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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

#363
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…

Im perfectly happy with markdown in vscode. Right next to my work and with a search function. I guess I could do txt but the syntax highlighting makes things a bit more readable. I think it works for me because it's mostly just a working memory. I virtually never visit my notes again. It is not some personal knowledge base nor project tracker.

This satisfied me for awhile, eventually though I wanted a more comprehensive solution to record todo notes alongside thoughts and project ideas, so I escaped my IDE and got a simple obsidian setup going. I can definitely recommend

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

#365
I use Joplin. I made a little extension which generates a file with Monday's date and then the days + dates as headers.

On Monday I copy anything I still want from the previous week and then just jot down notes as I go.

---

# Monday - 11

# Tuesday - 12

# Wednesday - 13

# Thursday - 14

# Friday - 15

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

#366

I host my own wall calendar. There is an annual subscription cost, but it's so cheap I don't notice. I hacked it together with thumbtack 1.0 and Bic Crystal a very long time ago. Others have used it and find the interface extremely intuitive. Localization is supported. I even have pencil support. If things become tentative, we can switch over to it seamlessly. When I have a todo item, I input it onto the day and time…

The real curveball is sending smoke signals to request pricing info.

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

#368
I feel the pain of this, I use obsidian for my day to day note taking and tasks to do as a general plan, I push tasks from Slack into Trello inbox as people chat me things that I need to look into, I make reminders for myself while away from a computer on my iPhone via Siri.

Apple reminders has a kanban now that is actually pretty okay, but I dont have a great way to get things from slack into it - manually copying all the text/attachments/url is super annoying.

There is an app that syncs your reminders with an obsidian task list, but I ran into too many bugs with it resetting and taking too long to clean all the old shit up that just got archived due to not being required.

I could probably get away with a bunch of MCP servers that query my local reminders, trello, and obsidian daily notes, outlook calendar, gmail calendar.... but it feels like such a bad way of going about aggregating everything.

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

#369
It's challenging. I struggle with the mismatch between work and personal in particular. They run both on different software stack and different cadence. On work side I'm constrained by whatever corporate thingie they give us, and on personal side I prefer selfhost FOSS...so fundamentally incompatible

No idea except knowing if I can crack this my life would be better

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

#370

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.

Reminders is not the job of a todo app, it is the job of a calendar app. For a todo there is no now, it is pick the best thing todo next. I need to be interupted for my dentist appointment. However I don't need to be interupted to buy milk, I need a remineer when I'm at the store anyway to also get milk. If the reminder was 'i see you are going in the direction of a store: we need milk if you have time to stop' that would work.
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