If you have a file called todo.txt on your computer, you're in the right place | Hacker News Reader

If you have a file called todo.txt on your computer, you're in the right place

todotxt.com

88 pointsmorphics80 comments

I've started to feel that todo apps have one major problem: they don't do the work for you. And this is why we're so obsessed with todo apps - we don't really want to do the work, we just want to play around with how we prioritize and organize the work.

In most cases, if we just got a lot of stuff done, we'd have no need for an app, because the list of stuff to do would be rather short.

> In most cases, if we just got a lot of stuff done, we'd have no need for an app, because the list of stuff to do would be rather short.

I find quite the opposite: The more things I do, and the more productive I am, the more rapidly things get added to my todo list. It's when I'm less productive that my todo lists stay short.

It's an interesting phenomenon that (at least my) todo lists are effective sticks for the carrot in that the size of the todo list scales with productive output.

Great observation.

There's a famous quote along these lines: "If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it."

It depends strongly on the person. For some people, checking stuff off a list is a carrot, not a stick.

I think it's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinsons_law :

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

>I find quite the opposite: The more things I do, and the more productive I am, the more rapidly things get added to my todo list. It's when I'm less productive that my todo lists stay short.

this is also what I find.

Another interesting bit is that I seem to actually finish between 10% and 33% of the tasks I plan to have finished by a certain date. This percentage completed doesn't seem to vary much between the times when I get a whole lot done, and the times when I get very little done.

I mean, I think my 'level of irrational optimism' remains fairly constant. I believe myself to be between 3x and 10x better than I actually am, and while within that range my error band is pretty random, it rarely steps outside of that range, even though I have weeks where I easily accomplish 100x what I would accomplish in my worst working week.

(I'm only counting time when I'm actually attempting to be productive. It's not fair to compare my "productivity" while working to "productivity" during vacation unless you want to introduce some very difficult to quantify variables.)

For me, todo lists remove the mental burden of keeping track of what I need to do in my head, and allow me to easilly shelf a new task without significant interuption to my workflow on the current task. Becuase I am at a computer for almost all of my work, my todo app is just vim, but I don't see why I wouldn't get the same benifit from a proper 'app' if I was at a job without consant access to a computer.

Brilliant observation.

And of course, every second we twiddle with out todo application, is a second wasted, not spent doing the things on that list.

I cannot believe there is not a proper study somewhere showing that these applications waste more time than they save. Or perhaps the opposite!!!

I like to use todo lists also for a sense of achievement. When I cross something from my list I feel i got something done, even if it was trivial , it gives me positive energy to get more done. Also I agree that when I am most productive, my list grows instead of shrinking.

> no need for an app, because the list of stuff to do would be rather short.

For me, one of the keys of a successful todo list is to keep the list short to begin with. A long todo list is too daunting, but a short one is motivating. I write them down on paper instead of using software, which I think just adds a layer of overhead.

Totally.

I write down the three highest priority things, do them. Repeat.

todo app + fiverr integration?

I started using org-mode for text-based notes/todos recently, even though I wasn't an Emacs user.[1] Org-mode has its own website, and more well-documented features than most programs I use! ( http://orgmode.org/ , manual http://orgmode.org/manual/ )

[1] It's an Emacs mode. I'm using it happily without knowing much Emacs.

Agree, Org documentation is very good, and easy for newbies to start as well. Certain features like Org-agenda, export into multiple formats and its ease of note-taking are very good features

I hope more software comes out that use Dropbox for storage. I want an Instagram for Dropbox, a music locker with a player for Dropbox, a Skitch for Dropbox, an Xmarks bookmark sync for Dropbox.

One Password, Hackpad, O'Reilly Media, and now this todo.txt are all doing the right thing and may they be successful for a thousand years. There is no reason I should have to pay Evernote, Apple, Amazon or Google any cloud storage money when I already use Dropbox, and there's no reason why I should have to deal with ads on "free" services either.

I work on Platform at Dropbox and I agree :) We want great developers to build all of these things and I want to help them. Anyone out there please reach out!

I would like to yet see a todo list software that sits on the neck on the user to complete the task he himself has entered. I need an outliner with following abilities: Expected result with a deadline Actions to complete the expected result Next review date/time The software should pop up in the middle of anything to shout out the action after the review time has expired. That completes all the to do list software has to offer. One more thing - it has to be on Android.

Sounds a lot like Apple's Reminders App. I made a few AppleScripts. In the middle of work when I have an idea/task and don't want to interrupt my workflow is press command-spacebar. ( This invokes LanchBar ) press "r" for Reminders.app, press space to get to text entry mode, and enter in whatever the task is.

