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Ask HN: What do you guys use to help organize daily tasks and things to do?

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Re: Ask HN: What do you guys use to help organize daily tasks and things to do?

#11

Post by Jtsummers »

For daily tasks, at work, the first thing I do is fire up Outlook and emacs.

Outlook has my calendar (very MS heavy corporate environment) so it displays every task, meeting, appointment easily. Mails that come in get put away (ok, not great with the zero-inbox thing, but I try).

In emacs I have a "daily activity log", it's the second thing I open each day. I create an entry for the day, tagging it with the project(s) I'm working on (these get added through the day as things come up, or at the start if I know it's on my agenda). I usually know what I'll work on that day so I'll create an entry for it, and open the linked org file for the project itself. So an entry might look like:

  ** >                    :foo:
  *** TODO [[file:foo.org][foo]] [0/2]
  - [ ] Deal with PR-128
  - [ ] Build and install image
(NB: > in a headline in org-mode makes it a target for links like [[STRING]] or [[file:foo.org::STRING]])

Those bulleted tasks are what I intend to work on that day. If they don't get checked off, I can't mark the project's work as DONE, and I'll refile them later. I should probably automate this somehow, perhaps collect all incomplete tasks at the top of the log file for easier refiling. Presently `C-c / t` does the trick for finding them. foo.org will have a more detailed description of what I'm doing, possibly linking to other things. The bullets vary in detail by the end of the day, and may have several sub-bullets and links. Sometimes project boundaries are fuzzy, I just pick something or create more levels:

  *** TODO Related projects
  **** TODO foo
  **** TODO bar

Re: Ask HN: What do you guys use to help organize daily tasks and things to do?

#12

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

gallonofmilk wrote: post #4
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #2

A pencil and a piece of paper, or an organizer from Staples. :-D If you're an Emacs user, org-mode is very powerful and quite useful as well. It's what I would be using, if I actually had a computer with me everywhere I go that could run it. http://orgmode.org/ If you aren't an emacs user, or are looking for an alternative, Taskwarrior is a quite popular CLI todo list management app, which has a similar (although not…

thanks! yeah the problem I've encountered when using just paper and pencil is that I seem to stick with it for a day or two and then slowly stop... I guess part of that is training myself to be diligent

Yeah, it turns out I'm bad at convincing myself that I won't remember the thing. And then I forget the thing.

Re: Ask HN: What do you guys use to help organize daily tasks and things to do?

#13

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

Jtsummers wrote: post #6
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #2

A pencil and a piece of paper, or an organizer from Staples. :-D If you're an Emacs user, org-mode is very powerful and quite useful as well. It's what I would be using, if I actually had a computer with me everywhere I go that could run it. http://orgmode.org/ If you aren't an emacs user, or are looking for an alternative, Taskwarrior is a quite popular CLI todo list management app, which has a similar (although not…

I've gotten to like Staples' Arc notebooks. They fold over like a spiral notebook, but pages can be moved freely like a 3-ring binder. Downside, instead of holes, sheets have notches in them to keep them attached to the rings that form the binding. This can be problematic sometimes if you keep moving a sheet around a lot, but I typically don't move a sheet more than twice (once to put it w/ related content, again to…

That's actually super handy. I might check them out.

Re: Ask HN: What do you guys use to help organize daily tasks and things to do?

#14

Post by stuxnet79 »

Jtsummers wrote: post #11

For daily tasks, at work, the first thing I do is fire up Outlook and emacs. Outlook has my calendar (very MS heavy corporate environment) so it displays every task, meeting, appointment easily. Mails that come in get put away (ok, not great with the zero-inbox thing, but I try). In emacs I have a "daily activity log", it's the second thing I open each day. I create an entry for the day, tagging it with the project(s…

Just started using org mode recently. It is fantastic. I still haven't figured out how to date TODOs and organize them around different org files. The org file fragment you've provided is interesting and has given me some ideas. I've also gotten into the habit of encrypting my org files - it is somewhat annoying having to type in the password every time you launch or save but it's worth it for the peace of mind.

