WeekToDo – Free Minimalist Weekly Planner App | Hacker News Reader

WeekToDo – Free Minimalist Weekly Planner App

weektodo.me

234 pointsevo_980 comments

I downloaded it and tried it and I'm not super interested in it. I've tried a number of different task/to do tools over time. What's working for me now is the following Google Doc that works as follows. If today is 4/10/22:

4/10/22

>Write Article

>Go Shopping

* Milk

* Cereal

>Pay Plumber

If I only paid the plumber that day and bought cereal, on the next day you'd have:

4/10/22

>Pay Plumber

>Go Shopping

* Cereal

4/11/22

>Write Article

>Go Shopping

* Milk

That's basically the whole thing. Of course there's a standard calendar app too. After a few months it gets long and you roll over into a new doc. I can always scroll to the bottom and I have a nice diary of things I accomplished. I don't know how you could improve the implementation over a google doc. The good thing about a Google Doc is if I get stuck on some todo I can brainstorm right in the doc. That's the hardest part with a to do system. Some To Dos stay on there for a while and need a lot of context, creativity and brainstorming to get done.

Done the same for over 10 years with a local "@Worklog.md" file on a light text editor (to get syntax highlighting). Can be synced with Dropbox or Obsidian too.

Recently switched to do the same on Notion, moving items in a "Worklogs" database at the end of each month (with one entry per month) to keep the Worklog size manageable. If a task gets too long I can just create a sub-page for it (or a toggle), put all the context information there, and just add a link to the TODO item.

Mark Forster has a great version of this, lovingly called "the final version": https://archive.ph/Gts2v

For me, adding items/tasks to time bound columns/lists does not work for me. Sometimes I have inspiration to clear my list and sometimes I do not.

I made https://easylists.app to solve my own problem. I want to make lists fast and essentially to treat them as throw away (just like pen and paper). Sometimes I have a "today" list. Sometimes I have a "Top 3" list. I change it up all the time.

Not exactly the same but similarly I made https://quicktodos.com for my wife and I to quickly share lists with real-time updating for things like going to the store or a daily task list.

Funny how so many of these exist with slightly different takes on the problem!

Just some random feedback - I like the look and feel, but if I type quick enough, the order of my keystrokes doesn't match the order of operations.

For example, if I focus an empty text field to start entering list items, and I type this quickly: "1 (Enter) 2 (Enter) 3 (Enter)" I get something like "1" as the first item, "23" as the second item, and two empty items below, as if I had typed "1 (Enter) 2 3 (Enter) (Enter)".

Nice work. This isn't your fault, but it's inspiring a tangent.

It's so strange, but I hate being so spoiled for choice.

The main thing I miss about software from 20 years ago is that there were rarely more than two or three answers to the "which software should I use?" question. By today's standards, the tools we had were subpar. But it was easier to tell the best of the "worst" from the worst of the best.

I recall it being more of an issue with file size, stability, and RAM usage. The question of "does this have everything I need?" didn't often occur to us, because that seemed like a ludicrous proposition in a "hey, this thing is less than a meg to download!" environment.

These days, without a substantial amount of (sometimes dubious at best) preliminary research, you don't get to find out if something meets your needs until you have invested enough time to feel somewhat trapped in the new ecosystem.

Ultimately, I'm not saying things used to be better. The tools we have now are miraculous. It's just for those of us who got to experience web search before Google and web search after Google...we will always be searching for that next hit of finding a tool that is so dramatically and obviously better than its predecessors.

While I agree part of that was being that there were fewer options, there's also just more complexity these days.

I consider things like:

* Does this synchronize to other devices?

* Does this support the device(s)/OS(es) I want to use it on?

* Does this integrate to other applications I use?

* Is this likely to contain malware, or could it in the future?

* Does it require me running my own infrastructure, or can I pay someone else?

* Am I comfortable with the extent I'll be locked into this ecosystem, if any?

* Is it a worthwhile cost to me? Is the price likely to radically change in the future (after I'm locked in)?

* If free, why? (Am I the product? Are there or will there be ads?)

* If open source, is it likely to stay that way? Is there a community around it? Am I capable of maintaining this if I need to?

* What new security threats does this open me up to?

