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Ask HN: What do you use to track your todo's?

23 pointsby _fabioabout 9 years ago
Is there any way you were able to stick with for a long time and increase productivity?<p>The more detailed answer the better.

30 comments

ajfordabout 9 years ago
I use Git and a markdown file.<p>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).<p>The text editor is left to the reader&#x27;s preference :) I&#x27;m strongly preferential of Vim, and use a few different Markdown plugins to ease writing.<p>Occasionally, if needed I build a printable PDF using Pandoc. Usually I only do this when I need to bring it with me.<p>Of course this doesn&#x27;t bring any sort of notifications or reminders, so I supplement this with Google Calendar (and more recently Google Keep) when needed.
josefdlangeabout 9 years ago
I wrote a thing for this!<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;josefdlange&#x2F;doit" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;josefdlange&#x2F;doit</a><p>To be fair, I don&#x27;t use it anymore because I&#x27;m a disorganized wreck (but that&#x27;s just a personal problem!). Despite that, I think it&#x27;s a neat tool. It was inspired by Zach Holman&#x27;s &quot;Boom&quot; -- and its Python port, &quot;Bam&quot; (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&#x27;t updated it in almost two years but it serves its purpose when I choose to use it.<p>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&#x27;t really make sense for me anymore.<p>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 &#x2F; PyPI packaging goes. I&#x27;d love to revisit it and improve it if there are reasonable issues&#x2F;features worth fixing&#x2F;implementing!
jsliabout 9 years ago
Well, no one mentioned Bullet Journal: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bulletjournal.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bulletjournal.com&#x2F;</a><p>They&#x27;ve already done a good job explaining the system, so I won&#x27;t do it here.<p>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.<p>I think the most useful thing is the task migration. You must migrate unfinished tasks from today&#x27;s log to next day&#x27;s log, <i>manually</i>. During the migration, I sometimes cross out some random thoughts that I put as tasks.<p>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&#x27;t think that really works for a long run (at least not for me). I find that if I didn&#x27;t do the review (migration), I intended to get slow start the next day, and gradually the system would collapse. That&#x27;s how I failed todoist :(<p>Just my 2 cents.
jdlshoreabout 9 years ago
Index cards and a pencil. I organize the cards into columns that represent calendar weeks (Thur-Wed), and I keep the next six weeks&#x27; worth of columns at all times. There&#x27;s an additional column for &quot;future&quot; that holds everything with a date more than six weeks away.<p>Stuff that doesn&#x27;t have a date, but is a nifty idea to do in the future, gets put into a stack of future ideas. They&#x27;re categorized. At any given time, I&#x27;m working on just a few ideas. When an idea is finished, I can take a new idea from the &quot;future ideas&quot; pile. In practice, I often know what I want to work on next and I don&#x27;t look at the pile.<p>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&#x27;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.<p>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&#x27;s enough slack in my weekly budget that I can absorb these sorts of administrative tasks.<p>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 &quot;cover sheet&quot; for the bundle. I don&#x27;t need to do this, but it makes me feel a sense of progress.<p>Been doing this for years and it works very well for me. It breaks down when I travel as I&#x27;m (a) busy and distracted, and (b) don&#x27;t bring the cards with me, so I have trouble staying on top of my inbox.
meikabout 9 years ago
Google Keep as a write-only TODO. A sheet of paper with a pen with a few entries for my &quot;tasks-of-the-day&quot;, and I strike any &quot;done&quot; entry.<p>Didn&#x27;t find anything more efficient.
meesterdudeabout 9 years ago
I use my side project, MindAUX.<p>Creating Todos is pretty easy; i can create as many as I want at once via an email or entry in the search.<p>Categorizing them is the next trick: I get emails every other day for todos I created that aren&#x27;t classified yet.<p>After that, they get regularly reviewed and timestamped as reviewed so they don&#x27;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.<p>When I&#x27;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.<p>Anything with a due date gets noisy (pesters me via email) as the date approaches as well as if its overdue; until it&#x27;s removed or completed.<p>I could but haven&#x27;t needed to use contexts yet or time estimates; primarily it&#x27;s been a matter of making sure something is at least in the system and being tracked&#x2F;reviewed in a way that I can forget about because I know it remembers and will remind me through a variety of ways.<p>I also get a weekly report of open todos, new todos, and other statistics.<p>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.
ereckersabout 9 years ago
Trello board with lists setup like so:<p>[Inbox][Queue][This Week][Today][Done][Done Apr 2nd]<p>Text files version controlled in git:<p><pre><code> &#x2F;notes&#x2F; &#x2F;notes&#x2F;project1&#x2F;todo.txt &#x2F;notes&#x2F;project2&#x2F;todo.txt &#x2F;notes&#x2F;project3&#x2F;todo.txt </code></pre> Since I&#x27;m in terminal all day I quickly jot down todos in .txt files as I go. The real management of them is done in Trello.
nibsabout 9 years ago