That is for a basic task, it will get tossed into the app. I can add things like "Go get the mail today @2:20PM", and it will enter in the correct time and date and remind me with a default reminder popup on screen.

In addition to the pop up on screen it is also listed in the Notification center, which is always a three finger swipe away on the trackpad.

You can even have it reminds you when you arrive or leave a location using geofences. ie: "Remind me to get oranges when I am near Safeway" and when I am near a Safeway it will remind me.

I use it for taking out the trash and bringing the cans back in. All this transfers to my phone as well, without any intervention on my part. So if I am out with a client, I don't want to be bothered by certain alerts. Reminders will know because I am nowhere near the trash cans.

Of course, there is the actual Reminders.app where you can get very granular, enter in large amounts of notes and additions, set it as a repeating item etc.

Entering can be done on your phone vie Siri entirely as well.

It may be a little overboard for some, but it is what I have been using lately, and has served me pretty well. A heck of a lot of these items used to be a battle of "should they go in my calendar, or should they go in a todo", now, only appointments go in my calendar, birthdays, things like that. Any action that is a one off, or even repeating but not really something that I would ever mark on a calendar or need to know abbot after I am done with the task, that goes through this new system.

The few apps I've granted access to my Dropbox always get (or take) full access to all my files, which is disconcerting. Is it possible for apps to be granted access to only the certain directories or limited areas of my Dropbox?

This is one of the reasons I stopped using Todo.txt like a year or so ago.

It needed access to EVERYthing. I understand the developers will not be accessing other files but I just can't let anyone access my personal photos, my school work, my statements, etc. There is a reason I have a password on my computer and letting a program access everything in the folder I love the most just isn't acceptable.

There has to be a way to grant access to a certain file and I will gladly start using these Dropbox apps.

> but I just can't let anyone access my personal photos, my school work, my statements, etc.

They shouldn't be on Dropbox in the first place. What you put on Dropbox is essentially public - be it for their admins or for law enforcement agencies who don't need a warrant to access your dropbox.

Look up BoxCryptor, or set up encfs on Dropbox yourself. You get all the advantages of Dropbox (everything is on every [non-IOS :(] machine always - with LAN sync), but you suddenly have secure area inside Dropbox.

It's possible but it seems to be a new thing. Some apps are starting to use only one directory (e.g. O'Reilly, Notebooks, etc).

So you're moving your eggs from someone else's basket to a different someone else's basket.

I don't understand your second paragraph, it just sounds like "I'm entitled" but I don't presume that's what you mean.

The point of it is that it would be best if I only have to pay one provider for cloud storage, not multiple, especially when I have so much storage available for me on Dropbox.

Entitled? No. Annoyed when yet another service wants to provide their own cloud storage for a monthly fee on top of something they could just use Dropbox with? Yes. That problem has been solved.

In addition with Dropbox I control the storage. There's no export needed. That data is mine, not yours and is accessible to me everywhere. So yes I want developers to use Dropbox, and charge for the add on, not the cloud storage.

Also, it would be fairly easy to switch to a different cloud provider with a similar interface, i.e. monitoring your filesystem.

Apps like 1Password sell an app, the online sync can be through whatever service you want, 1Password already got paid.

Evernote/LastPass/Xmarks make their money selling the service, why would they use DropBox instead and essentially put themselves out of business.

Also, didn't Dropbox just buy some music company? Expect music locker based antics soon.

There is no reason I should have to pay Evernote, Apple, Amazon or Google any cloud storage money...

I use Google tasks and I don't pay any money to Google. On Android I use a freeware 3rd party app (GTasks), works like a charm.

That data is then on Google and not your local hard drive as it would be with Dropbox.

I think Workflowy has an amazing approach to this problem (hierarchical, collapsable tree) and I simply wish they added date functionality.

Right now, I can't use it for TODO, and use it only for brainstorming. For TODO, I now use getflow.com

Workflowy is amazing, and with a couple of small additions (like being able to copy and paste properly) it would be just about perfect.

I just made the jump from todo.txt to Workflowy and paid for pro service within a week. Project hierarchies really seal the deal for me, while todo.txt has a flat layout, even if you organize items by project or context.

There is Checkvist. Not as pretty, but more functional.

I'd also love the ability to attach media and clips in workflowy as I use it for notes and research.

I like the idea of Workflowy, but it really needs offline support. I can't even realistically evaluate it without that. Last I heard they were working on it.

Yeah, we're working on it. Testing it on our phones now, seems to be working pretty well.

