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Taskwarrior, where have you been all my life?

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Re: Taskwarrior, where have you been all my life?

#111

Post by WaxProlix »

pmarreck wrote: post #107

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/ ) to prioritize important emails is far superior and has zero ongoing maintenance cost in time: https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/worlds-dumbest-time-ma…

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.

Re: Taskwarrior, where have you been all my life?

#112

Post by grincho »

yodon wrote: post #69
grincho wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things ( https://culturedcode.com/things/ ) does pretty much that. It has a little Quick Entry daemon which lets you press control-option-space in Mail.app to make a new task linked to the selected mail. By default, the subject ends up as the task's title, though you can change it before hitting Return. In general, I highlight recommend Things. It does all the typical GTD stuff, in a mostly Maclike way, and has a gre…

Can you click on a created task in Things and get back to the mail message in the iOS Mail app (as opposed to just seeing a copy of the message as text in the todo app the way most todo apps handle email->task connections)?

Absolutely. The links even resolve on different devices, as long as you have access to the same mail accounts.

Re: Taskwarrior, where have you been all my life?

#113

Post by stewbrew »

jecxjo wrote: post #65
jacobevelyn wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean the "todo.txt" CLI ( https://github.com/todotxt/todo.txt-cli ), or just a file you edit manually? I've used the todo.txt CLI on and off, sometimes in collaboration with my (shameless plug) "friends" CLI ( https://github.com/JacobEvelyn/friends ) for "tasks" that are social in nature. But I always seem to come back to paper todo lists.

I actually wrote my own in Haskell, but really I just mean the structure. I no longer need huge ordered lists of blocking dependencies. I loved that taskwarrior did that, but once your life becomes less complicated, all the cool features seemed to get in my way. I wanted burndown charts. I wanted an app to figure out what tasks were highest priority based on how much time they could take and deadlines. But once you n…

There are some extensions that bring task dependencies to todo.txt. IMHO outlines are a quite natural extension of the original format that can be used for that without making things too complicated.

Re: Taskwarrior, where have you been all my life?

#114

Post by sametmax »

pmarreck wrote: post #107

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/ ) to prioritize important emails is far superior and has zero ongoing maintenance cost in time: https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/worlds-dumbest-time-ma…

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.

Re: Taskwarrior, where have you been all my life?

#115

Post by zwkrt »

vinceguidry wrote: post #101
tjr225 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You have to carry it around if you want your task list to be anywhere but in just one spot.

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.

Re: Taskwarrior, where have you been all my life?

#116

Post by tjr225 »

zwkrt wrote: post #115
vinceguidry wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to carry it around if you want your task list to be anywhere but in just one spot.

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.

I agree, and the act of carrying a notepad around is not usually an issue for me anyway. I keep my work checklist at work and bring it home on days when I work remotely. I also keep checklists at home for non work stuff. Shopping lists are usually torn out of home checklists, brought with me, and then disposed of.

There's also something really gratifying about physically checking stuff off of a list.

Re: Taskwarrior, where have you been all my life?

#117

Post by agumonkey »

lawn wrote: post #73

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/ It's basically a gamified to…

that might work for me, I have a good gamified response usually.

Re: Taskwarrior, where have you been all my life?

#119

Post by jecxjo »

tjr225 wrote: post #88
lawn wrote: post #73

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/ It's basically a gamified to…

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.

A lot of the optimizations I found (in taskwarrior) was allowing the app to figure out what I needed to do next. Due dates and expected duration and priority...all done programmatically.

I really only needed that for work, as my personal life is much easier managed with pencil and paper.

Re: Taskwarrior, where have you been all my life?

#120

Post by enraged_camel »

pmarreck wrote: post #107

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/ ) to prioritize important emails is far superior and has zero ongoing maintenance cost in time: https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/worlds-dumbest-time-ma…

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.

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