I use a notebook and write a * followed by a one-line description of the task. If I create a task, I have to do it. When I finish it, I cross out the whole link. When I finish all the tasks on a page (I put notes in there too) I put a checkmark in the top lefthand corner of the page. I have a todo.txt for work stuff that contains all ongoing todo items.
cweagansabout 9 years ago
Taskpaper. There are vim, atom, emacs, and sublime text plugins to support the format, but I use the official Taskpaper app. I also have a handful of scripts that I use to help manage the file, including an any.do-like daily review in a terminal (i.e. find all the overdue stuff and for each one, prompt to either mark as complete or assign a new due date or delete it; same with @today and some others). I use a separate file for an inbox, and part of the daily review is moving each of the inbox tasks to an appropriate project list in my main tasks file. I use IFTTT and the DO Note app to append new tasks into my inbox file, and I have a couple other triggers set up (for instance, a Github project of mine will drop a task into my inbox when a PR is opened to go review the PR -- this is much less distracting than an email notification or similar).
dougdescombazabout 9 years ago
Pen and paper pad. Usually put exclamation points next to things I think are priorities. The next morning, I copy over things I didn&#x27;t get done the previous day. Eventually, if I keep copying them long enough, I stop because I come to term with the fact that they aren&#x27;t high enough priorities.
gaza3gabout 9 years ago
I&#x27;m using Workflowy. Tried it for a few hours and I was pretty sold on it. Got a whole year sub for it. Got buyer&#x27;s remorse shortly after. Gave it another shot and now I can&#x27;t live without it.<p>I use it mainly to track ALL of the things that is going on at work.
guilhasabout 9 years ago
Zim-wiki is very good for general note taking and simple todo. It&#x27;s worth to try.<p>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<p>It looks simple at first, but is actually very powerful.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;iPE9OIS.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;iPE9OIS.png</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;zim-wiki.org&#x2F;screenshots.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;zim-wiki.org&#x2F;screenshots.html</a> <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;zim-wiki.org" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;zim-wiki.org</a>
arvinsimabout 9 years ago
I run Spacemacs org-mode first. I use it to commit all the todos that I can think of to paper.<p>Todos with timeframes and deadlines get done. So I peruse the todo list and set their timeframes. I use Google Calendar to schedule them.
a3nabout 9 years ago
somefile.rst<p>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.<p>I have the following shell script:<p><pre><code> dt=&quot;$1&quot; || &quot;today&quot; date --date=&quot;$dt&quot; +&quot;%Y-%m-%d %a&quot; echo &quot;--------------&quot; echo &quot;- &quot; echo </code></pre> I call it from vim:<p><pre><code> :r!newday </code></pre> or:<p><pre><code> :r!newday tomorrow </code></pre> Which creates this, which I then fill in as I go:<p><pre><code> 2016-04-03 Sun -------------- - Commented on HN. - &gt; Make another comment on HN. </code></pre> A plain bullet records what I did. A bullet followed by &#x27;&gt;&#x27; means something I need to do today (or tomorrow). Most of the time when I complete a todo, I just remove the &#x27;&gt;&#x27;. If it&#x27;s still there at the end of the day I move it to the next day&#x27;s entry. In the manner of .rst, I sometimes have sub-bullets.<p>A new entry goes at the top. I have a few undated long-ish term entries at the very top.<p>That&#x27;s for my work life. For my personal life I just sit on the couch and wait for emails from my ex-wife.
gh02tabout 9 years ago
Taskwarrior, with my own task server to sync between multiple devices. Been using it for a couple years now.
Aij7eFaeabout 9 years ago
Vim with some todo plugins, Emacs orgmode, but there are also some lists which I need daily on mobile, for that purpose I use Wunderlist with abbreviated descriptions ( Yea I know I&#x27;m paranoid, but hey it&#x27;s in the cloud and Microsoft owns it )
exolymphabout 9 years ago
I use Apple&#x27;s Notes app. It doesn&#x27;t really need to be more complicated than that.
theknarfabout 9 years ago
Professionally I use Jira, there&#x27;s really notting quite like it.<p>Personally I tend to use Google Spreadsheet, it allows for collaboration on small teams.<p>Sometimes I use a plaintext file in a git-repo (usually formated as a markdown or org-mode file).
patrickgordonabout 9 years ago
I use Trello.<p>Three lists: TODO, DOING, DONE<p>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.<p>I use labels pretty heavily too such as red for BLOCKED.
tmalyabout 9 years ago
I use Google Keep app for short lists. For more involved projects, I use Trello. When neither of these are available, I use a simple text based file with markdown.
rman4040about 9 years ago
I use operating system sticky notes.
kiloreuxabout 9 years ago
Habitica is really fun, it makes accomplishing tasks as a fun and entertaining way by gaming it more.
ljkabout 9 years ago
after trying many apps and tools like trello, todo lists, a simple .txt file. I found that the most useful thing for me is just a pen and a small notebook and write the things down and cross them out when it&#x27;s done
peternickyabout 9 years ago
Paper and pencil&#x2F;pen.
acairdabout 9 years ago
emacs org-mode, sections with the date and [&#x2F;] and subsections with the TODO tag, moving things forward as needed; sort of a cheater&#x27;s GTD.
thakobyanabout 9 years ago
I use a simple .txt file always open in Sublime!
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Davidbrczabout 9 years ago
Emacs org-mode
albashaabout 9 years ago
WorkFlowy
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IgorPartolaabout 9 years ago
TODO.yaml
Kinnardabout 9 years ago
Pomotodo