Granted, I don't always care about all of these (sometimes depending on answers to others), but it's a way bigger list than I'd have had 20 years ago.

Thank you, its a great check list

Just installed it to play around. Really nice to have a purely offline app in this space.

What did surprise me is the unskippable 'splash screen' with the sponsor message before the app is usable (several seconds), this would really annoy me if there's no way to get rid of it.

I really like the app. To be honest the sponsor message didn't bother me that much, but it's real that it's there for several seconds. Is it intentional or is it loading the app?

I've never seen an app take that long to launch on my machine before, so I think this is to highlight the sponsor.

What application bundler is this using? Assuming electron, but the github repo only contains assets and translation so it's hard to tell.

I was looking at the repository and in the tags it says electron.

yikes. so there's no reason to download it lol, we get the same experience as running it in-browser

Exactly what I wanted to know. There's no way I want to run another heavy weight Electron app.

same here!

I like the concept. I plan my week in a similar manner with Notion: just add headlines for every week day.

My issue is that the tasks often overflow and I rarely clean them up consistently.

How does this app solve the problem of overwhelm?

You should try Akiflow.com! there's an awesome notion integration that makes it really efficient to plan notion pages

It's a minimalist planner app. Why would it solve (self-inflicted) problems for you?

well planner apps aren't designed to MAKE problems now are they?

I hate to be that guy, but this looks exactly like https://teuxdeux.com/, a service made by Tina Roth Eisenberg (https://www.swiss-miss.com/) which has been around for a long long time.

More than one product can exist in a space (and todo lists are a dime a dozen) and maybe this was a completely original idea and GMTA, but wow it sure looks like a note for note copy

And both look exactly like the A4 tear-out paper planners my partner has used for years. They're both digital iterations of a well trodden path

It's a very simple weekly planer. There is going to be columns with weekdays and in those list items. There are a lot more than these two apps in this space. I personally enjoy https://tweek.so/

The privacy and locally hosted angle seems like plenty of differentiation.

Other than that I'd have to squint very, very hard to make it look "exactly" like TeuxDeux (which I find a lot less appealing, visually)

Another user of tweek here, loving the competition in the space though! The fact this can run offline without an account is great.

Yes. TeuxDeux.

I knew this app looks exactly like something else I've seen before, but I couldn't recall the name.

However, I don't consider this to be a copy of TeuxDeux because there's nothing particularly revolutionary in either app's design — they're both just digital versions of paper planners.

As far as todo apps go, I've tried them all. The problem I have with most of them is that they don't separate deadline with do-time. I want to plan a task such that deadline might be on Friday, but I intend to actually do the thing on Tuesday. Apps don't allow me to record that information.

When I first heard about TeuxDeux about an year ago I realized that the old fashioned and obvious weekly planner strategy could work. Since TeuxDeux wasn't free (I could be wrong because I now see a free version in their website), I just used a Google Doc to write down what I intended to do every day of the week.

And it worked reasonably well.

I'm happy to see WeekToDo come out. And it's open source!

IIRC Julius Caesar's or the Egyptian's take on the calendar have been around longer than Swissmiss' app.

I swear, teuxdeux is the most laconic and functional planner I've ever tried and it looks stunning. I'm so happy I found this comment, thanks @jeffkeen

A benefit of teuxdeux is that they charge $2 a month with the intention of putting the funds to maintaining the site and not having to sell the company.

$3/month. Maybe it changed recently?

Edit: we're kind of both right. $3/month, or $24/year.

Yeah, I was quoting the annual fee. After having a few apps acquired and disappeared (e.g., wunderlist acquired by ms), I liked their strategy of charging just enough to stay independent.

I came here to say the same thing!

Frankly it’s a great concept and I might use it myself.

Generally like how simple the app is, but as an Aussie, I find starting the week on a Sunday off-putting.

When I open the web version of the calendar picker, it's showing Monday as the irst day of the week?

Btw, I didn't realize vast majority of the world outside Americas have week starting on Monday.

I've switched my calendar to start on Monday (as a USAian) because I prefer to not have my weekends split across two different rows. This became especially important as my kid's activities would fill our weekend and needing to ensure nothing else of importance was missed in planning out our upcoming week(s).

Can anyone recommend a meal planning system?

