSS. The site has "overflow: auto;" on the body :/ RIP iOS users https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/momentum-scrolling-on-ios-overflow-elements/ https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/momentum-scrolling-on-io...
    - aidenn0 8y ago

ISL 8y ago

I use taskwarrior, and it makes my life better. Two things I wish I could configure it to do (stating here in case someone already knows how): 1) A view that surfaces only the next task for each project, with a little annotation like: Write chapter 1 (First Novel) Make grocery list (Juliet's Party) Collate transactions (Month-end reconciliation) Without that culled list, a comprehensive task-list is overwhelming. 2) Integration with a calendar (Google Calendar, etc.), where adding events to the calendar automatically adds them to Taskwarrior. Thank you, Taskwarrior team! ( I was about to ask for a donate link, but I finally found one. Thanks :)! )

daveyarwood 8y ago
Re #1, my strategy is to make `task ready` my "home base" of sorts. `task ready` shows you only tasks that aren't blocked or scheduled for the future. In other words, tasks that are ready to be done ASAP. My daily flow is to try and clear my plate, i.e. reach "Inbox Zero" with my `task ready` view. Every task in that view needs to either be completed or rescheduled for a time that I think I have a chance at completing it. As for projects with tasks that block other tasks (e.g. write chapter 1 is "next," and it is the blocker for anything else, like writing chapter 2), you can tell Taskwarrior to hide them from your `task ready` view by using the `depends` property. For example, if "write chapter 1" is task 42, then I might add a task like `task add 'write chapter 2' depends:42`. Until I mark task 42 (writing chapter 1) as done, "write chapter 2" won't show up in my `task ready` view and I'm free not to think about it.

hartator 8y ago

I didn’t knew FollowUpThen, it seems very handy.

flavor8 8y ago

Since nobody has mentioned it, ToodleDo is a good tool with a slightly dated UI and a terrible name. It has mobile apps, 2FA, projects / subtasks / scheduling / optional alarms, and a variety of other related features. There's a free restricted version, also a paid version, which is reassuring.

dwightgunning 8y ago
I'm a long time user and have paid the ~$20/year, subscription for >5yrs. It's been rock solid the whole time. I find it's got the right out of GTD without being too bloated and/or cumbersome to use.

lawn 8y ago

While technically awesome I've tried using it several times but always end up dropping it. I find it difficult to maintain and over time it's left to rot until I finally give up on it. For me I don't actually need the complexity. A simple text based todo list would basically do the same job. The main issue is actually maintaining it. This is why I like habitica more: https://habitica.com/ https://habitica.com/ It's basically a gamified todo list which is perfect for me. It's also awesome with helping establish new habits. The incentive of not wanting to break a streak is surprisingly strong. Nothing else has been remotely as successful.

0xdeadbeefbabe 8y ago
I tried it yesterday while looking for an app that would track "on a scale of 1-5 how well did I do X today". I settled on KeepTrack, but it doesn't have habitica's style. Maybe habitica encourages taking the habit seriously without taking myself too seriously.
- schrodinger 8y ago
  I like https://www.askmeevery.com/ https://www.askmeevery.com/. It just sends you an email and you reply. And if the reply is numerical, it'll generate a plot and statistics for you.
tjr225 8y ago
I find a physical notepad and a pen to be perfect for prioritizing and recording to-dos. Not sure why it needs to be "optimized" any further.
- vinceguidry 8y ago
  You have to carry it around if you want your task list to be anywhere but in just one spot.
  - zwkrt 8y ago
    from my perspective, as soon as my todo list is digitized it is hidden from me. And as soon as it is hidden I forget to maintain it.

dbecks 8y ago

Not sure if this helps, but I made a little iOS app a while ago to help with my workflow. Check it out: HiFutureSelf (http://hifutureself.com http://hifutureself.com) HiFutureSelf is a super fast way to send messages to the future as reminders. You can set a time or location to trigger the message. It's completely free and maintained for fun :)

yig 8y ago
I use calendar events. Then I can also allocate time to do the task.
- dbecks 8y ago
  Totally! I do too! Maybe it's just me.. but somethings just don't fit into the calendar. Like when I pull up to the gym I get a message to do my 100 squats for the day (AND NOT ACCEPT LESS). Or when I arrive to the grocery store to pickup shampoo. Or when I leave the office today to go by the pharmacy to pick up a prescription...

