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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

#391

Post by inanutshellus »

hermitcrab wrote: post #373

Every developer: 'Wow there are a 1000 of ToDo apps. I can't possibly try them all. So I will write my own ToDo app that does exactly what I want!' Result: There are now 1001 ToDo apps. ToDo/productivity apps is a very tough market. I know because I wrote a visual task planner for Windows and Mac (hyperplan.com) and struggled to get enough visibility to make it commercially viable, despite a lot of rave feedback.

The same is true for group apps (manage a team; organize events with random people, etc. apps)... so many options... and so far every single season my kids have participated in a sport I've been privileged to try a new one... :-\

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

#392

Post by lemontheme »

sandcat_ wrote: post #340
lemontheme wrote: post #333

I prefer keeping everything in one file as well, since even the act of creating a new file is sometimes enough of a hassle for me to skip jotting something important down. Question for fellow one-file'ers: what do you on mobile? My problem in the past was that all plain text editor apps on iOS open files at the top, which meant scrolling all the way down every time I opened my notes file. These days I use NotePlan, b…

Just add new notes and tasks at the top? I find that it means less important tasks tend to settle towards the bottom, and I’ll periodically go and reshuffle things as required.

Okay, so there are people who do this? I've actually considered it on several occasions, but it always felt a bit 'wrong', like prepending rather than appending to an array.

I like the idea though of less important things being farther down, like sediment, whereas current/important things stay closer to the surface. There's a fun metaphor in there.

Might try your way, after all!

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

#394

Post by yoavm »

xz18r wrote: post #56
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?

Yeah - I mean I haven't been adding any new features recently, but mostly because the system just works. I'm using it daily and definitely fixing stuff if they break.

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

#395

Post by fknorangesite »

bluGill wrote: post #370
koakuma-chan wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

Reminders basically does have this: you can set a given item to alert when you are arriving/leaving from a specific location.

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

#396

Post by lemontheme »

jshen wrote: post #335
lemontheme wrote: post #333

I prefer keeping everything in one file as well, since even the act of creating a new file is sometimes enough of a hassle for me to skip jotting something important down. Question for fellow one-file'ers: what do you on mobile? My problem in the past was that all plain text editor apps on iOS open files at the top, which meant scrolling all the way down every time I opened my notes file. These days I use NotePlan, b…

I use obsidian. It's markdown, and can sync across devices.

Obsidian is great but it's a productivity trap for me. The last time I got into it I went too far in designing the 'perfect' PKM system, while not actually using it all that much. Turns out I just really like designing systems. =p

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

#397

Post by reddit_clone »

miroljub wrote: post #297
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…

The whole point of org-mode is that it's so malleable, that you can extend it to be whatever you want it to be, much easier than writing your own, ad-hoc, bug-ridden reimplementation of org-mode.

Org-mode is the most appropriate answer. It is as simple or as sophisticated as we want it to be.

Obviously one needs to be an Emacs user first

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

#398

Post by don_neufeld »

anzumitsu wrote: post #300
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…

Can you give some examples of your 100 daily actions? I’m struggling to understand how you’re scheduling so many things, like I’m sure I complete 100 actions in a day but most are going to be things like “brush my teeth” or “clean up the dinner dishes”, which I personally wouldn’t schedule.

It's definitely detailed. Here are a few from today:

Call PG&E about medical baseline allowance

Check SM Court website re: Conservancy ruling

Expect next invoice from [redacted]

Order refill of [medication]

Book service for [vehicle]

Various financial transfers associated with agreements.

Tons of project related tasks for work I can't share

etc, etc.

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

#399

Post by XenophileJKO »

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…

So my current pet project is a to-do system with an app that you can look at, edit, or complete tasks in. But I have both a fully agentic interface and simpler LLM powered inputs.

I'm really enjoying it. I think it is a good example of how to leverage LLMs to reduce drudgery.

Things I can do now: - take a picture of a notice like a license renewal and a task is created and automatically filled with due dates and information extracted from the image and likely from online searches.

- turn a design document into a reasonable task plan.

- create classified and researched tasks with a sentence.

I'm just getting started on it but it already is kind of feature complete. Programmed with Claude Code, about 20k lines.

The key I think is to have something as easy to input as a text file, because it applies intelligence to remove friction.

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