I used to track every project in its own text file. Every task and a description was in this file. It was great, but got a bit messy. So now I use EasyOrg [1] where I also track each project's todos in its own text file, but now with time scheduling, search by time, links to other tasks in the file etc.
My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)
51–60 of 272 posts
Re: My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)
#52Re: My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)
#53Make it .org file and you’re in a different league instantly.
I've maintained a single log.org file for 5 years now and it's been great!
Re: My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)
#54Re: My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)
#55I thought I was the only one that did this
Re: My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)
#56It's something I also tried to do for a while, just by using VSCode and a bunch of text files. I really like the lightweight-ness of just being able to edit as if it's text, but wanted to have for tasks what VSCode has for code: command palettes, "syntax highlighting", jump to "references" (like dates) and an editor which understands structure (like an outliner, but without all the awkward text selection issues).
Anyway all of that led us to try and build a dedicated "IDE", but for tasks/notes and multiplayer support [1]. Hopefully it's going to be useful for others working from their todo.txt/thoughts.txt!
Re: My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)
#57Lists in text files work great. So unbelievably great.
I go back to them often, and some things can outgrow them completely when you want to:
- Reduce the work between my list and collaborating with others (a shared list) - First class convenient experience on all my devices is useful - Notes synced automatically can go a long way. - When projects grow, and there's more details to manage, along with updates, than not.
Has anyone used the text file appoach that can be compatible with LogSeq/Obsidian?
I'm not sure why, but this time using mainly LogSeq has clicked. I do run it inside of an Obsidian Vault just in case... but haven't used Obsidian much. I really like the feel of per line item like a text file that logseq provides. There are tradeoffs too though.
I think I might be enjoying it because it's plaintext, with a little bit more metadata, when/if I want it.
The hashtags I invent that only I know are almost an unfair advantage for pulling up all the meetings with a person, or a topic, etc.
Re: My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)
#58> 4pm Rihanna talk (368 CIT)
5pm 1:1 with Beyonce #phdadvisee
Sounds like a nice day.
Re: My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)
#59Old man checking in. I use the TOPS Steno Pad and PaperMate Gel Ink pens. Light weight, damage resistant, and no power required. Still works a treat. There's something about writing information down on paper that makes it store in my memory differently. I read volumes of digital text on my monitor every day, but I write very little into the steno book, so almost everything I write gets stored very deeply in my memory…
I sketch all of my ideas on yellow legal pads for the same reason. It's my playground. Mostly diagrams and code snippets. Playing around with the names of things.
For my "TODO/notes," though, I still use a plain text file in gedit. No timestamps, no nothing. When I want to remember how to build Envoy with bazelisk, I search for "bazelisk" and see the most recent, oldest, and all intermediate attempts with my notes (e.g. "runs out of memory, but if you're not building the tests, you can get away with 6 cores"). I've gotten into the habit of "tagging" potentially useful information with words that I might search for later.
Need to save an error message for possible later reference? notes.txt. Meeting notes? notes.txt. TODO? notes.txt. Rough draft of slack message? notes.txt. You get the idea.
Re: My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)
#60I also use plain text files for a lot of my personal organization. My system isn't quite like what OP describes, but it has some things in common. Some of my files are also structured by date as a never-ending journal. This isn't for a todo list, it's for a journal of things I encounter that I'd like to be able to find again and that I don't want to accumulate as clutter elsewhere...i.e. in browser tabs, etc. Sometimes it's a web link, or maybe something I learned somewhere, something someone told me, etc. I include notes whatever words / strings I think I might use if I want to find this particular thing later. I use org mode and make each date be a top-level bullet so I can nicely leverage powerful text search tools like ripgrep, regular expressions, etc.
I don't find it useful to force everything into a single file. Instead, I'll organize these text files somewhere inside a directory structure that I can recursively grep. Unlike the OP I do use mutable TODO lists to track high level lists of things that I want to continue to spend mental energy on, but I do like the chronological list of done things and I might think about adding something like that or maybe augmenting the chronological notes file I already have.
I do depart from the world of plain text for keeping track of larger amounts of information such as good papers I encounter, complete blog posts that I might want to refer back to, etc. For this I use the fantastic DEVONthink tool. It's got a large array of powerful features including automatic OCR and indexing of images and an excellent search feature, but the one that I use the most is its ability to make a "web archive" from a link. This downloads all of a web page's resources and stores them in the database locally, making it really easy to refer back to things that I've seen before regardless of whether I have internet access or not, whether the website is still around, etc.