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I tried every todo app and ended up with a .txt file

al3rez.com

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Re: I tried every todo app and ended up with a .txt file

#51

Post by Kokouane »

jasode wrote: post #25

I've had a plain TODO.txt file for over 20 years so I agree with all the benefits the author mentioned. However, I don't like it because without an app, there's no runtime loop to notify and alert me of what's coming up. This means I don't have "ambient awareness" of what's going on unless... I open the TODO.txt file ... manually scan it... then rescan it again and again multiple times per day. It's really tedious an…

Surely this would be easy to fix with a simple script that runs on a VPS to alert you on a platform of your choice, maybe using something like Apprise (https://github.com/caronc/apprise). Get the notification as an email, on Discord, Signal, etc.

This does complicate the system a bit, but still low overhead in my opinion.

Re: I tried every todo app and ended up with a .txt file

#53

Post by al3rez »

BeetleB wrote: post #40

A bit hyperbolic. He tried very few Todo applications. No org mode? No Taskwarrior? Both are apps backed by plain text.

I tried both Org and taskwarrior, still for me it takes more actions, more frictions and formatless nature of txt file suits me otherwise I will end up optmizing my org mode workflow lol

Re: I tried every todo app and ended up with a .txt file

#54

Post by reactordev »

jasode wrote: post #25

I've had a plain TODO.txt file for over 20 years so I agree with all the benefits the author mentioned. However, I don't like it because without an app, there's no runtime loop to notify and alert me of what's coming up. This means I don't have "ambient awareness" of what's going on unless... I open the TODO.txt file ... manually scan it... then rescan it again and again multiple times per day. It's really tedious an…

All you need is cron.

Re: I tried every todo app and ended up with a .txt file

#55

Post by al3rez »

no_wizard wrote: post #47
mulhoon wrote: post #13

I've always liked https://www.taskpaper.com/ It's one step up from a single txt file. You only need to use one text file with it. It's like a nice UI for a single todo text file.

The real shame is it has no iOS app

it has and it's called taskmator, used it for years, but now run linux.

Re: I tried every todo app and ended up with a .txt file

#56

Post by xz18r »

yoavm wrote: post #32

I've built Wren ( https://github.com/bjesus/wren ) with a pretty similar idea of simplicity in mind — a task is just a file — but, it can also be whatever kind of file you want: 1. Drag an email to ~/Notes and it's a task 2. touch ~/Notes/get\ milk and it's a task 3. ln -s ~/Documents/something-i-need-to-finish-writing.doc ~/Notes/complete\ writing and it's task Wren doesn't care about the format.

This is pretty cool! Is it still in active development?

Re: I tried every todo app and ended up with a .txt file

#57

Post by mesotron_dev »

Another way to solve this is to use Fossil. Fossil has a built-in wiki. You can launch Fossil UI and use the built-in wiki with Markdown. Have legacy txt files? Just open a new fossil project and add them to it. And if you set up the admin and user correctly, you can mirror your notes to GitHub. So, it's not that text files are not a good option. There are many vastly superior options with almost no effort.

Re: I tried every todo app and ended up with a .txt file

#58

Post by joshmarinacci »

I love this article. The magic of todos is that it's really about the process, not the apps. An app can facilitate the process, but it's not required. I personally use Things and an ongoing Google doc. It requires me to copy between them every day, but I find that forces me to do the process of prioritizing and paring down, which is the magic part. A text file would work as well.

There are a few things I wish I could magically add to the text doc, though, like inline alarms and calendar events.

Re: I tried every todo app and ended up with a .txt file

#59

Post by akkartik »

jasode wrote: post #25

I've had a plain TODO.txt file for over 20 years so I agree with all the benefits the author mentioned. However, I don't like it because without an app, there's no runtime loop to notify and alert me of what's coming up. This means I don't have "ambient awareness" of what's going on unless... I open the TODO.txt file ... manually scan it... then rescan it again and again multiple times per day. It's really tedious an…

I use the Unix way and multiple tools.

If something has a date attached, put it on the calendar.

If something is time sensitive add alarms as needed (calendar notifications have not been doing it for me in the last 5+ years)

20 years ago it was text file + Unix calendar + crontab + something custom.

These days it's text file + calendar + clock app + something custom.

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