Ask HN: What do you use to track your todo's?
Is there any way you were able to stick with for a long time and increase productivity?
The more detailed answer the better.
The more detailed answer the better.
I keep a repo on all my systems that track a Gitlab repo (any Git repo would work). This repo contains a primary ToDo file with an overall list. When necessary, I spawn dedicated lists for specific projects or events. This is all written in Markdown (usually Github flavored).
The text editor is left to the reader's preference :) I'm strongly preferential of Vim, and use a few different Markdown plugins to ease writing.
Occasionally, if needed I build a printable PDF using Pandoc. Usually I only do this when I need to bring it with me.
Of course this doesn't bring any sort of notifications or reminders, so I supplement this with Google Calendar (and more recently Google Keep) when needed.
https://github.com/josefdlange/doit
To be fair, I don't use it anymore because I'm a disorganized wreck (but that's just a personal problem!). Despite that, I think it's a neat tool. It was inspired by Zach Holman's "Boom" -- and its Python port, "Bam" (credit goes to Ben Tappin for Bam). It borrows a handful of code from the latter for data persistence in particular, and for the scaffolding that the CLI rests upon. Thanks Ben! I haven't updated it in almost two years but it serves its purpose when I choose to use it.
I wrote it because I found that switching context away from my terminal was detrimental to my workflow. My day-to-day work has since evolved from being buried in a tmux session, so it doesn't really make sense for me anymore.
Feel free to contribute to it, file an issue, or generally bitch about it; it was honestly a couple-hour job to play around with creating something from a nascent idea, and with learning how Python / PyPI packaging goes. I'd love to revisit it and improve it if there are reasonable issues/features worth fixing/implementing!
They've already done a good job explaining the system, so I won't do it here.
I used it when I was still in graduate school writing a paper. I managed to track tons of tiny details in the writing process.
I think the most useful thing is the task migration. You must migrate unfinished tasks from today's log to next day's log, manually. During the migration, I sometimes cross out some random thoughts that I put as tasks.
This is the time that you _must_ spend everyday. It somehow can keep up your sensation of completeness. I know some apps can help you do this automatically, like todoist, but I don't think that really works for a long run (at least not for me). I find that if I didn't do the review (migration), I intended to get slow start the next day, and gradually the system would collapse. That's how I failed todoist :(
Just my 2 cents.
Stuff that doesn't have a date, but is a nifty idea to do in the future, gets put into a stack of future ideas. They're categorized. At any given time, I'm working on just a few ideas. When an idea is finished, I can take a new idea from the "future ideas" pile. In practice, I often know what I want to work on next and I don't look at the pile.
Cards are estimated in terms of points. I know from experience how many points I can get done in a week. At the beginning of each week, I count up the estimates on the date-sensitive cards. If there's extra time available, I either pull forward cards that need to be done in the future or bring in cards that will progress one of my current ideas.
Every day, I completely clear my inbox. Spam, no-response, and quick-response email gets taken care of immediately. Everything else gets turned into a card and put into the calendar. There's enough slack in my weekly budget that I can absorb these sorts of administrative tasks.
When I finish a card, I mark it with a little sticky dot. At the end of the week, I bundle up the cards with a rubber band and put it in a cardfile. I also add up the total estimates and write down the ideas I was working on for future reference. That info gets put on another card, of a different color, that acts as a sort of "cover sheet" for the bundle. I don't need to do this, but it makes me feel a sense of progress.
Been doing this for years and it works very well for me. It breaks down when I travel as I'm (a) busy and distracted, and (b) don't bring the cards with me, so I have trouble staying on top of my inbox.
Didn't find anything more efficient.
Creating Todos is pretty easy; i can create as many as I want at once via an email or entry in the search.
Categorizing them is the next trick: I get emails every other day for todos I created that aren't classified yet.
After that, they get regularly reviewed and timestamped as reviewed so they don't need to reappear for a while. I get emails for any todos that have never been reviewed, or that are overdue for a review.
When I'm deciding what to do in the next i select several I think I can tackle and add them to my list of active todos, then sort them based on priority.
Anything with a due date gets noisy (pesters me via email) as the date approaches as well as if its overdue; until it's removed or completed.
I could but haven't needed to use contexts yet or time estimates; primarily it's been a matter of making sure something is at least in the system and being tracked/reviewed in a way that I can forget about because I know it remembers and will remind me through a variety of ways.
I also get a weekly report of open todos, new todos, and other statistics.
This works for me, because it is easy to do brain dumps of this or that, while also making it harder for me to drop a particularly important ball, or lose track of it.
[Inbox][Queue][This Week][Today][Done][Done Apr 2nd]
Text files version controlled in git:
/notes/
/notes/project1/todo.txt
/notes/project2/todo.txt
/notes/project3/todo.txt
I use it mainly to track ALL of the things that is going on at work.
Highlights: * Markdown to visual in real-time * Create pages and tags link between them * ! Back links, where a page or tag is being referenced * Past images * Drag drop file * Save storage is in folders files * Python plug-ins
It looks simple at first, but is actually very powerful.
Todos with timeframes and deadlines get done. So I peruse the todo list and set their timeframes. I use Google Calendar to schedule them.
Which is plain text, and vim knows how to display headings and such. I never render it, .rst is just for syntax highlighting in vim. My current file is 2742 lines, and goes back to Sept. 2014.
I have the following shell script:
dt="$1" || "today"
date --date="$dt" +"%Y-%m-%d %a"
echo "--------------"
echo "- "
echo
:r!newday
:r!newday tomorrow
2016-04-03 Sun
--------------
- Commented on HN.
- > Make another comment on HN.
A new entry goes at the top. I have a few undated long-ish term entries at the very top.
That's for my work life. For my personal life I just sit on the couch and wait for emails from my ex-wife.
Personally I tend to use Google Spreadsheet, it allows for collaboration on small teams.
Sometimes I use a plaintext file in a git-repo (usually formated as a markdown or org-mode file).
Three lists: TODO, DOING, DONE
Items in DONE get archived the next day. Items in DOING get moved back to TODO if not completed. I organise them in their list by importance - i.e. ones at the top are most important.
I use labels pretty heavily too such as red for BLOCKED.
Before I was also using notepad++ with 3 text files TODO.txt NOTES.txt and INBOX.txt always open.
And AutoHotkey shortcuts to print date time and \n\n /---=== 2016-04-04_09-50_2016w14 =========----/ \n\n separators