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A plain-text file format for todos and check lists

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Re: A plain-text file format for todos and check lists

#31

Post by eurasiantiger »

kstrauser wrote: post #13
ozim wrote: post #10

I am just getting more and more convinced that any personal todo list is useless. Most useless part is priorities on personal list. If something like utility invoice is to be paid - just do it. If it is something like "read Anna Karenina" it is not getting any priority ever it is just something I would like to do in my life. So stuff that really needs to be done I will deal with without any todo list I will just reme…

My problem is that I'll never remember to do those things on my own. I have repeating items for things that seem obvious but that life experience has demonstrated that I just can't track on my own. I wish I could remember to order flowers for my wife in time for them to be delivered before our anniversary, but I won't. A todo app for me is a lifesaver: instead of being all stressed out that I'm forgetting something i…

But are you then actually remembering her?

Re: A plain-text file format for todos and check lists

#32

Post by hiq »

[deleted] wrote: post #30
jxi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normal human brain can’t remember that much. It also helps to write down everything that needs to get done first, so that you can prioritize between them.

[deleted]

> But aren’t you writing down a bunch of stuff that, really, honestly, you’re probably not going to do?

That's a separate problem, and a good reason to have periodic reviews. If you have big items that stay on your list for weeks you should consider removing them or make them more actionable than they currently are.

Re: A plain-text file format for todos and check lists

#33

Post by hiq »

ozim wrote: post #10

I am just getting more and more convinced that any personal todo list is useless. Most useless part is priorities on personal list. If something like utility invoice is to be paid - just do it. If it is something like "read Anna Karenina" it is not getting any priority ever it is just something I would like to do in my life. So stuff that really needs to be done I will deal with without any todo list I will just reme…

> So stuff that really needs to be done I will deal with without any todo list I will just remember it

Well you're lucky then, because I frequently have to remind people of important things they (still) have to do and seem to have forgotten. Having such a list is a way to avoid the stressful situation of being late with things you can't postpone or which you benefit greatly from doing sooner rather than later.

Re: A plain-text file format for todos and check lists

#34

Post by ozim »

jxi wrote: post #19
ozim wrote: post #10

I am just getting more and more convinced that any personal todo list is useless. Most useless part is priorities on personal list. If something like utility invoice is to be paid - just do it. If it is something like "read Anna Karenina" it is not getting any priority ever it is just something I would like to do in my life. So stuff that really needs to be done I will deal with without any todo list I will just reme…

Normal human brain can’t remember that much. It also helps to write down everything that needs to get done first, so that you can prioritize between them.

Maybe I am just on the boring side of life and I don't really have that much to do.

My biggest problem earlier was that I thought I should have a todo list to achieve things in life. As it turns out it just does not matter, my connections, my starting point in life was much more defining to what I can achieve today than any form of organization of my self I would implement.

Of course unless I would be totally undisciplined and disorganized, but it turns out that I was disciplined and organized enough to reach good life and adding todo list is not something that would help me.

Re: A plain-text file format for todos and check lists

#35

Post by pessimizer »

jotaen wrote: post #15
pessimizer wrote: post #7

No way to create subitems i.e. when the subitems are completed, the parent item is completed? The main thing I need out of a task manager is for it to allow me to decompose and refine tasks, and to keep track of that stuff as it gets complicated. If the data format doesn't even allow for subtasks, that seems impossible without abusing tags. edit: I now see that it's the top issue on your bugtracker.

For reference, this is the discussion around subitems / nesting: https://github.com/jotaen/xit/discussions/2 As mentioned in that ticket, I’m still reluctant to add this to the [x]it! file specification. On the one hand it seems like an obvious and useful feature, but on the other hand it’s unfortunately pretty difficult to implement in tooling. For example, I tried to add experimental support for nested subitems in…

> There can be conflicting state, for example: what happens if the parent item is checked, but the children are still open? Or the other way around? If all children are checked, shouldn’t that “automatically” resolve the parent? What if the parent has a closer due date than the children? And so on. While decision could be made for any of these corner cases, it might still feel strange in practice.

To me, the convention to go with seems easy.

1) If the parent is explicitly checked, leave the children as they are, and ask the user through tooling if they want to check each unchecked subtask, delete it, or move it up a level.

2) If all of the children are checked, the parent stays unchecked, but tooling should ask the user if the parent is complete, or if another subtask should be added.

3) If the parent has a closer due date than the children, don't do anything unless you feel like warning the user i.e. hold the subtasks to their due dates, and hold the parent task to its due date.

The issue about descriptions I see as a non-issue: dictate that descriptions marry to the task above them. It would be nicer to be freer with mixing descriptions and tasks, but you'd have to introduce more tokens.

