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Taskwarrior, where have you been all my life?

blog.djy.io

141–150 of 233 posts

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

#141
post #134

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.

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).

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

#142
post #103

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

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.

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.

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

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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-io...

WTF! I had no clue that overflow: auto messes things up so badly for iOS users. I'll have to file that for the next time I'm writing CSS. I wonder what the justification for that is...

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

#144
post #79

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.

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.

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?

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

#145
post #138

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 re…

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.

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

#146
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…

99.999999% of the purpose of any todo list process (app or otherwise) is a prompt for your memory (whether its scheduled or not).

Scheduling and maintaining is a discipline that doesnt always come naturally. And is largely redundant.

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

#147
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.

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

#148
I wrote a post on this some time back:

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.

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

#149
post #88
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.

For todos, I love flightstrip racks. Yes, it’s ATC gear, but man it’s so satisfying to mark a task done by moving a series of plastic tokens. https://www.google.fr/search?tbm=isch&q=flightstrip+rack

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

#150
post #134

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.

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 oth…

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.

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