I would like to have a database of recipes that I like, with ingredients listed so I can plan weekly food shopping.

Grocy https://grocy.info/ does exactly this - it's a tracking system for groceries/grocery shopping/recipes and a few other things.

You enter what you have bought/eaten and it keeps track of what you have and when it will expire. You can also automatically build a shopping list to maintain a minimum set of essentials.

An additional part of it is the Recipes module, where you can enter recipes and what ingredients are needed, then see which recipes you already have the ingredients for and add any missing ingredients to your shopping list..

You might be interested in something like this that was posted a short while ago?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30623852

Anyone seen any open source versions with sync and a mobile app? I want one I can contribute to or hack to my own liking, but I need those basics.

I spend ~85% of my time inside Chrome such that the only possible tool that could work for me is a Chrome extension. I currently use https://prodtodolist.com/ for general reminders but it's too barebones and something like this implemented as a ~minimalist~ Chrome extension could be very handy.

Honestly, my realization that I spend so much of my time inside Chrome is the exact reason I have started looking for native apps instead of SaaS.

Chrome has become the problem for me more than anything, because as much they want to be the OS of the web - they're pretty terrible at it.

I agree with you and same here; I've moved my entire workflow to the browser. From Figma to my entire dev environment, it's all in the browser and Google handles everything else from accounts to preferences.

While that enables me to do most of my work on a low-performance tablet, it introduces a bigger (chrome) issue; latency. I've noticed that most input websites (Notion, Google Docs, etc.) have an input latency whereas native apps don't.

Notion honestly has the worst input latency, even on their Android app.

(Not only latency, but poor cursor management as well. I'll frequently hit return, see my blinking cursor on the line below, start typing, and I'll be typing in the previous line.)

Text-entry is possibly the least enjoyable part of Notion.

You're spot on.

I've caught myself writing text in my editor and then copying it into Notion. Makes me wonder why I'm still using Notion if its latency _that_ bad.

What editors do you use that have lower latency? I've found that Emacs is surprisingly low latency.

Curious how you define terrible in this case. Doesn't the fact that you spent so much time in the browser that you had to look for alternatives mean that it was in fact too good?

I'll quickly plug my current to do solution: a pinned Google Keep note with a daily reminder that's pushed to my devices at 7am.

I already use Keep for my grocery list and other things, so this way I don't need Yet Another App. It's on all my devices, it's got lists and checkboxes and reminders, and the UI is simple and responsive (which tbh wasn't always true, Keep speed and stability sucked for a long time but it's rock solid now).

Interested to hear how this app might compare to my baseline solution.

Also, what's this business about scheduling priorities being better than prioritizing your schedule? Personally I mostly just do things in order of priority and the timing is flexible. I'm not sure I would benefit from telling myself to do X at Y time.

I like your solution.

About the last thing, I read something a time ago about every time you have an input you should see if this is important and if it's urgent. Is it's important and urgent you should do it, if it's important but not urgent you'd should scheduled. If it's not important you can delegate that, and if it's not important or urgent you should delete that. I thing the idea it's focus in what is important and don't fill the calendar whit a lot of tasks

Tangential ask HN: what is a good Linux desktop to do app that supports monthly recurring tasks (I have some accounting stuff that I need to remember to do every month). I’ll use for daily adhoc tasks too, but any app (or pencil and paper) can handle them.

I keep going back to the todoist app. It works OK but there is something about it it doesn’t click with me. Maybe there’s a little too much white space in the design and it looks like a webpage instead of an app that fits into the desktop.

I also really like elementary planner, but its sync feature doesn’t work perfectly with Todoist … which is more or less required for me because I need my todo list on my Phone. It is going through a major revision right now so I’m hopeful that it gets even better.

Both support recurring monthly reminders. If I were you, I would try elementary’s planner first. It was designed for elementary distro desktop, but it works just fine in gnome

its the empty space and how when you click on a task to edit it makes a modal pop out. I would prefer a slide in on the right side how wunderlist does it. I am currently trying out remember the milk, it just lacks some things todoist does well.

Isn't that what calendars are for? Most of the time they are pre-installed on all OSes and they handle recurring schedules and notifications. On Linux I use Thunderbird for email with the Thunderbird Lightning Calendar [1]. I sync phone and desktop using CalDAV.

