Google essentially implemented FollowUpThen and Taskwarrior in Inbox via snoozing and reminders. I can honestly say Inbox has significantly changed my life. I have to use email every day already, so overlaying task management has been a huge boon. I have a recurring reminder every Sunday night to take out the trash. I set up reminders to go off in 1 year (like when I sign up for something and don't want it to auto renew). I basically setup a reminder for everything I have to do. And since I have Inbox open all day long anyway, I never forget anything anymore.
I was searching the comments for someone saying this. Snooze / archive to achieve inbox zero is life changing. I have one simple rule. If I can't do something right now, I snooze it until I think I will be able to deal with it.
The knowledge that it will not be forgotten is very cathartic and my inbox doesn't fill with emails I intend to deal with but haven't yet.
I think what people forget is that time is often a better folder system than folders, as it doesn't place the responsibility to check again on the user.
I've tried to evangelize and I can't understand why it hasn't resonated as much with others.
While technically awesome I've tried using it several times but always end up dropping it. I find it difficult to maintain and over time it's left to rot until I finally give up on it.
For me I don't actually need the complexity. A simple text based todo list would basically do the same job. The main issue is actually maintaining it.
It's basically a gamified todo list which is perfect for me.
It's also awesome with helping establish new habits. The incentive of not wanting to break a streak is surprisingly strong. Nothing else has been remotely as successful.
I've had good luck with "todo list" and the "X effect" thing (basically just streaks - X out a calendar day for each time you do a daily task". Everything else, without exception, has been enough work to feel like a secondary task which I then quit doing. This might be a tool light enough to digitize those benefits without being a burden.
I used habitica for about a year and loved it. However, at some point my character was maxed-out and there was no incentive to continue (quest-events were a bit lame). I tried starting from scratch with a new character and quickly got bored. Maybe I should try it again, if they have improved it.
Yup. I'm great at putting items on RememberTheMilk or Outlook or Google Calendar or Google Tasks or iCloud Notes or a whiteboard, but REALLY BAD at using the same system consistently, let alone actually checking the list ("hey, I'm bored, what should I do now?")
I hate this app. It's extremely unresponsive, doesn't know how to dismiss notifications properly, and is laggy on mobile. Some pages that are accessible from the web view don't work at all on the iOS version. And I'm 99% sure that the damage-calculation hits aren't being calculated properly.
Yes, I know it's open source. I still dislike these aforementioned aspects of it, though.
I tried it yesterday while looking for an app that would track "on a scale of 1-5 how well did I do X today". I settled on KeepTrack, but it doesn't have habitica's style.
Maybe habitica encourages taking the habit seriously without taking myself too seriously.
Re #1, my strategy is to make `task ready` my "home base" of sorts. `task ready` shows you only tasks that aren't blocked or scheduled for the future. In other words, tasks that are ready to be done ASAP.
My daily flow is to try and clear my plate, i.e. reach "Inbox Zero" with my `task ready` view. Every task in that view needs to either be completed or rescheduled for a time that I think I have a chance at completing it.
As for projects with tasks that block other tasks (e.g. write chapter 1 is "next," and it is the blocker for anything else, like writing chapter 2), you can tell Taskwarrior to hide them from your `task ready` view by using the `depends` property. For example, if "write chapter 1" is task 42, then I might add a task like `task add 'write chapter 2' depends:42`. Until I mark task 42 (writing chapter 1) as done, "write chapter 2" won't show up in my `task ready` view and I'm free not to think about it.
I use taskwarrior daily at work primarily for its dependencies and recurring tasks.
For example, when I pick up a case to work on, I'll immediately add it:
task add project:team.kanban case-1234 Add the frob
Then as I inspect and think about the parts that need to be done, I'll add a bunch more pieces as sub-projects:
task add project:team.kanban.case-1234 Query backend for the data
task add project:team.kanban.case-1234 Send ajax call/store in redux
task add project:team.kanban.case-1234 Add to UI
task add project:team.kanban.case-1234 Use the new widget for filters
task add project:team.kanban.case-1234 Make filters work
Then I go back and decide which pieces here I want to do before the others. If, in order, the above tasks were IDs 1-6, then:
So at this point, only tasks 2 and 5 are unblocked and can be started on. It externalizes the state of the case, so I don't really even have to think about what to do next (hence the name of the default report, "next") or how far done I am. A good way of thinking about how I choose this breakout is, what could I commit without breaking the build?