platz 8y ago

http://mgsd.tiddlyspot.com/demo3.html http://mgsd.tiddlyspot.com/demo3.html TiddlyWiki powered GTD system

neves 8y ago
I loved it, but does it still work with modern browsers? I stopped using it since it started to fail at each browser update.
knight17 8y ago
mGSD is based on TiddlyWiki Classic, here is GSD5, a new project, built on the current version, TiddlyWiki 5: http://gsd5.tiddlyspot.com/ http://gsd5.tiddlyspot.com/
- platz 8y ago
  I find tw5 a step backwards in terms of usability. Not a fan of design aesthetics which decrease information density.

psychedelic 8y ago

Am I the only one still using a #2 pencil and a piece of paper for my 'to do' lists???

jvehent 8y ago
Yes, I upgraded to a fountain pen a while ago!
bsg75 8y ago
I'm not too far off with the TaskPaper format.
daftao 8y ago
I carry a Mead memo book and a pen in my back pocket at all time, it's great for taking notes, recording stuff I don't want to forget, doodling, etc.. Added bonus: I can take it out to write a to-do and not accidently spend 20 minutes on Twitter or HN. Beats any other productivity app I ever tried in that regard.
- aidenn0 8y ago
  After having a mead go through the laundry, I switched to a rite-in-the-rain with a fisher. The notebook can survive 2-3 trips through the laundry before it becomes hard to read.

joe-collins 8y ago

I know Google's scary, but having task management/scheduling built into and up-front in their Inbox is wonderful. When I saw that, I ditched the old gmail interface and haven't looked back.

sp332 8y ago

If you just want to schedule emails without involving too many third parties, you can do this in the Outlook mobile app by swiping right on any email. For the desktop app, right-click an email and use the "Follow Up" menu. You can also do it in Google's Inbox app, but you have to swipe left instead. The Inbox website lets you schedule emails by hovering over an email and clicking the clock icon.

pmarreck 8y ago

Was immediately turned off by his devotion to the ridiculously overrated Inbox Zero. Inbox Zero is a gross waste of time and essentially OCD masturbation. Using tools (like filters, or a better email client with smart prioritization such as https://sparkmailapp.com/ https://sparkmailapp.com/) to prioritize important emails is far superior and has zero ongoing maintenance cost in time: https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/worlds-dumbest-time-management-technique-inbox-zero.html https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/worlds-dumbest-time-manag... If you want to actually get productive, get RescueTime: https://www.rescuetime.com/ https://www.rescuetime.com/ There is a very good reason why the Spark iOS app doesn't even bother showing your unread count.

WaxProlix 8y ago
Sounds a lot like the Getting Things Done approach, which is a little culty as a community but has some reasonable advice. One of those nuggets is "touch it once," using the "four Ds" - Do, Delete, Delegate, Defer. I've been basically using it as an approach for a while and it's great when I stick to it. It's not in opposition to using filters and such though afaik; all of my build/jira/notifications/updates/forum posts/etc email goes to various buckets and is immediately forgotten.
sametmax 8y ago
I am more productive with zero inbox than other tools. And since neither of us can prove we are right, let's accept it's just an opinionated tool, and it's a matter of taste.
- pmarreck 8y ago
  > And since neither of us can prove we are right Actually, that's false. Use https://www.rescuetime.com/ https://www.rescuetime.com/ and compare with people who don't use this system, divide by the number of incoming emails per person, and you'll know in short order. Empirical data is a wonderful tool to find truth.
enraged_camel 8y ago
Agreed on Inbox Zero. I used it for a while, until I realized that there is tremendous value in being as responsive to emails as possible. Most people don't expect replies to emails, so they tend to be delighted when you respond immediately. It's a great way to set yourself apart from your coworkers or competitors. So now I have my email inbox open in its own monitor, and I glance at it when a new email arrives. If it requires a response, I respond right away, even if it is something like "OK, let me look into this and get back to you." People really, really like knowing that you are 100% attentive.

gtt 8y ago

Awesome. Could someone recommend note-taking tool with the same spirit?

kchr 8y ago
vim.

