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.
Taskwarrior, where have you been all my life?
181–190 of 233 posts
Re: Taskwarrior, where have you been all my life?
#182I 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.
> 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…
> #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.
Re: Taskwarrior, where have you been all my life?
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 be…
> 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 te…
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.
Re: Taskwarrior, where have you been all my life?
#184The 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).
Re: Taskwarrior, where have you been all my life?
#185I 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 periodic…
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.
Re: Taskwarrior, where have you been all my life?
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I totally agree. I am currently trying to figure out how to best do that with todo.txt with the minimal amount of dependencies. I liked in taskwarrior how all the tasks were numbered and could be referenced, but it required a big infrastructure in taskwarrior, which is more painful in todo.txt.
There is no use in numbering tasks in todo.txt files. But you (as a developer) can create an id based on the current time stamp and the tasks content that can be referenced later on. The VIM ttodo_vim plugin does it this way.
Re: Taskwarrior, where have you been all my life?
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 te…
I don't think it's that at all. Truly. I think it's a trust thing of the opposite sort: people don't trust themselves to comfortably (and actively) forget non-critical tasks, which is what the OP does with this method. I think lots of folks keep things in their inbox because of two reasons: 1) removing them feels like loss, and increases risk of ultimate forget, and 2) you can't effectively set a reminder for somethi…
On number 2, that's not entirely true, you can be like "I'm not reading this now, I'll snooze it until x when I'll go through some emails"
For me it's all about reducing noise level and cognitive load. It's made me a lot more organised, although occasionally I keep pushing things back and won't admit that I'm not going to do them because I feel like I should do it today but I probably ultimately won't. Curse my fallible humanity!
Re: Taskwarrior, where have you been all my life?
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The truism "out of sight out of mind"
It's surprisingly true. To the point I noticed that in times of stress, I would simply not look at whatever productivity tool I've been using. I found myself no longer invoke org agendas. No longer opening the paper notebook with tasks. Hell, I found my eyes glazing over the whiteboard with a list of tasks I put there the previous night.
Semi-conscious avoidance is a terrifying thing.
Re: Taskwarrior, where have you been all my life?
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it's that at all. Truly. I think it's a trust thing of the opposite sort: people don't trust themselves to comfortably (and actively) forget non-critical tasks, which is what the OP does with this method. I think lots of folks keep things in their inbox because of two reasons: 1) removing them feels like loss, and increases risk of ultimate forget, and 2) you can't effectively set a reminder for somethi…
On number 2, that's not entirely true, you can be like "I'm not reading this now, I'll snooze it until x when I'll go through some emails" For me it's all about reducing noise level and cognitive load. It's made me a lot more organised, although occasionally I keep pushing things back and won't admit that I'm not going to do them because I feel like I should do it today but I probably ultimately won't. Curse my falli…
The "snooze hell" is extremily unproductive if you ask me. Quite often I end up creating an avalanche of reminders just by snoozing/deferring individual tasks until "later" instead of deciding when/where to actually perform the task, so I can continue focus with whatever feels more inportant at the moment...
Oh, brain :-(
Re: Taskwarrior, where have you been all my life?
#190Google 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 be…
How do you avoid the snowball effect?
If many tasks/mails are coming everyday and you are snoozing them to the future, you are adding more tasks/mails to your future inbox, which in turn will motivate you to snooze them again, feeding the task monster. Until one day there are so many snoozed tasks that it is overwhelming.