That, raw data access and I'm all for it!

Just used Workflowy. THANK YOU! This is what I've been looking for. I have lists on springpad, on Tasks on Android, on IMDB, on a text file, etc. This changes everything.

Wow, workflowy is excellent! Thanks for the tip!

Same general thrust of Taskpaper, which is another to-do list based on a standard text file format.

- http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/taskpaper

- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5B3mTuC2Xg

It's what I use for my todo list. This one seems a bit more geeky (cli friendly)

Surely this is geekier than Todo.txt: https://github.com/davidoc/taskpaper.vim

(I prefer it, in any case)

The idea behind todo.txt is pretty neat, but in its basic form it's missing a few features. Luckily it's easily extendable.

I hacked up (and I do mean hacked up) two python scripts that add two bits of functionality that are essential for me:

- Timed tasks: add a date to a task and when that date rolls around, the task gets assigned top priority.

- Repeating tasks: add a human readable marker to a task that indicates it needs to be repeated every X days and every X days a copy of that task is assigned top priority. Another copy of the task is set to pop up in the set X number of days.

For me, these make the rather simple todo.txt the perfect todo list / note keeping setup. Unfortunately the todo.txt Android app doesn't work with my extensions so I have no use for it (I just look through the txt file in the Dropbox app if I need to see it on the go).

I'm loving how the trend now seems to have apps using Dropbox to store my data. Hopefully the next step will be to use a standard self-hosting API (that does not seem to exist yet) for those who are happy to pay for software but want to keep our own data.

That would be fantastic! It doesn't seem unreasonable to create an open source project that adheres to the Dropbox API. Then it would just be a matter of getting clients to include a "file sync URL" field in the settings of their apps.

> will be to use a standard self-hosting API

What about rsync? It's an open protocol that can be used to synchronize data across multiple devices.

It doesn't do two-way sync. Nothing syncs as well as Dropbox does, right now. Maybe AeroFS is close to it, though.

I've been using git-annex[1] to handle this problem. It doesn't handle the synchronization instantaneously via a daemon, but that's trivial to add. Plus, it requires neither a centralized canonical repository nor complete synchronization of every file (only fetch the ones you need).

[1] http://git-annex.branchable.com/

That's very interesting, does it work well? There's a git-annex assistant, apparently, that works like Dropbox.

I haven't used the assistant, but yes, git-annex works well.

For example, my music collection is split across multiple hard drives in two different states - not by intention, of course; it's just what happens over the years. However, I can create a single folder on my laptop that organizes all of this music, even though it's far too large to fit on the laptop's hard drive. Even though the files exist on multiple hard drives, my laptop knows which ones have which files, so I know which hard drive I'd need to plug in to access a particular file.

Better yet, since this is a fully distributed setup, there's nothing magical about my laptop - I have a desktop that has another copy of the repository, and it too knows where all of the files are (even though it has a different subset of my music collection).

I can also back portions of the collection up without ever having my entire collection on a single drive. I can enforce redundancy - "make sure that three verifiable copies of this file exist on other drives before deleting it here". I can back up to Amazon S3 or Glacier. I can - well, do pretty much whatever you'd want to do on a non-distributed filesystem - except this is distributed.

Dropbox is a great idea - I'm happy that it exists, and I see its value for a lot of use cases, but at the end of the day, it's not really solving the problem of distributed data; it's just creating a centralized, canonical data store in the cloud that is capable of interacting with other data stores.

Dropbox is great, but at some point, it's nice to move on from SVN! :)

Keep in mind, I'm not trying to do any sort of version control on my files - it's strictly a way of managing a completely distributed filesystem. If you want versioning, git-annex apparently can do some of this too, but I can't speak to it.

Huh, that sounds very nice. I don't have use for it, as all my files sit on a NAS, but it sounds very useful in other cases.

Dropbox does not sync well. I always end up with tons of files like "Person As copy of file x at date y". It only works if you are "working" alone with a folder and if you only use one device at a time.

The problem is that this is the only way to handle sync safely unless you want to manually merge as in a SCM. This is why every attempt at syncing since the dawn of IT has always sucked.

That means that Dropbox syncs as well as it's possible for a program to sync, though, doesn't it?

Laughed when I saw this post. Since I had just been looking at my TODO file for next steps on a project.

I like being able to include a TODO file in a project, commit it to git and then sync across platforms/machines etc. Low tech, free task management.

Hard to get and update from your phone, though. That's where I usually want to get my todo list together.

you can commit code from your phone but not change the TODO list?