Izkata 8y ago

I use taskwarrior daily at work primarily for its dependencies and recurring tasks. For example, when I pick up a case to work on, I'll immediately add it: task add project:team.kanban case-1234 Add the frob Then as I inspect and think about the parts that need to be done, I'll add a bunch more pieces as sub-projects: task add project:team.kanban.case-1234 Query backend for the data task add project:team.kanban.case-1234 Send ajax call/store in redux task add project:team.kanban.case-1234 Add to UI task add project:team.kanban.case-1234 Use the new widget for filters task add project:team.kanban.case-1234 Make filters work Then I go back and decide which pieces here I want to do before the others. If, in order, the above tasks were IDs 1-6, then: task 3 modify depends:2 task 4 modify depends:3 task 6 modify depends:5 task 1 modify depends:2,3,4,5,6 So at this point, only tasks 2 and 5 are unblocked and can be started on. It externalizes the state of the case, so I don't really even have to think about what to do next (hence the name of the default report, "next") or how far done I am. A good way of thinking about how I choose this breakout is, what could I commit without breaking the build? If you also use vimwiki, there's another plugin that works on top of it called taskwiki [0] that lets you use use a taskwarrior filter to show a set of tasks in the wiki, that auto-update. It even shows dependencies as indented todolist items (though the above example wouldn't work because tasks 2, 3, and 5 each have two tasks that depend on it; this and a few other things has me writing my own vim plugin for vimwiki that'll handle handle the above, plus a few other differences). [0] https://github.com/tbabej/taskwiki https://github.com/tbabej/taskwiki

kchr 8y ago
Nice workflow, thanks for the tip.
amerine 8y ago
Awesome write-up of your flow. Thank you.

toastking 8y ago

This seems really cool but I can't imagine using a task manager that doesn't also have a mobile app.

ISL 8y ago
Taskwarrior has a mobile client: https://taskwarrior.org/news/news.20160225.html https://taskwarrior.org/news/news.20160225.html
- Grumbledour 8y ago
  The play store link seems dead, though?
  - ISL 8y ago
    Hm. The taskwarrior app I use daily is gone from the Play Store. The author now offers something called TaskwarriorC2 that may have similar functionality, with a different UI spirit. Edit: I just installed TaskwarriorC2 and got it working (by hand-copying my hard-won profile configuration from original taskwarrior (pem files, taskrc, etc., the whole profile directory)) from kjv.task/files/ over to the com.taskwc2/files/ directory on the phone. Editing the taskrc file is currently broken for me, so if I hadn't already had one, configuration would have been daunting. Now that TaskwarriorC2 is working: If you're a taskwarrior poweruser, the interface is awesome. If you'd never used taskwarrior before, it would seem inscrutable.
    - wingtask 8y ago
      I was never happy with the Taskwarrior client you linked so I'm launching a mobile client alternative for taskwarrior: https://wingtask.com https://wingtask.com
      - ISL 8y ago
        Awesome. <Picard>Make it so!</Picard>

synthmeat 8y ago

I’ve used taskwarrior for 3-4 years exclusively, and can state that if you have a complaint about it, it’s highly likely that you haven’t considered the problem scope as deeply as its devs did. But then I stopped being a lone wolf dev and it simply doesn’t work for teams. Yet.

kchr 8y ago
Even if you work in a team, surely you take on individual tasks based on what team has decided?

rconti 8y ago

It always blows my mind when people who claim to have issues with focus or task management then go on to talk about how they've automated tons of trivial tasks. That sounds like the OPPOSITE of someone who has issues with focus.

