Ask HN: How do you keep track of your to-dos? longer-term projects? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you keep track of your to-dos? longer-term projects?

33 pointsuger36 comments

In 2022, what tools are you using to keep track of your to-dos?

What tools are you using to keep track of progress on longer-term projects?

I have always struggled with maintaining lists and usually revert back to plain text documents with running bullets — however, that doesn't scale well and I end up with text files lacking any order. I've since been using Obsidian[0] and, while my process is similar, I am able to create structure around the files and noticed significant improvement.

Since starting a new job earlier this month, I simply maintained a notebook with tasks. Once those are complete, I cross them out and add them to my Goals / Brag sheet that I keep for personal reference. I'm now wondering why I didn't do this all along.

[0] https://obsidian.md/

I also use Obsidian, with a slightly different workflow. I create 3 different types of lists: week lists, sprint lists and ticket lists.

- Week lists are divided into days, with one sub-heading for each day, and a sub-sub-heading for a daily todo list and the day's events/meetings. Each one lets me take notes and prepare info for the day, with a general to-do list at the top of each day that organizes my general goals. It really helps structure everything for me in a meaningful way.

- Sprint lists are fairly specific to agile work, but I use them to set goals for each sprint and keep a "birds-eye view" of my work, so to speak.

- Ticket lists are specific to Jira tickets, and they're what I link to in the aforementioned two lists. I use these to store information that is specifically relevant to a task at hand. If the knowledge can be generalized, I'll usually try to make a page for it elsewhere in my notes and link to that instead.

It's a bit of a mess, but it really helps organize things for me. Being able to anticipate, react and record like that is an essential tool to not driving myself crazy in the workplace.

Same here with the text files. They end up going forgotten about until months laters. I even tried obsidian. So for me, I am working on building a TUI application in Rust to do task management. I'll dog food my own code, helps me with learning more Rust, and since I built it, maybe I will actually use it.

I tried everything, starting with Remember the Milk (!) almost two decades ago, to Evernote, Asana, Todoist, Basecamp, Trello, text files on a shared folder, etc. I never was able to stick with any of the solutions for longer than a few months. Each one had something annoying that would distract me from the core goal of getting the work done.

I decided to go back to basics, and went to pen and paper. Got a simple (but gorgeous) kit from Ugmonk [1], and I now use it to prioritize my day/week. Ugmonk follows the classic GTD style of Today / Next / Someday, which helps keep you focused on what is immediate / medium term / long term.

I still use Trello for brainstorming, and to store things online that I'm working on, as well as archive for comments/screenshots/links, things I need to follow-up on, etc.

The combination of Trello for online storage, and a paper-based prio list that is right in front of me seems the perfect balance. I look at Trello a couple of times per week, and write my priorities for the day/week on a Ugmonk card every night.

In parallel I'm testing Obsidian as a long term knowledge library. The client app is way better than it was last year, but I still need to create the habit of taking notes everyday.

[1] https://ugmonk.com/pages/analog

I write things down on a notebook. I received loads of notebooks from vendors with their logo on them. When I complete something I put a line through it. If something is important I write an asterisk next to it.

Currently, using Craft[0] as the central repository for my projects. It's where I write specifications, diaries, meeting notes,... Once I've outlined a plan for the project, I set up a new project in Things[1], to list all the action items, setting dates and reminders if I need to.

[0]: https://www.craft.do

[1]: https://culturedcode.com/things/

I roughly follow Getting Things Done (GTD) and built a Flutter desktop app for managing the various lists in GTD (I hate flicking between note files).

You can see it on this page. Note that I haven't decided if I'll launch the app yet, so there's not even a domain name. https://qzj2yr24qf8m.umso.co/

GTD also recommends you keep a projects list to remind you of all the open projects you have.

A list. In my head most of the time. A wiseman once told me that if it's important you'll remember and if you don't, it will come back to you in one form or another. I try with software, but nothing has ever really worked. I work in a small team and we're trying Google Spaces now as it has tasks built in, but it needs just a little more ..

Text file or org mode. For something really big I guess I'd consider an issue tracker, but I've never had to do that for any personal project. I've been at companies obsessed with using technology for this and it's always been a waste of time, especially when they churn to a new system without fully migrating and deleting the old system. Even if they make the old system archived/read-only, you end up having to look into 5 different systems to see what you are working on. I always tell myself that if I'm ever roped into a tech lead slot, I'm going to leave the choice of issue tracker up to the other devs, but will insist that there be only one system and that all the previous ones must be merged into it.

Really, IME, the technology doesn't really matter. I've never seen a tracker that scales really well, and unless very large scale is required, afaict they are all about equal.

Started using LibreOffice spreadsheets to outline and make notes. Simple formatting is made easier with a grid. Writing full paragraphs is possible but discouraged. It's easy enough to make a list, reorganize it and export or feed it into code. It's even possible to add multimedia to the document.