Well, my point was that I can't commit from my phone. At least I don't know how, but it may be easier than I think.

Well, the last time I tried todo.txt-touch (for android), synchronization didn't really work and I lost information after a few days of trial. Development also seems to have rather stalled. There are only very few commits (other than cosmetic changes) to the git repo while the app feels rather unfinished. So, I don't think, todo.txt changes much in its present form.

I just have a notebook on Evernote called bucket lists. I have notes like: Movies [movies I want to watch] Music [...] Books [...] Shopping list [things to buy online or in-store]

I think the system works well enough for me. After all, the best organizational system is the one that keeps YOU organized - not one that satisfies others.

I've just had a look at the CLI functionality. About a year ago I've been looking for something similar and couldn't find anything light enough which just let me add TODOs on the command line. I ended up writing my own in about a hundred lines of Python which implemented the most important functionality. It had no way to filter or anything (that's what grep is for though) but it worked well. By now I have abandoned todo-lists completely after realizing that merely organizing my work won't get the job done. The best way to deal with work is to actually get it done, rather than procrastinate by just thinking about it.

The #1 problem I have with most to-do list applications is that they don't support (or have bad support for) subtasks. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like this is a main feature of todo.txt either....

Google Tasks supports sub-tasks. I use "Tasks" on android for phone sync (weird that android has no native task app to sync with google tasks -- atleast I've not found one)

I've come to the conclusion this isn't actually a problem. If you don't think of your to do list as a tool for organizing projects but merely of a list of things you need to do, you don't actually need sub tasks.

But you do, of course, need to block some time every now and then to take a bird's eye view of where your projects stand.

This works for my, but YMMV of course.

Personally, I started using Steve Losh's t for my tasks recently, and I love it.

http://stevelosh.com/projects/t/

If I ever want/need to, I can always access/modify my tasks file via Dropbox on any machine or phone. But I don't. Fact is, if I'm ever actually doing work, I'm usually on my Chromebook and have access to the terminal. Moreover, that's when I'm actually completing tasks, or adding new ones.

It's honestly a great, simple, no-bullshit system. You should give it a shot.

I've been using Todo.txt for about 8 months now.

I don't think it's a question of what makes it better that another product but what makes it right for you.

I like the CLI properties of it and the ability to extend it with new features in any language you want.

Entry of new tasks and completion of done ones is really fast. The Android app isn't as beautiful as it could be but it does the job. My hard requirement was that my tool be available on Mac/Linux/Android. Having a Dropbox backed service made that a bit easier.

The software should pop up in the middle of anything to shout out the action after the review time has expired.

That completes all the to do list software has to offer.

The iPhone equivalent of Todo.txt for me is the Notes app. Ironically the reason Todo.txt behavior exists is because all the other Todo apps try to be Todo apps, including this one.

Sometimes I just want a blank sheet with no Todo magic. That is why I use Notepad and the Notes app.

Site is Text [and image and Video] heavy. Download link is down, and it should have much more prominence within the page. I would take down video and produce a minimal page, more in line with a minimal CLI todolist. Bit it looks nice, may really try it out.

I have a TODO.yaml. At my previous job I used to serve it over HTTP to the LAN for my co-workers to see. I don't think many of them used it but I was hoping that we could all do that and then I could have a structured view of what people were working on.

Todo lists are a great utility for people like me who are obsessed with exploring ideas and forget rudimentary tasks like paying bills

Nice. I'm wrapping a text-based todo/note taker now. I think there's still a lot of people who use these.

I have a todo.txt on my google drive.

How is it different from Org mode?

Well it's way less advanced and less standardized than org-mode but apparently it uses DropBox to automagically sync with your shiny smartphone/tablet.

Pretty sure there are solutions out there to add this functionality to org-mode that said ; )

  joey@j-comp:~$ locate todo.txt
  /usr/share/vim/vim73/doc/todo.txt

Does that count?

Mine's called ShitToDo.rtf

Site is down.

$ cat ~todo.txt

Things to do:

fill out this list

everything else

The problem was solved by Google Docs years ago. It already gives me access from any browser and all my devices via Drive. Just import your todo.txt as a Docs document and your done. Full change/revision log. Completely free form - zero imposition of a format or task flow beyond what you impose on yourself, which may be nothing more than dumping down your thoughts and reviewing them occasionally. IMO its the only viable solution and i wouldn't consider using anything else.

Agreed. Does todotxt.com handle the fact that I might have the document open on 3 or 4 computers and a tablet or 2 and a phone and handle the potential for conflicts etc...?

Site is a bit text heavy. How's it better than wunderlist?

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