Re: Ask HN: What do you guys use to help organize daily tasks and things to do?

#15

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

stuxnet79 wrote: post #14
Jtsummers wrote: post #11

For daily tasks, at work, the first thing I do is fire up Outlook and emacs. Outlook has my calendar (very MS heavy corporate environment) so it displays every task, meeting, appointment easily. Mails that come in get put away (ok, not great with the zero-inbox thing, but I try). In emacs I have a "daily activity log", it's the second thing I open each day. I create an entry for the day, tagging it with the project(s…

Just started using org mode recently. It is fantastic. I still haven't figured out how to date TODOs and organize them around different org files. The org file fragment you've provided is interesting and has given me some ideas. I've also gotten into the habit of encrypting my org files - it is somewhat annoying having to type in the password every time you launch or save but it's worth it for the peace of mind.

You can look at this: http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/orgtutorial_dto.html

That should help you with some of the stuff you just mentioned.

Re: Ask HN: What do you guys use to help organize daily tasks and things to do?

#16

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

Jtsummers wrote: post #11

For daily tasks, at work, the first thing I do is fire up Outlook and emacs. Outlook has my calendar (very MS heavy corporate environment) so it displays every task, meeting, appointment easily. Mails that come in get put away (ok, not great with the zero-inbox thing, but I try). In emacs I have a "daily activity log", it's the second thing I open each day. I create an entry for the day, tagging it with the project(s…

One nice thing about having your calendar, or a todo list longer than a day, in org, is that you can use the fantastic agenda mode.

Also, org has support for literate programming, multiple files in one org file (at least one person stores all their config files in an org file). It also supports publishing, a rudimentary spreadsheet system, and countless other things. There's a reason why so many swear by it.

Re: Ask HN: What do you guys use to help organize daily tasks and things to do?

#17

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

tmaly wrote: post #10

Trello is nice if you have access to it. If you have Jira or other task/bug system you can also use that. I personally think a TODO.txt file is easier than both. A nice paper sketch book is also good, but if you lose it, your out of luck.

Better yet, if you use Emacs, have a TODO.org

Seriously. There's a reason I've been singing org's praises throughout this thread. It hasn't been amazingly useful to me personally (I take my notes on paper), but it's a really high-quality tool, and if you're already using TODO.txt it's like that, but with agendas, sorting, organization, calendars, and countless other useful features.

Re: Ask HN: What do you guys use to help organize daily tasks and things to do?

#18

Post by Tiksi »

Kinda related but does anyone know of some sort of software like Jira that isn't oriented towards software devs? I've tried Trello and Taiga but neither have a way to build a dependency chain (issue a requires issues b and c which require...) like you can in Jira. However I don't really wanna push Jira onto non-technical people and tell them to ignore half of what's on the screen.

Re: Ask HN: What do you guys use to help organize daily tasks and things to do?

#20

Post by tedmiston »

Jtsummers wrote: post #6
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #2

A pencil and a piece of paper, or an organizer from Staples. :-D If you're an Emacs user, org-mode is very powerful and quite useful as well. It's what I would be using, if I actually had a computer with me everywhere I go that could run it. http://orgmode.org/ If you aren't an emacs user, or are looking for an alternative, Taskwarrior is a quite popular CLI todo list management app, which has a similar (although not…

I've gotten to like Staples' Arc notebooks. They fold over like a spiral notebook, but pages can be moved freely like a 3-ring binder. Downside, instead of holes, sheets have notches in them to keep them attached to the rings that form the binding. This can be problematic sometimes if you keep moving a sheet around a lot, but I typically don't move a sheet more than twice (once to put it w/ related content, again to…

That sounds like the Levenger Circa system. I never tried them myself (thought they were too pricy), but they are popular in the GTD crowd.

http://www.levenger.com/circa-notebooks-339.aspx

I did Hipster PDA for a while, which you could kind of consider a poor man's version.

http://www.43folders.com/2004/09/03/introducing-the-hipster-...

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