bdcravens 8y ago
I think some people just need to put the work into something they enjoy (and hope that doesn't become just a distraction) Myself, I suck at budgeting. So naturally I'm building a Rails app to do it for me ...
karmajunkie 8y ago
"focus" problems very often are "hyperfocus" problems where we can get really zoned into whatever we're doing but make poor choices about where that focus lies. Think of it as a difference in executive function rather than a focus issue.
aidenn0 8y ago
There are people who are so task focused that they waste a lot of energy worrying that they're not working on the right task! If you're at all like me, then this is a foreign concept. The introduction to GTD hints that it is specifically targeted at people like this to reduce their anxieties. It also caused me to stop reading the book because, as I said, that concept is mostly foreign to me (I have observed it in others, but my empathy is insufficient to truly understand it).
- jecxjo 8y ago
  There are also people w/o the anxieties, who live their lives as firefighters. Every day take on the emergencies! That was me for a long time. When you have a job that is constantly filled with fires you can survive for a long time doing this. The problem is that sometimes a non-fire tasj can start out as low priority but eventually become the most important thing you have to do today all based on a due date. Unless you are good at managing your future tasks, you'll often miss them. I never had anxieties about getting things out the door, mostly because my bosses were constantly chopping down one or two of the legs of my stool (money, time, resources). But it was easy for me to keep pushing a low priority task to the bottom of the list because its not due yet, totally forgetting about the fact that eventually it will be due.

keslert 8y ago

Shameless plug for https://heyhabit.com https://heyhabit.com (I'm the dev). It's meant to be used as a chrome extension that takes over the new tab in Chrome, but you can try it from the website. I've been using it for ~2 years now and it works really well off and on. I've discovered that it's really helpful for getting me back on track when I fall off the horse. Because the calendar maintains what a "successful" week looks like for me, it eliminates some of the mental energy required to regroup.

city41 8y ago

Google essentially implemented FollowUpThen and Taskwarrior in Inbox via snoozing and reminders. I can honestly say Inbox has significantly changed my life. I have to use email every day already, so overlaying task management has been a huge boon. I have a recurring reminder every Sunday night to take out the trash. I set up reminders to go off in 1 year (like when I sign up for something and don't want it to auto renew). I basically setup a reminder for everything I have to do. And since I have Inbox open all day long anyway, I never forget anything anymore. Hey Google, thanks for making Inbox!

sammorrowdrums 8y ago
I was searching the comments for someone saying this. Snooze / archive to achieve inbox zero is life changing. I have one simple rule. If I can't do something right now, I snooze it until I think I will be able to deal with it. The knowledge that it will not be forgotten is very cathartic and my inbox doesn't fill with emails I intend to deal with but haven't yet. I think what people forget is that time is often a better folder system than folders, as it doesn't place the responsibility to check again on the user. I've tried to evangelize and I can't understand why it hasn't resonated as much with others.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  > I've tried to evangelize and I can't understand why it hasn't resonated as much with others. Perhaps it's a trust thing? It only works if you're 100% sure that a snoozed email will come back every time and no later than you told it to. Is it reasonable to trust Inbox to do that? Probably, but people have to be convinced of that. And note that for some of us, trusting the magical AI-enhanced black box that Google tends to build is a little on the hard side.
  - Myrmornis 8y ago
    I think people think it means leaving gmail behind. Even if you tell them they can carry on using gmail, I guess they think it will leave a mess of duplicate emails or conflicting state between the two.

atrexler 8y ago

I'm currently using Asana for task management. I guess the only upside is that I can share tasks with my wife, but its clearly not really meant for just single person management. Has anyone tried both taskwarrior and asana? Any obvious pros/cons? taskwarrior seems much simpler and can live locally if you dont want locked in asana/whatever?

comnetxr 8y ago
I've tried both. I liked Asana a lot in the early days - it was simple and removed the friction of logging tasks. I especially liked that many tasks could be entered in the same way as an outline, just using enter to drop to the next line and tab/shift-tab to nest tasks. All the task properties I needed were visible at once and I could quickly tab through the task details and log what I needed. Eventually they added more features for teams and the features I liked became more complicated to use, so I dropped it. I tried taskwarrior as well, thinking that being in the command line would reduce the friction for entering tasks as I spend so much time there already. However, the friction is higher for viewing and reorganizing tasks so I would fill up a todo list and then not use it.