If you also use vimwiki, there's another plugin that works on top of it called taskwiki [0] that lets you use use a taskwarrior filter to show a set of tasks in the wiki, that auto-update. It even shows dependencies as indented todolist items (though the above example wouldn't work because tasks 2, 3, and 5 each have two tasks that depend on it; this and a few other things has me writing my own vim plugin for vimwiki that'll handle handle the above, plus a few other differences).
if there's one takeaway, it's that you have to find your own way of getting what's in your head into a place you can trust, and there's no objectively right place for that. Just keep looking until you're comfortable with one and stick to it.
> you have to find your own way of getting what's in your head into a place you can trust
That's definitely #1. I'm surprised I had to scroll so far down to find it. :)
For a long time I was looking for a system that would auto-prioritize tasks for me. I'd dump things in, and it would tell me what I had to do today, this week and this month. Long story short, it turned out to be a silly expectation.
So #2 rule should be, review your tasks periodically.
Basically, an 80/20 productivity system should be:
#1 write everything down
#2 review and cull your list every day
#3 do things off your list
Taskwarrior is very nice, but I found org-mode combined with the mobile client orgzly even nicer. Export to ical, sync to server and you have it in your watch or mobile calendar as well.
Task warrior is a hell of a tool - it's synced accross my devices and doesn't need proprietary software. I built a Taskwarrior app for pebble as well, so I can have the tasks that have a deadline in the timeline.
Years ago I used Remember the Milk and then hopped between multiple "other" solutions over the years. Decided to give RTM another look last month and was really impressed.
In hindsight I should have never left it.
IMO Dropbox needs to purchase them to integrate with their growing offering.
I’ve used taskwarrior for 3-4 years exclusively, and can state that if you have a complaint about it, it’s highly likely that you haven’t considered the problem scope as deeply as its devs did.
But then I stopped being a lone wolf dev and it simply doesn’t work for teams. Yet.
I wonder why no one has mentioned using Google-Calendar as a task-management tool. I too use (starred) emails to remind myself of tasks that I have pending. But for anything that's time specific, I just put it on my google-calendar (or any online calendar really).
Eg: Mow my lawn on Sunday? Ok, I'll create an all-day event on Sunday to mow-my-lawn. And once I'm done, all I have to do is delete it. I can then periodically check my calendar from my phone/laptop/tablet, and see everything I have to do that day/week. If I want to get a head-start on anything that's coming up next week, it's all there on my calendar too. If I need a reminder, I can just have it send me a push-notification at a specific time. Best of all, I never have to be at my computer to get all these info/alerts. As long as I have my phone nearby, I can check my tasks, and get reminders for anything I've forgotten about.
Yeah; basically any calendar app. Every OS/device comes with one built in; they can sync across all your devices; they expose the database via SDK or API so you or others can augment them with additional tools (though I don't find it necessary).
For me, this has been a solved problem for many years.
It's one of those things where everybody's different, I get that.
But using an email system to manage your tasks seems only one step less goofy than calling yourself and leaving yourself voice mails. You can make that work, I guess, but that's not what the tool is for.
I think modern calendars are one of the great software success stories, actually. They are rock solid reliable, based mainly on hackable open standards, and work everywhere. I don't delete things from my calendar, I just leave them in there as a fossil record of my life.
(What was I doing ten years ago on this day? I just checked; apparently I helped my girlfriend sell her car, bought my sister a plane ticket, and worked on software for most of the day.)
This data has moved with me from platform to platform and will be accessible my whole life. This is how computers are supposed to work! (But seldom do...)
IMHO it should be more integrated with tasks, and tasks should be much more powerful. Some examples:
- Here in Italy I can donate blood every 3 months. So I want to set a task "Now you can donate blood" on say June 1st and set it to repeat itself 3 months after the day I actually donate blood and in the meantime being shown on top of calendar in a special "to-do" section. And if I donate blood on June 5th, the next donation should be automatically set on September 5th. I achieve this with an external app that syncs to tasks, but being it integrated in calender would be wonderful.
