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To-do waves

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Re: To-do waves

#21

Post by jabroni_salad »

hunter2_ wrote: post #11
macNchz wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made a little email/web app that makes it easy to have a shared list like this for my wife and I, it’s very barebones but I use it every day: https://www.onit.today/ I found the alternatives to be either: designed to build your life around them and therefore too complex, or simple but lacking a good mechanism to have a shared list with others.

Looks great! Right now we just use a Google sheet but I'm looking to upgrade. There's something I need that isn't obvious when comparing features of apps like this: I need the next due date of a recurring task to be a specified duration (say, a week) after I mark the previous occurrence as done, not when the previous occurrence was due. Example: my cat's water fountain can only be in service for a week before it must…

Ticktick will do this. I have one called 'air filter every 3 months' and the next iteration is always exactly 90 days from when I mark the current one as done, even if I am late or early.

Re: To-do waves

#22

Post by whiterock »

jabroni_salad wrote: post #21
hunter2_ wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks great! Right now we just use a Google sheet but I'm looking to upgrade. There's something I need that isn't obvious when comparing features of apps like this: I need the next due date of a recurring task to be a specified duration (say, a week) after I mark the previous occurrence as done, not when the previous occurrence was due. Example: my cat's water fountain can only be in service for a week before it must…

Ticktick will do this. I have one called 'air filter every 3 months' and the next iteration is always exactly 90 days from when I mark the current one as done, even if I am late or early.

Do you need the premium version for that? Is there any OSS that does that? I might need to get onto that then…

Re: To-do waves

#23

Post by whiterock »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #13
xivzgrev wrote: post #6

This sentence “ And a week, year or longer waves like cutting nails, tanking a car, renewing a passport” I initially read that the author only cuts his nails once per year. Yuck… Then I realized he was more likely giving an example of weekly. Anyone else read it that way?

What is "tanking a car"?

probably a „germanism“.

Re: To-do waves

#25

Post by macNchz »

hunter2_ wrote: post #11
macNchz wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made a little email/web app that makes it easy to have a shared list like this for my wife and I, it’s very barebones but I use it every day: https://www.onit.today/ I found the alternatives to be either: designed to build your life around them and therefore too complex, or simple but lacking a good mechanism to have a shared list with others.

Looks great! Right now we just use a Google sheet but I'm looking to upgrade. There's something I need that isn't obvious when comparing features of apps like this: I need the next due date of a recurring task to be a specified duration (say, a week) after I mark the previous occurrence as done, not when the previous occurrence was due. Example: my cat's water fountain can only be in service for a week before it must…

Thanks for the detailed info–I think what you're describing is how onit actually works. By default, when a repeating todo item is due, you'll get a daily email listing the things that are currently due. For each repeating todo item you can choose what happens when you check it off: either schedule it again based on now+interval, or on a strict schedule (e.g. always on Wednesday, always on the 15th of the month etc).

I use the strict schedule for things like bills or annual registrations, and the now+interval schedule for things like your cat fountain cleaning example, where I'm happy to just get a morning reminder about it until I get around to it.

I should probably update the homepage to provide some more detail on the actual functionality!

Re: To-do waves

#26

Post by pawsys »

slategruen wrote: post #24

I'd rather think of it like a pulse wave rather than a sinusoidal one

That's a good point. I was thinking about it during writing. Really it is binary – doing and then not doing for a while. There is no ascending part of the graph – even though spiky line would be closer to depict this it is also incorrect. I chose to use the simplest wave form just to highlight the nature of most to-dos – they repeating over and over again like waves on the ocean.

Re: To-do waves

#27

Post by Cerium »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #12
Cerium wrote: post #9

My first thought here is that the composition of todo waves allows the opportunity for a human to become arbitrarily busy on a given day when the waves positively interfere. Thankfully many of these items phase lock to the circadian rhythm or enjoy some scheduling flexibility.

I thought it was going to try to actively schedule based on the opposite of that, like get your passport renewed early because you have a lot of stuff coming up next year.

Yes, I thought it would go there as well.

Re: To-do waves

#28

Post by pawsys »

thenerdhead wrote: post #3

It's a cool metaphor. I think the examples are a bit more of things that you just do though. I don't normally think about having to pee, it just hits me. I don't normally consider going out for ice cream a "to do", I see it as a reward for doing things on my todos. I can't tell the authors perspective on breaks though. They mention scheduling them are counterintuitive but believe they are needed for diffuse-mode thin…

I meant that it's counterintuitive to think about scheduling breaks, but it's actually very helpful thing to do. Thanks for the feedback. I will see if I can make it clearer in the article.

Re: To-do waves

#29

Post by ozim »

I don't find it insightful because for me tasks that are ToDo are not like sine waves.

I am also not a person that gets annoyed by cleaning dishes or brushing teeth. I just do these things and I accepted that these are time costs that I cannot do much about.

Not brushing teeth - getting even single infection from rotting tooth would cost me much more in terms of wasted time than brushing twice a day.

Just like trying to cut on sleep time, you might get away for 3-5 days sleeping less but then you will have to pay it back with interest.

I think it is mostly difference in approach "unrealistic" trying to schedule and squeeze in as much as possible - vs - I have bunch of stuff to do, let's see how much I will be able to finish and anything that drops goes to the next day or ends up never done because if I did not do it and no one complained (even myself) it probably was not that important at all.

Re: To-do waves

#30

Post by jabroni_salad »

whiterock wrote: post #22
jabroni_salad wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ticktick will do this. I have one called 'air filter every 3 months' and the next iteration is always exactly 90 days from when I mark the current one as done, even if I am late or early.

Do you need the premium version for that? Is there any OSS that does that? I might need to get onto that then…

No, I use the free version. My todo listing needs are actually very basic, I just think ticktick has the best semantic scheduling out of any that I have tried and I hate fiddling with scheduling widgets.
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