[1] https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/calendar/

In my mind I put those reminders in the group of “things to do”. Just like I need to do whatever task of the day, I need to do that accounting tasks if the happens to be the first week of the month. So I like them to be in the same place.

Btw, I decided for Todoist. The recurring reminder is on the premium plan, but I am using a good enough process: I set the recurring tasks to have a deadline of, e.g. the 5th of next month. Then, when I get there, I will set the deadline for the next month and so on. And I grouped these tasks in a group named “Recurring”.

I have exactly this issue too. And I still procrastinate and don’t do them and sometimes get fines. I need something that prevents me using my phone or computer until it is done. Which probably means I’d just pretend it is and fake tick it off.

No mobile version is a bummer :( I almost always want to add events on the go.

This is close to something I'd use/need. I built something similar for my wife and I to do weekly schedules for our kids. It has chores, school work, daily routine stuff, etc. It currently uses Trello and some custom API code. To replace that, I'd need:

* Easily multi-calendar. My wife or I go in, enter things for each of the kids' schedules. So ideally a drop-down or something with each of the calendars.

* Printable with the entire week on a single landscape page neatly.

I've thought about building out my own not using Trello, and still might.

Just an observation. The initial prompt (theme, settings) has Previous & Next buttons, but on last prompt titled All Ready, the buttons are Next, ready. It should be Previous Ready.

I disabled update check but it still wants to connect to the internet after it has been open for a while. Why does it want to do that?

For those who are looking for the code: https://github.com/Zuntek/WeekToDoWeb

If you enter in the web version and open the dev console you can see that it's trying to pull the sponsors and contributors.

The presence of (a billion) apps like this make me feel like in another timeline they figured out some kind of simple, mostly text, very limited programming language/markup that's somewhere between HTML and (Turing Complete) Javascript, maybe Hypercard-esque?

I'd love there to be an AppImage, Flatpak and / or an AUR version for Arch users...

can't you install it from Snap on Arch?

The intersection of arch users and users willing to use snap is nonexistent

Nice - I did something similar with The Daily Mini-Journal (focusing on the daily tasks): https://www.thedailyminijournal.xyz/

This is actually incredible! I think we should push for web apps more and more, it'll help for convergence between platforms. Do you have a timeline for when this will look good on mobile phones?

Nice!

I made something similar (although web based) but much simpler years ago to suit my planning, which is still in use by many others.

Weekis: https://weekis.com

How is it different then a calendar with tasks/reminders support?

I’m using the calendar in nextcloud and syncing it with caldav on IOS and it works pretty smooth. Can also schedule the reminders. :/

This is a very good app. Weekly-based todo list is something that I replicated myself in Joplin for ages. Now it's a lot better and with automations! Thanks for keeping it up!

Trying this out in a sandbox now and I really like it. I think I'll give this a go for a while. I wish it had a few more options though like being able to send it to the tray.

I love the minimalist UI and the fact that I can set up tasks for specific dates in the future. Nice work.

What is the stack?

I read in github repo it's Vue and electron.

I couldn’t find the link of the repo in the site. Thanks for checking.

What ever happened to pencil and paper?

I'm currently using a notebook, but I find it very limiting in the amount of information you can write down. It becomes rather difficult to maintain structure or add text later on. Pen and paper works best for quick, abstract notes in my experience.

I still use pen and paper but I find that they’re best used as a scratchpad where the stuff you put in there eventually find their way in a TODO app where you can re-organize them or add more details as they are uncovered.

With respect, why is the /privacy/ aspect so important in a planner app that you've chosen to market it as an important feature? I actually want my planner to be public! Makes the appointments/meeting plans process simpler.

Also, while I'm not a big fan of integrating every other thing into gmail, I actually rather like that recent updates in gmail which have calendar/planner on the side, I think they've got the right idea. Something like a planner/calendar I _want_ to be ubiquitous and visible all the time in whatever UI I'm in.

This is a really good point. To be honest in my case I don't like when I write something in Google calendar and after that I have 20 ads about that. Aside from that, being able to have my calendar public is very useful.

It's about the choice rather than forcing to be locked into someone having the ability to know literally what you are going to do next.

Great point

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