- A task can have more dates to be set. An example is taxes: from April 1st I can review the documentation the governament send me, from May 1st I can submit the correct documents and at May 31st I must have submited the documents. Of course during this period the task should always be visibile on my calendar.
Thing is I have the feeling that todo lists, calendars, tasks and time-tracking should ALL be integrated in the same software. And as far as I know this software is emacs' org-mode... one day I will learn it.
Shameless plug for https://heyhabit.com (I'm the dev). It's meant to be used as a chrome extension that takes over the new tab in Chrome, but you can try it from the website. I've been using it for ~2 years now and it works really well off and on. I've discovered that it's really helpful for getting me back on track when I fall off the horse. Because the calendar maintains what a "successful" week looks like for me, it eliminates some of the mental energy required to regroup.
offtopic, but I really like the fresh minimalism of the website. The colors and the choice of the monospaced font are quite unique. It captures the feel of using a terminal without being boring.
The todo.txt file format supports extensions, and some of the extensions include start date, due date, recurring tasks. The Simpletask todo.txt Android client supports these, and can filter by things that are past their start date, sort by due date, etc. Todo.txt also supports projects/contexts/lists/tags and Simpletask can filter by them.
i don't know which todo.txt commandline clients, if any, can do this but i bet some can (topydo maybe?). Simpletask supports Lua scripting, i dunno if this is sufficent to allow dynamic prioritization of tasks, but it might be. I don't think Simpletask supports dependencies but topydo does.
todo.txt is a file format. The nice thing about todo.txt-based tools is that the todo list is stored in a plaintext file in a relatively readable and editable format, with one line per task. This allows you to edit it using ordinary text editors, grep it, and sync it using utilities (resolving conflicts on a line-by-line basis).
I use Google Keep with pretty good success. Having one list for "To-Do Now" (daily stuff) and one for "To-Do Later" (longer term goals). The key for me is syncing across devices. If I can't add the to-do quickly when I think of it then the system wouldn't work for me.
I run into this every once in a while, but the sticking point is always the mobile picture. If I want to add a todo item using my phone, what are my options?
Like the author I went through too many solutions to organize myself. (Evernote, iOS Reminders app, OneNote, emacs/org-mode, Google apps, iOS Calendar, Omni tools & many more).
I've settled down on using Apple Notes & Things 3. Things 3 is expensive, but it's simple & has a beautiful UI. It structures tasks in the same way I think about them. I really like the Quick Entry feature on the Mac, where I can quickly add a to-do from a web page or an email... The app seems to be well maintained and I am glad they didn't choose the subscription route. My biggest wish, a web API.
I really like Notion (https://www.notion.so/), and I am sure I could do a great GTD system in it! However, I don't feel comfortable with subscriptions on apps where I keep MY data. Maybe because I grew up relatively poor, I always have the fear at the back of my mind, that maybe in the future I won't be able to afford it and what a big hassle that would be.
I got really excited about Taskwarrior and set up a server and accounts for all of my teammates. But we quickly found that we were spending more time logging our tasks than we were actually consulting TW for what to do next.
Example:
task add project: support_customer_migration priority: H -- support#XYZ - analyze dependencies for customer X - github.com/repo/issue/number
I'm yearning for a tool that lets me drag & drop an email, and it automatically creates a task based on the content. I can obviously go and edit it after setting deadline or assign to project etc.
I was hoping to create this workflow with MS Outlook(on Mac) and its inbuilt Tasks, but apparently they don't support it :-(
I’ve done a non-trivial amount of research around this in connection with office graph and outlook addins. The trick is you need to be able to get back to the original email in its thread from the task, so you can retain context and reply or extend the context as needed while still tracking it as a task. All the implementations I’ve found on the outlook side loose that connection (I think gmail tasks let you retain it but I sadly prefer outlook to gmail)
[Edit to add] almost forgot the key piece, which is that I think it’s possible to retain that context but I haven’t quite been able to justify the time to actually complete the round tripping code.
Things (https://culturedcode.com/things/) does pretty much that. It has a little Quick Entry daemon which lets you press control-option-space in Mail.app to make a new task linked to the selected mail. By default, the subject ends up as the task's title, though you can change it before hitting Return.
In general, I highlight recommend Things. It does all the typical GTD stuff, in a mostly Maclike way, and has a great iOS client.