One thing in the thread that I don't find necessary is marking partial completion.

I don't have any experience with Sublime, but this seems like a very basic tree.

When reading the subtasks, all you have to hold is the stack of the checkbox states and due dates of higher task levels for tooling to answer any of the above questions. A tool could seek backwards in order to check a parent if the children were checked, the user was warned, and the user said they wanted the parent checked. But if instead you really only wanted to read a line at a time, you could add a dummy item called "[ ] Complete parent task" at the end of the subtask list in order to keep an unchecked parent with checked children consistent.

The problem for me is that a tree is what I have trouble organizing. If it's just a linear list of things, I'm not sure how useful it could be for me other than by setting alarms that I could set directly. There is never a time when one of my tasks isn't to break down another task into simpler steps; all but the simplest tasks I have really have "break this down" that as the default first subtask.

So one workflow datapoint for useful with subtasks, useless without subtasks.

Re: A plain-text file format for todos and check lists

#36

Post by olau »

egypturnash wrote: post #18
ozim wrote: post #10

I am just getting more and more convinced that any personal todo list is useless. Most useless part is priorities on personal list. If something like utility invoice is to be paid - just do it. If it is something like "read Anna Karenina" it is not getting any priority ever it is just something I would like to do in my life. So stuff that really needs to be done I will deal with without any todo list I will just reme…

My experience is that physical to-do lists are great for sitting down, surveying what needs doing, and deciding what you’re going to do today. Including decisions like “I did not read any of Anna Karenina yesterday but I still want to do this so I am putting it on today’s list, and while I am thinking about this I took 5s to take it off the shelf and put it by the comfy reading chair”. And things like “laundry is gon…

I used to do that too on paper, but at some point I ended up opening a text file in Emacs and do exactly what I would do on paper, just in Emacs. It's only a small chunk of text, so I don't use org-mode or anything like that.

But yeah, not accumulating stuff requires a conscious decision and the will to stick to it. The same goes for paper, though. I have a coworker that at some point had a stack of paper over 20 cm high.

Re: A plain-text file format for todos and check lists

#37

Post by mola »

ozim wrote: post #10

I am just getting more and more convinced that any personal todo list is useless. Most useless part is priorities on personal list. If something like utility invoice is to be paid - just do it. If it is something like "read Anna Karenina" it is not getting any priority ever it is just something I would like to do in my life. So stuff that really needs to be done I will deal with without any todo list I will just reme…

For me it's useful to rid my mind from nagging thoughts. I might be working on something while suddenly thinking about something else to be done. If I'm not writing it, I'll lose focus. Writing it in a Todo list calms my mind and let me get back to whatever it is later, without worrying I'll forget about it. My mind wonders quite a bit, so this is very beneficial for me.

Re: A plain-text file format for todos and check lists

#38

Post by ozim »

pilina wrote: post #16
ozim wrote: post #10

I am just getting more and more convinced that any personal todo list is useless. Most useless part is priorities on personal list. If something like utility invoice is to be paid - just do it. If it is something like "read Anna Karenina" it is not getting any priority ever it is just something I would like to do in my life. So stuff that really needs to be done I will deal with without any todo list I will just reme…

> So stuff that really needs to be done I will deal with without any todo list I will just remember it or deal with it right away. Just remember. That's exactly the thing I (for example) am not capable of. I keep forgetting everything. Every time I have some spare time, I am checking my todo first if there's something I need/want/can do.

Thanks for your point of view.

It is also why I am writing comments on the internet, to see what are other people life experiences.

Re: A plain-text file format for todos and check lists

#39

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

I like it. Few issues:

  - doesn't describe handling spaces or other characters before the checkbox
  - doesn't support UTF-8 checkbox emoji
  - doesn't support nested lists
  - specifies a specific space character when a character class would be better
  - not clear what "item must not contain blank lines" means
  - description indentation limit of four space characters is a problem for nested items
  - description supporting blank lines (properly indented) would be useful for longer descriptions
  - date should support an ISO or other standard date format
  - timezone is necessary for events happening in specific timezones or across timezones

Re: A plain-text file format for todos and check lists

#40

Post by kstrauser »

eurasiantiger wrote: post #31
kstrauser wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem is that I'll never remember to do those things on my own. I have repeating items for things that seem obvious but that life experience has demonstrated that I just can't track on my own. I wish I could remember to order flowers for my wife in time for them to be delivered before our anniversary, but I won't. A todo app for me is a lifesaver: instead of being all stressed out that I'm forgetting something i…

But are you then actually remembering her?

Yes, of course.
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