I often find calendars too difficult to quickly read & maintain.<p>My digital TODO-lists often become out-of-date since I don't always have just phone/laptop available to jot down notes.<p>My paper notes have worked for short-term tasks but seem to be lacking when it comes to long-term tasks/events.<p>But perhaps I'm using these things incorrectly. What do HN users use?
Work environment and needs are very personal but maybe you can learn from my solution.<p>My frustration with most task manager is that they require me to manually maintain a parallel universe to the other tools I use to execute a project such emails, files, links, notes etc. This manual maintenance require a lot of discipline and typing. When I am busy I am less likely to update the task list and then few days after that my tasks are out-of-date and it takes even more energy to fix, which I am less likely todo.<p>As a result I decided to develop my own task manager for Gmail (<a href="https://www.centask.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.centask.com/</a>) a tool that integrates everything I need to complete a project, (emails, files, links, notes etc.) organize it in any way I want it, and schedule single and nested items to appear when I need them. Since it is Gmail centric I can email myself links and notes from any app.<p>The key for me was that I process my email inbox within Centask so I must use it, so it may get long when I am busy but never gets out-of-date.<p>When I have paper notes, I either type them into Centask as separate items or email myself an image of it and add the image as sub-task of the main task.<p>Hope that helps
You need a system, not a tool. Once you have a system, you can find the tool (or more likely, small set of tools) that help you best implement it.<p>My system is loosely based on Getting Things Done (GTD). At different times over the last 15 years I’ve implemented it using pen and paper; dedicated apps; simple to do list apps; a word processor; etc.<p>Find a couple systems and try them out. Then adopt the principles of each that you find most useful.