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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

#341

Post by spaceisballer »

kilroy123 wrote: post #312
Aurornis wrote: post #253

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 this is a vocal minority. Outside of internet comment sections, most everyone I know doesn’t care that much about their todo list software. The most productive people I ever worked with all had really minimal productivity software. For one person…

I strongly agree. I think it's a form of procrastinating. I read about all these complex systems for notes and second brains and whatnot. All procrastinating imho.

That’s been my personal experience. Spend plenty of time looking at all kind of options to optimize my ir my teams workflow. Then just fallback on pen and paper or some very simple excel spreadsheet. Something thinking about being more productive makes you feel productive.

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

#342

Post by broast »

The only feature I need that would accelerate my workflow that text file editors don't currently have is a column with the last modified timestamp of that particular line, and maybe some color indication to show which lines were modified the most recently compared to others. And this would be based on change, not based on save or commit.

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

#343

Post by user3939382 »

My inbox is my todo list. If I want to go nuts I can add a “waiting for them” label. Archive means done. Unread means unprocessed. I can send myself an email or if the task originates from someone else their email thread is the task. For voicemail, call, SMS heavy workflows of the past I routed my sms and voicemail through my inbox as well. This tooling is very personal but the above I’ve found to standup to very large workloads.

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

#348

Post by Theodores »

cloudking wrote: post #327

Next version, a pen and paper!

Next, next version, just commit everything to working memory, as in one's brain. To help with this, simply tell others what you are doing and give them updates. Practice can be gained by doing things such as shopping without a list. Hacks can also be used, so a list of code fixes can be called 'updating the specs', even though it is a list of things to do.

As for pen and paper, writing things down is a way of committing todos to working memory, the paper does not have to be referred to, just the act of writing means that it gets noted.

Forgetfulness is a feature. If it wasn't important and it gets forgotten, then forgetfulness has worked.

Joking aside, todo lists, in whatever form, are rarely going to be forever solutions, and, depending on the task and who you are working with, the solution is going to vary.

What is fascinating is working with someone that has all the tools for the day job and to work on another project, for instance DIY. They might have all of these fancy project management tools for work, but do they use them for renovating the house?

Of course not! They are back to either pen and paper or just working memory.

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

#349

Post by dcanelhas »

graemep wrote: post #206
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…

A lot of this is solved by todo.txt format ( https://github.com/todotxt/todo.txt ) There are apps that support it on many platforms and it is easy to sync across devices.

Sometimes I like to imagine early people inventing, forgetting about and inventing the wheel again.

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

#350

Post by mentos »

koonsolo wrote: post #101

For me it's still Trello. I used to have a .txt file, and once went back to it. But somehow, having these task cards is easier for me.

Trello here too. Has a web and mobile app so its slightly better than .txt file in that I can add to it on the run.
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