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

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

#211

Post by brettermeier »

pydry wrote: post #188
skydhash wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taks tracking is different from reminders. There’s actually few things that I want to be reminded of, and they either belongs to a calendar (collaborative items) or a reminder app. The separation is blurry and they can all fits within the agenda concept. As for tasks tracking, it’s all lists. And a daily/weekly/monthly review is enough for me.

They blur into each other enough that it's good to use one app/text file that can do all three.

And my calender app is used like a list, i can sort it by setting the time for each list item if i really care. I kind of set a reminder for every item i put in, but not everybody wants that for sure.

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

#212

Post by dialup_sounds »

ChromaticPanic wrote: post #171
Igrom wrote: post #92

Reading through the comments under this thread, there are many users who swear by a plain text file, but who then build quite a lot of snowflake software to regain functionality offered by more structured TODO applications. That includes: - having your computer alert you to things that come up - being able to tag notes - being able to add events to a calendar - being able to set priority of tasks - expecting prioriti…

Too many programmers think they have a unique use case without considering that maybe the existing projects are bloated for a reason. Then they end up just recreating the same bloat.

Gall's Law:

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.

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

#215

Post by svachalek »

koakuma-chan wrote: post #118
not_kurt_godel wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's Reminders app does all of those things and many more without having to learn emacs

Ironically the Reminders app sucks at reminding. I use the Clock app for my todo list; it makes a pretty loud noise pretty reliably, which makes it pretty good for reminders.

Yeah I think this is a result of the attention economy, there are 75 million notifications per day that someone somewhere wants to push in your face so we've gotten really good at cutting them out. But the counter-swing is also too big and now critical things like calendars and reminders are buried in a list we never look at.

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

#216

Post by barbazoo »

fmbb wrote: post #209
pancakemouse wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What this shows to me, as someone who has committed some of the unholy crimes above, is that people want their system, however esoteric, to come naturally to them. I think reading docs, understanding a new system which someone else has designed, and fitting one's brain into _their_ organisational structure is the hard part. Harder than designing one's own system. It's the reason many don't stick with an off-the-shelf…

Also, if you are a developer by trade a lot of these features are quick and easy to implement.

And might even be fun to implement and maintain.

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

#217

Post by jimbokun »

Igrom wrote: post #92

Reading through the comments under this thread, there are many users who swear by a plain text file, but who then build quite a lot of snowflake software to regain functionality offered by more structured TODO applications. That includes: - having your computer alert you to things that come up - being able to tag notes - being able to add events to a calendar - being able to set priority of tasks - expecting prioriti…

I think a lot of your examples demonstrate the power and low learning curve of a single text file as an organizing tool.

Org mode is one direction you could take your text file in. Feeding your text file into an LLM or committing it to git or formatting with Markdown are others. But starting with a plain text file doesn’t commit you to any of those paths.

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

#218

Post by tatjam »

I like the "dopamine hit" of changing a task from TODO to DONE that comes from colors. I use this very simple vim syntax file for that :)

syntax match TODOKey "TODO"

syntax match DONEKey "DONE"

syntax match BLCKKey "BLCK"

syntax match MAYBKey "MAYB"

syntax match Comment "\/\/.*$"

hi def link TODOKey DiagnosticWarn

hi def link DONEKey Type

hi def link BLCKKey DiagnosticError

hi def link MAYBKey Constant

hi def link Comment Comment

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

#219

Post by don_neufeld »

block_dagger wrote: post #157
don_neufeld wrote: post #150

sigh I've done the text file thing, and it’s fine. Up to a (very small) point. What the author describes as their “workload” barely registers. For context, for me, Things on any given day has over 100 individual actions, most of which are recurring. By doing this, I can stay on top of an extremely broad surface area. There is no way a text file can handle the number of parallel work streams my (or really many) people…

I would argue that it would be trivial to have a todo.txt for each area you mentioned. Put them in a folder labeled “todo” and you’re all set.

Sure, but I would lose a ton of reminder and repeating action functionality.

I’d also have to scan across a dozen or more files to figure out what my day looks like.

Seems strictly worse to me.

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

#220

Post by melodyogonna »

Too much organization never helps, I've learned this with both note taking and with todo apps.

My workflow with ticktick is largely based on having all my to-dos in one "next actions" list. Tags are the one feature I can't throw away though, most of my to-do lists is tagged with a project name. My day to day view of Ticktick is usually some tag

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