The Search for the Perfect To-do List • Hacker News Board

Re: The Search for the Perfect To-do List

#121

Post by ihaveajob » Fri, Mar 25, 2016, 4:03 PM UTC

mathattack wrote: post #9

I'm very interested in the topic as I've struggled to replace the efficacy of my old Franklin Planner. I've tried Google calendar reminders, and that hasn't worked. Evernote hasn't been great either. I don't want to go back to Notepad. Maybe the issue is having the discipline to spend 15 minutes a day planning?

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Re: The Search for the Perfect To-do List

#122

Post by miguelrochefort » Fri, Mar 25, 2016, 4:30 PM UTC

lfowles wrote: post #77

miguelrochefort wrote: post #68

The perfect to-do list will be a semantic marketplace of outcomes. You describe the outcomes you want in life using a formal semantic language, and broadcast them for the world to see. Then, anyone who has the ability to satisfy the expected outcome (i.e., "I'm at work at 8AM") - bet it yourself, a friend, or a taxi driver - can engage in a contract where the conditions of all parties are described and agreed upon. T…

So, the ideal to-do list will be defined in prolog?

Assuming that prolog is the best language to represent these goals, yes.

But I believe we can do much better than prolog.

Re: The Search for the Perfect To-do List

#123

Post by collyw » Fri, Mar 25, 2016, 4:33 PM UTC

deadcast wrote: post #100

collyw wrote: post #58

Pen and paper still works out way more flexible than any of the todo lists I have tried.

Yeah that solution still works just fine for me. Also just using a plain text file works well too.

I was using a google doc for my task list / bug tracker at a previous job. Then we got Jira involved. No one bothered to fill it in properly, so it was more hassle than it was worth. Actually it was way more hassle then the google doc and far less flexible.

Re: The Search for the Perfect To-do List

#124

Post by Jtsummers » Fri, Mar 25, 2016, 6:41 PM UTC

maigret wrote: post #93

kaitai wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something in that space, though! Before I can have friends to dinner, I need to buy the ingredients, but before I buy the ingredients it would be good to print the recipes so I don't need to go back to the store. Also, I need to clean the dining room a bit which involves moving the elephant out of the room and into the garage. Two little streams with deadlines: move elephant, print recipes today. I worked on…

For this problem, Getting Things Done says you should only record the next task. The second doesn't interest you as you only need to think about it once you're done with the first. Work projects have multiple dependencies because they involve often many people, but Agile has been also pushing backward the desire to plan too much in advance.

The problem (crap, way late to post, sorry) is that you may record the task "Have friends for dinner". THEN you start working backwards on the dependency chain. It's a natural way to break down problems (why am I shopping for food if I don't know what I'm shopping for?). Shopping for my weeknight dinners is different than shopping for my Saturday night party (literally different tasks if they're time separated).

So the desire is to be able to record a target task, and obscure it (so to speak) behind the preparatory tasks. This is where projects and other things come into play. Project: Make a journal for my sister's wedding anniversary. Tasks: Purchase materials, assemble, hire artist friend to produce neat drawing on cover, distribute for signing by family (both sides). Those end up becoming ordered in some fashion (purchase materials, then the rest), or running in parallel (hire the artist friend and paste it into the produced journal, send out a single sewn signature to family and sew it into the final product, assemble the rest and wait). If you've only recorded the task "purchase materials" you don't have a concept of what follows it (and it remains in your head). This doesn't mean you need to see the following tasks, yet (software can hand them behind the tasks they depend on or by date or similar). But recording them is not a problem.

Re: The Search for the Perfect To-do List

#125

Post by iamgopal » Fri, Mar 25, 2016, 10:20 PM UTC

kbd wrote: post #75

iamgopal wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once I made a todo list web app with tons of excel like features and unlimited hierarchy and could do any kind of automation with it with built in python script subset. Could be even used as database for other apps. Ultimately features pile on. It gets Harder to maintain, nobody really bought the concept. ( imagine seeing excel for the first time. ) had to give up ultimately. Guess I should clean up and open source i…

> Guess I should clean up and open source it for the interested. I'd definitely be interested, at least in some screenshots to see what you mean by having both excel-like features and hierarchy. It sounds somewhat similar to Smartsheet[1], are you familiar? [1] https://www.smartsheet.com/

Have not heard about smart sheet, but this was something like hierarchical comment thread, with parents have all knowledge about only immediate children. Change propagates along with calculations only higher in hierarchy. I am not at my desk right now but will send screenshots as well as videos once I do.

Re: The Search for the Perfect To-do List

#126

Post by kbd » Sat, Mar 26, 2016, 2:54 AM UTC

iamgopal wrote: post #125

kbd wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Guess I should clean up and open source it for the interested. I'd definitely be interested, at least in some screenshots to see what you mean by having both excel-like features and hierarchy. It sounds somewhat similar to Smartsheet[1], are you familiar? [1] https://www.smartsheet.com/

Have not heard about smart sheet, but this was something like hierarchical comment thread, with parents have all knowledge about only immediate children. Change propagates along with calculations only higher in hierarchy. I am not at my desk right now but will send screenshots as well as videos once I do.

> but will send screenshots as well as videos once I do.

Sweet! Thanks for following up, I'll keep an eye on this thread.

Re: The Search for the Perfect To-do List

#127

Post by Chris2048 » Wed, Apr 06, 2016, 6:18 PM UTC

jwdunne wrote: post #118

julianpye wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is key for any ADDers - chains of dependencies to ensure that not only raisins are picked off your ToDo List and you get to only see next steps and not all steps. For the past three years I have been working on this in an app sideproject and planned to launch the beta this winter, but I keep getting distracted :) Android alpha testers can get in touch with me.

Send me an email. This sounds awesome :)

me too :-)

Re: The Search for the Perfect To-do List

#128

Post by Chris2048 » Thu, Apr 07, 2016, 4:36 PM UTC

VladimirGolovin wrote: post #116

miguelrochefort wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely this. Beyond that, we need opportunity tracking. Often, there is a very small window in progress can be made on a task. It could be an unique event, a recurring event, a time of day, access to a resource, etc. - Buy milk when you're near milk - Talk to John when you're near John - Tan when they sun is bright - Catch the train in the next 5 minutes otherwise you'll wait an hour for the next You can't make a…

I'm working on a todo app that will address this via automatically-activated contexts. For example, you could have a task which has "@work & @near:Bob" in its Contexts field, and it will appear in your list when the both conditions are met. (The app currently has all the infrastructure for such contexts, however I'm not yet sure about how to implement person proximity triggers in particular).

Is this public yet?