I do not rely on writing todos to accomplish todos, for the accomplishment, I focus on "set and setting", using self-talk, making a comfortable workspace etc.

For a lot of things this seems to be a sweet spot.

On occasion I will use a mind mapping tool. This is really another way of brainstorming a topic, and so it doesn't "put things in their place" so much as it does introduce new relationships and address coherency of thought process. The hierarchy of mind mapping is often too much structure and something more like a word or phrase cloud is called for - which grids are good at emulating.

I keep Excel spreadsheets with simple todo lists for things I need to do… for example, taxes, renewing a drivers license, purchases that are easy to forget, books I want to read, etc.

It’s sort of todo lists and one line notes, all saved into one folder.

I’ve found for myself that I just need something very simple and easy to use. There are programs out there that let you use mark down, or they sync your todo lists or your notes. All this extra fancy stuff just adds complexity and for me, distracts me from the actual stuff I need to get done.

Of course, this isn’t a silver bullet for everyone.

For my long term side project I just dump ideas into a barely organised backlog.md [^1]. After finishing a feature or taking a few months away, I normally dive back in by browsing this and choosing the next milestone.

It's worked well for a couple of years, and helps me keep the long term goals in mind.

[^1] https://github.com/DomWilliams0/name-needed/blob/develop/.pl...

OneNote page with a few freeform columns and rows for and using ctrl-1 to create checkboxes. If needed can make a table easily with tab. Various task programs didn't work well for me.

I really only reference it at the start of my day or week. If something really needs to break out on it own subpage.

For organizational todos for projects, contracts, booking stuff for trips etc.. pasting a screen clipping freeform or inline into OneNote or dragging in a docx/pdf is a killer feature nothing self hosted seems to have.

I’ve used a bunch of different tools (even built my own), but have settled in on notion due to its flexibility.

What I’ve finally come to understand is that the tool doesn’t matter all that much. More important is making a habit of using it.

I’ve recently read it takes on average 66 days to form a habit (much longer than the traditional 21 days I had always heard). If you can stick to your daily productivity tactics until it forms a habit, you’ll be in a good place.

Obsidian with the Todo plugin and tags.

I am also a part of the cult slowly building a personal database in obsidian to use as postmortal-simulation training fodder later.

Personal and work ToDo's - Todoist (I like how I can add tags to things, e.g. #CHAT, #RESEARCH, #BUY, etc).

Larger work projects - Separate Todoist folder with a ToDo for each item (e.g. "Increase modal by X pixels")

Jira tickets - Obsidian.md (I create a page for an in-progress ticket and add personal notes, Q's to ask about (I include the answers), etc.)

Simple things - White board on my wall

At work I use a personal kanban task organizer to prioritize my tasks. The tasks for today are also visible in Outlook. It is a desktop app that I wrote for my needs.

https://gitlab.com/moasda/task-organizer

At the moment, I use Todoist as a front end and have a bunch of automations that run via the API.

Could you elaborate on this?

Seconded. Could you elaborate on the automations?

TeX, Calendar file, scratch wiki

TeX for everything; it's basically `duck-talking` with snippets of code. One TeX doc per project.

Calendar file with reminders to do stuff in the future, ie. delegate to your future self.

Todos in a scratch wiki page, so notes can be scribbled from any device.

The only thing I've found that is as simple or as complex as you want it, and that I have stuck with for over 10 years is Workflowy

https://workflowy.com/

Generally I don’t keep todo lists. If something is really important I’ll remember it anyways. If not, it doesn’t matter if I forget to do it.

For software projects I use an issue tracker of course.

I have projects running from 2015 and I ended up using Trello.

I tried with a paper notebook but it's harder to prioritize and organize things on paper.

Now I only use paper to resolve problems

I had loads of Trello boards but since they limited the free version, I found Wekan which you import Trello boards into, and self host.

With a million open, unsaved Notepad instances.

Lately I've been using Workflowy however and it's actually managed to minimize my Notepad-spam.

emacs. single org mode file in a github repository. Everything that needs to be done goes in todo list and moves to inprogress->done/postponed. All the notes related to a particular task go in the todo heading of task. It is very handy i can search same file with ripgrep and able to find references/how i deployed something/keys etc.

Not having any todos works best for me. Just wake up as early as possible and do as much as possible and that is it.

Joplin on my phone and linux pc's and a free nextcloud hoster for synching it with e2e encryption.

Todoist for personal, shared Todoist with one other person, GitHub Project for technical team stuff.

Todos: pad kept near dominant hand. Blue pen to add, Red pen to cross out.

Long Term: Markerboard in office

Sticky notes app on my Mac. Easy and stays in my face until I’m done.

A .txt file with a "char-checkable" list

taskwarrior + taskwarrior-tui

Notion

trello

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