whack 8y ago

I wonder why no one has mentioned using Google-Calendar as a task-management tool. I too use (starred) emails to remind myself of tasks that I have pending. But for anything that's time specific, I just put it on my google-calendar (or any online calendar really). Eg: Mow my lawn on Sunday? Ok, I'll create an all-day event on Sunday to mow-my-lawn. And once I'm done, all I have to do is delete it. I can then periodically check my calendar from my phone/laptop/tablet, and see everything I have to do that day/week. If I want to get a head-start on anything that's coming up next week, it's all there on my calendar too. If I need a reminder, I can just have it send me a push-notification at a specific time. Best of all, I never have to be at my computer to get all these info/alerts. As long as I have my phone nearby, I can check my tasks, and get reminders for anything I've forgotten about.

rndstr 8y ago
There are also reminders that string along as long as you don't check them off.
veidr 8y ago
Yeah; basically any calendar app. Every OS/device comes with one built in; they can sync across all your devices; they expose the database via SDK or API so you or others can augment them with additional tools (though I don't find it necessary). For me, this has been a solved problem for many years. It's one of those things where everybody's different, I get that. But using an email system to manage your tasks seems only one step less goofy than calling yourself and leaving yourself voice mails. You can make that work, I guess, but that's not what the tool is for. I think modern calendars are one of the great software success stories, actually. They are rock solid reliable, based mainly on hackable open standards, and work everywhere. I don't delete things from my calendar, I just leave them in there as a fossil record of my life. (What was I doing ten years ago on this day? I just checked; apparently I helped my girlfriend sell her car, bought my sister a plane ticket, and worked on software for most of the day.) This data has moved with me from platform to platform and will be accessible my whole life. This is how computers are supposed to work! (But seldom do...)
delcaran 8y ago
IMHO it should be more integrated with tasks, and tasks should be much more powerful. Some examples: - Here in Italy I can donate blood every 3 months. So I want to set a task "Now you can donate blood" on say June 1st and set it to repeat itself 3 months after the day I actually donate blood and in the meantime being shown on top of calendar in a special "to-do" section. And if I donate blood on June 5th, the next donation should be automatically set on September 5th. I achieve this with an external app that syncs to tasks, but being it integrated in calender would be wonderful. - A task can have more dates to be set. An example is taxes: from April 1st I can review the documentation the governament send me, from May 1st I can submit the correct documents and at May 31st I must have submited the documents. Of course during this period the task should always be visibile on my calendar. Thing is I have the feeling that todo lists, calendars, tasks and time-tracking should ALL be integrated in the same software. And as far as I know this software is emacs' org-mode... one day I will learn it.

zwischenzug 8y ago

I wrote a post on this some time back: https://zwischenzugs.com/2017/12/03/how-i-manage-my-time/ https://zwischenzugs.com/2017/12/03/how-i-manage-my-time/ if there's one takeaway, it's that you have to find your own way of getting what's in your head into a place you can trust, and there's no objectively right place for that. Just keep looking until you're comfortable with one and stick to it.

tra3 8y ago
> you have to find your own way of getting what's in your head into a place you can trust That's definitely #1. I'm surprised I had to scroll so far down to find it. :) For a long time I was looking for a system that would auto-prioritize tasks for me. I'd dump things in, and it would tell me what I had to do today, this week and this month. Long story short, it turned out to be a silly expectation. So #2 rule should be, review your tasks periodically. Basically, an 80/20 productivity system should be: #1 write everything down #2 review and cull your list every day #3 do things off your list
- zwischenzug 8y ago
  > #1 write everything down #2 review and cull your list every day #3 do things off your list That's pretty much the 'Getting Things Done' book in a sentence! Though the advice is every week, not day in the book, and latterly changed to 'whenever works' with the advent of web systems to track tasks.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

foo42 8y ago

Wish I'd seen this a few weeks back before building my own command line app, it seems I've taken an almost identical approach to them in everything I've implemented, though obviously they're much farther along! Still, part of the motivation for building my own was to trick myself into getting the habit of checking the list every day since I'd be keen to dogfood it - that's worked out pretty well so I can't complain!

