Ask HN: How do you do your To-Do list? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How do you do your To-Do list?

#21

Post by jetblackio » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 4:25 PM UTC

Pen and paper, using Bullet Journal conventions (http://www.bulletjournal.com/).

Ultimately the problem I have with digital todo lists is todo-creep. Lists become large and unwieldy. Old todos are not automatically deleted. Pen and paper allows you to make a fresh start each day. If there is an important task you didn't finish the day before, you'll remember it and add it to the new day.

Bullet Journal allows you to organize the todo in a way that I find very useful. I've been using it for about six months now and don't think I'll ever switch.

Re: Ask HN: How do you do your To-Do list?

#22

Post by danmaz74 » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 4:26 PM UTC

I'm using it less lately, but https://workflowy.com/ is a really good solution to the to-do list problem.

Re: Ask HN: How do you do your To-Do list?

#23

Post by madisonmay » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 4:26 PM UTC

I'd highly recommend giving Fetchnotes (http://www.fetchnotes.com) a go. It's dead simple to use and looks incredible on iOS 7.

Re: Ask HN: How do you do your To-Do list?

#24

Post by mindcrime » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 4:32 PM UTC

I just use a wiki page. We run a private Mediawiki instance for ourselves to share and store all sorts of information & knowledge, and I have a Phil_TODO page on there. I just plug stuff in at the top as it arises, then put tags around stuff that's done and move those to the bottom. Periodically I come in and re-shuffle the ones near the top to reflect relative priority.

It's not perfect, but it works reasonably well for me.

Re: Ask HN: How do you do your To-Do list?

#25

Post by pinoyyid » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 4:35 PM UTC

Most of my todo items come to me as emails, so I wanted something that lives within my Gmail. I managed this in three steps... 1/ I created a label called "todo" 2/ I made this a section in my Gmail priority Inbox so it's always displayed 3/ I created a filter to fire on emails sent to myname+todo@gmail.com, and label them as todo.

So I can just label an email as todo, or send myself an email to myname+todo@gmail.com

Re: Ask HN: How do you do your To-Do list?

#26

Post by nhebb » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 4:38 PM UTC

Two ways:

1. Pen and paper for daily tasks.

2. A desktop app I wrote for personal use that helps me track intermittent tasks / projects. It's more geared toward tracking train of thought than tasks, though.

Re: Ask HN: How do you do your To-Do list?

#27

Post by pavs » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 4:40 PM UTC

jmduke wrote: post #20

After trying various methods (Wunderlist, journaling, Trello, Evernote, the list goes on and on), I finally settled on a slight variation on "bullet journaling": bulletjournal.com Basically, writing daily notes/to-do-lists with a focus on organization and brevity.

I love the idea of Bullet Journaling. I used to do something similar couple of years ago. Now I use Wunderlist mostly because its OS/Device agnostic and reasonable looking.

The reason Bullet written journaling didn't work for me because carrying a notebook is annoying, since I don't keep a bag with me all the time, it means I have to keep one in my pocket all the time. Also Notebooks gets damaged.

The positive was that it "feels" more personal when writing down your todo list and there is definitely a "cool" factor to it. But probably not for everyone.

Re: Ask HN: How do you do your To-Do list?

#28

Post by troebr » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 4:45 PM UTC

I made a little trello clone as a weekend side project, http://lipstr.com , I've stopped working on it, I don't use it all that often since I like using a paper to keep track of my tasks now. My girlfriend is probably the only daily user.

Re: Ask HN: How do you do your To-Do list?

#29

Post by korg250 » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 4:47 PM UTC

OneNote.

Sincs nicely with my Windows Phone.

Re: Ask HN: How do you do your To-Do list?

#30

Post by mdavidn » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 4:47 PM UTC

jaxn wrote: post #9

I use OmniFocus. Every once in a while I look for something "better" but decide that I just need to be better at using OmniFocus. That is probably true for any of the todo list apps.

I've also been sticking with OmniFocus. It syncs to each of my Macs and iOS devices, yet it still accepts changes when offline. It offers a quick-entry "inbox" but also two higher dimensions of organization, project and context, when my inbox inevitably grows unwieldy. It supports recurring tasks and due dates for important reminders like credit payments.