381–390 of 831 posts
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> scraps of paper that eventually get spontaneously disposed of Where "spontaneously disposed of" is sometimes abbreviated L-O-S-T, right?
Even so, I feel that much of the point of writing things down in the first place is to put the information into the mind (where the subconscious mind can work with it and do its jobs) and, ultimately, so you won't need to be reminded about it later.
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…
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…
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.
I've used a .txt pretty much my whole life from my old Vaio running Ubuntu to my Mac books after, especially as a heavy terminal/nano enjoyer. I always saved it as do.txt in my base dir. Thousands of lines which was always nice to look at and more importantly easy to reference links I used during debugging or troubleshooting from months ago. It's a weird mix of a bookmarking list, daily to dos and quickly jotting down phone numbers or details while on the phone with someone (if I'm not on my personal laptop, I usually type the thing while I'm on the phone in the PC browser address bar then copy it over which is not ideal because auto-search).
Another strategy I've used is iMessaging myself with links or notes, which in my opinion is the best way since it auto syncs AND you can pin yourself in the iMessage app for quick access.
[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/infinote-single-page-notes/id6...
I use Todoist in a very light weight fashion. I add tasks and they sit on my screen until they're done, basically identical to a text file. I've never used the points, projects, labels, etc. It does one thing a text file struggles at: scheduling recurring tasks and adding notes to a recurring task. I have annual reminders for infrequent, but important stuff. For example, I have a recurring annual task to review my in…
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> - having your computer alert you to things that come up If my own experience is a valid example, alerts are overrated. They don't work for long. I hate getting interrupted by something that actually does not need my attention at that precise moment. I would disable those alerts in no time. I prefer leaving physical cues in the real world. I think screens are bad UI unless you already spend way too much time in fron…
I geeked out a bit, after reading another blog post, and used my thermal printer for this. I've been using it for a few weeks now. The little sticky notes it makes are great. https://joeldare.com/trying-to-stop-procrastination-with-my-... I am starting to collect too many of them though. I kinda like the idea of ops text-file because it is renewed from day to day. I'm still not quite sure how to deal with the items I…
"The biggest killer for any task tracker I find is an accumulating backlog of items that seem too important to quit but too intractable to make progress on." - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44270076
(I suspect that’s part of too many browser tabs hanging around, too)
function todo
vim "$HOME//"(date --date=$argv --iso-8601)
end
$ todo # opens the today file
$ todo tomorrow #opens tomorrows file
$ todo ''
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It's like Rumshpringa for TODO apps. Everyone wants to rebel from the old norms and go do something different, only to end up returning to the reliability, clarity and comfort of a good pen and pocket notebook. Big fan of the Rite-In-Rain notebooks, myself, and Fisher Space Pen's Cap-o-matic.
> Big fan of the Rite-In-Rain notebooks, myself, and Fisher Space Pen's Click-o-matic. I carry this combo everywhere I go. Way less friction than taking out my phone, unlocking, and suffering the horrible experience of typing something on a virtual keyboard. I do enjoy the looks I get from friends and family sometimes, as they all expect me to be high tech everywhere in my life but I'm probably one of the most low-te…
I also don’t want to carry an extra thing in my pocket when I already have a phone.
But I’m glad what works for you works for you!