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

al3rez.com

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

#451
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…

> but _every_ item on the list above is handled out of the box, or is offered through a free and maintained plugin.

Which one writes post-it notes for you?

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

#452

I had a similar journey, settled on a todo app that actually uses text files too https://www.taskpaper.com Save the text file to a cloud sync provider and you can check it on every device

I ended up there, too. Taskpaper Mac app is great.

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

#454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't know that app, but I don't want a specific location - milk can be had at hundreds of different stores in my town. While it isn't all the same there are only about 4 different suppliers to all those stores.

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

#455

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…

> Reminders is not the job of a todo app, it is the job of a calendar app.

Ehh. The thing with a calendar "reminder" is that calendar apps assume that any such reminder is irrelevant once the time you set for the reminder goes by. They exist to remind you that some time-sensitive real-world event is starting, in time to be ready for it; but once that event has ended, you must have either done it or missed it — so either way, the calendar forgets about it.

Whereas a reminder / "todo with a date" object in a reminder/todo app, makes a different assumption: that you still need to do the thing, even if you didn't interact with the reminder when it first popped up. So the reminder is still there, glowing brightly, and often pops back up with further notifications, until you complete it.

Three examples from my own calendar of the type of reminder I'm talking about here, if you can't yet picture what I mean:

• It's time to replace the filter in my cat's water fountain [and take apart and scrub all the parts of the fountain while I'm at it.] (This isn't urgent — there's no particular need to do it exactly when I'm reminded of it — but it grows more urgent the longer it is left undone. The persistence of the reminder helps me to remember to do it, if I was busy when I first saw it.)

• I've gotta either pick the specific meals going into my meal-box subscription service box by midnight Saturday, or skip the week (or the service will pick randomly for me, giving me things I really don't want to eat, and I'll torture myself trying to motivate myself to cook those meals anyway, because I don't want to waste money/food.) I set this one to go off with two explicit "pre-notifications" twice — once at 7PM on Thursday, and again at 9PM on Friday. It then goes off again on its own, a little bit before midnight, and that's the final warning. (And, of course, if I check it off before then, the other notifications associated with that instance of the reminder won't fire.) I also usually just leave the Friday 9PM one unacknowledged + open as a toast on my computer until I've picked it, to ensure I won't get distracted and forget about it.

• Pay my credit card bill. (I have monthly autopay set up, but my understanding is that they still get to charge some minimal amount of interest for any charge that remains posted + not paid down for 21 days. So I set a reminder to pay the card down every 14 days. Again, not urgent per se — the worst that happens is that the 30-day autopay kicks in. But I find it a convenient time to review the last 14 days of charges for any strange activity; and the longer I go without doing that, the more of a schlep that starts to feel like — so biweekly is actually good here.

To be clear, I had all three of these set up as calendar events before — and they didn't work very well that way! Repeating reminders have much better semantics here.

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

#456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of earning money, but surely that's not what's it's all about, is it?

in terms of actually building something useful

Does everything you build must be useful? What if it's just really fun?

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

#458

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.

I spent several years trying to make a custom todo system and ended up back where I started using CalDAV and a basic todo app and calendar. Turns out I was always procrastinating because I didn't want to force myself to adapt to something simple.

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

#460
Notebook + pen. Checkboxes. A mix of half-hour timeblocks ala the Pomodoro method, and plain checklists for shopping tasks. For stuff that’s extra important or is happening in the next few days I slap a post-it on my desktop monitor somewhere I’ll have to constantly move it when I’m using the whole screen to work.

If I want to get fancy then I have a couple of bookmarks to custom myNoise.net multi gens configured to run for 25min.

I also have some pretty notebooks and a cheap fountain pen, this combo makes me feel like a witch when I write in them and that’s fun.

I have tried a ton of apps and they all fall by the wayside. I have to buy a new bottle of ink once or twice a year and the occasional notebook. Simple. Gets out of the way and never requires me to open up the Attention Sink and lose a half an hour getting distracted by a Telegram message or whatever.

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