fenwick67 8y ago
Me too, I just wrote a quick CLI app for logging my work on Monday

romanr 8y ago

Hitask (https://hitask.com https://hitask.com) does everything, has Google Calendar sync and Chrome extension. iOS, Android apps, team sharing and many more.

davidcamel 8y ago

I got really excited about Taskwarrior and set up a server and accounts for all of my teammates. But we quickly found that we were spending more time logging our tasks than we were actually consulting TW for what to do next. Example: task add project: support_customer_migration priority: H -- support#XYZ - analyze dependencies for customer X - github.com/repo/issue/number

kchr 8y ago
I think a common misconception of planning is that you wish to avoid logging and the "hassle" it means. For me, logging what I have done is the only way to keep track of the project status and let my team members know what have been done.

ademars94 8y ago

The way this article scrolljacks on mobile makes it unreadable.

mikedilger 8y ago

I find invariably that if I write something down anywhere, it falls out of my head, after which point I stop thinking about it, I lose motivation, and unless I permanently slave myself to the task manager it does not get done. There is a lot of value in keeping everything in your head.

bshanks 8y ago

The todo.txt file format supports extensions, and some of the extensions include start date, due date, recurring tasks. The Simpletask todo.txt Android client supports these, and can filter by things that are past their start date, sort by due date, etc. Todo.txt also supports projects/contexts/lists/tags and Simpletask can filter by them. i don't know which todo.txt commandline clients, if any, can do this but i bet some can (topydo maybe?). Simpletask supports Lua scripting, i dunno if this is sufficent to allow dynamic prioritization of tasks, but it might be. I don't think Simpletask supports dependencies but topydo does. todo.txt is a file format. The nice thing about todo.txt-based tools is that the todo list is stored in a plaintext file in a relatively readable and editable format, with one line per task. This allows you to edit it using ordinary text editors, grep it, and sync it using utilities (resolving conflicts on a line-by-line basis).

shakna 8y ago
I have a cheap startup task in cron that greps my todo files (generally one per project, and an everyday one) for any scheduled tasks and adds them to my calendar. Which syncs across devices. If I modify times then the calendar events get killed and reinserted. (Diff checks for changed todos for me) Finally, the feedback loop gets closed by email. I can send an email with a task, and it gets pulled down to insert or modify todos.
mpcjanssen 8y ago
One big area where taskwarrior shines compared to solutions like todo.txt or org mode is synchronizing between devices using taskd. Although it is a bit involved to set-up, once it works, it works very well. I am slowly trying to add task identities to Simpletask to get closer to this ideal (at the cost of 'ugly' meta data in the Todo file)

el_cid 8y ago

Like the author I went through too many solutions to organize myself. (Evernote, iOS Reminders app, OneNote, emacs/org-mode, Google apps, iOS Calendar, Omni tools & many more). I've settled down on using Apple Notes & Things 3. Things 3 is expensive, but it's simple & has a beautiful UI. It structures tasks in the same way I think about them. I really like the Quick Entry feature on the Mac, where I can quickly add a to-do from a web page or an email... The app seems to be well maintained and I am glad they didn't choose the subscription route. My biggest wish, a web API. I really like Notion (https://www.notion.so/ https://www.notion.so/), and I am sure I could do a great GTD system in it! However, I don't feel comfortable with subscriptions on apps where I keep MY data. Maybe because I grew up relatively poor, I always have the fear at the back of my mind, that maybe in the future I won't be able to afford it and what a big hassle that would be.

anotherevan 8y ago

This 30 minute video from the recent Linux.conf.au may also be of interest. https://youtu.be/zl68asL9jZA https://youtu.be/zl68asL9jZA Manage all your tasks with TaskWarrior