[Edit: In fact, you can actually drag a mail right into a Things window as well, just as you propose. I never knew that!]
I use a variation on inbox-zero: if it's unread, it still has to be dealt with. Sort email unread-first. Works well enough for me (I have lots of "automatically mark read" filters for noise emails).
I use the email-to-board feature of Trello and just include the address as a BCC when replying to clients, or just forward it if I'm not replying. Everything goes into the "Incoming" column which I can then prioritize. Works great for me.
In Asana, you can forward emails to [email protected] and it will create a task for you. The headline is the title of the task and the body is the description.
[+] [-] city41|8 years ago|reply
Hey Google, thanks for making Inbox!
[+] [-] sammorrowdrums|8 years ago|reply
The knowledge that it will not be forgotten is very cathartic and my inbox doesn't fill with emails I intend to deal with but haven't yet.
I think what people forget is that time is often a better folder system than folders, as it doesn't place the responsibility to check again on the user.
I've tried to evangelize and I can't understand why it hasn't resonated as much with others.
[+] [-] patrickdavey|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lawn|8 years ago|reply
For me I don't actually need the complexity. A simple text based todo list would basically do the same job. The main issue is actually maintaining it.
This is why I like habitica more: https://habitica.com/
It's basically a gamified todo list which is perfect for me.
It's also awesome with helping establish new habits. The incentive of not wanting to break a streak is surprisingly strong. Nothing else has been remotely as successful.
[+] [-] tjr225|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ErrantX|8 years ago|reply
Scheduling and maintaining is a discipline that doesnt always come naturally. And is largely redundant.
[+] [-] Bartweiss|8 years ago|reply
I've had good luck with "todo list" and the "X effect" thing (basically just streaks - X out a calendar day for each time you do a daily task". Everything else, without exception, has been enough work to feel like a secondary task which I then quit doing. This might be a tool light enough to digitize those benefits without being a burden.
[+] [-] toyg|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rconti|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jdtang13|8 years ago|reply
Yes, I know it's open source. I still dislike these aforementioned aspects of it, though.
[+] [-] 0xdeadbeefbabe|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agumonkey|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ISL|8 years ago|reply
Two things I wish I could configure it to do (stating here in case someone already knows how):
1) A view that surfaces only the next task for each project, with a little annotation like:
Without that culled list, a comprehensive task-list is overwhelming.2) Integration with a calendar (Google Calendar, etc.), where adding events to the calendar automatically adds them to Taskwarrior.
Thank you, Taskwarrior team! ( I was about to ask for a donate link, but I finally found one. Thanks :)! )
[+] [-] daveyarwood|8 years ago|reply
My daily flow is to try and clear my plate, i.e. reach "Inbox Zero" with my `task ready` view. Every task in that view needs to either be completed or rescheduled for a time that I think I have a chance at completing it.
As for projects with tasks that block other tasks (e.g. write chapter 1 is "next," and it is the blocker for anything else, like writing chapter 2), you can tell Taskwarrior to hide them from your `task ready` view by using the `depends` property. For example, if "write chapter 1" is task 42, then I might add a task like `task add 'write chapter 2' depends:42`. Until I mark task 42 (writing chapter 1) as done, "write chapter 2" won't show up in my `task ready` view and I'm free not to think about it.
[+] [-] Izkata|8 years ago|reply
For example, when I pick up a case to work on, I'll immediately add it:
Then as I inspect and think about the parts that need to be done, I'll add a bunch more pieces as sub-projects: Then I go back and decide which pieces here I want to do before the others. If, in order, the above tasks were IDs 1-6, then: So at this point, only tasks 2 and 5 are unblocked and can be started on. It externalizes the state of the case, so I don't really even have to think about what to do next (hence the name of the default report, "next") or how far done I am. A good way of thinking about how I choose this breakout is, what could I commit without breaking the build?If you also use vimwiki, there's another plugin that works on top of it called taskwiki [0] that lets you use use a taskwarrior filter to show a set of tasks in the wiki, that auto-update. It even shows dependencies as indented todolist items (though the above example wouldn't work because tasks 2, 3, and 5 each have two tasks that depend on it; this and a few other things has me writing my own vim plugin for vimwiki that'll handle handle the above, plus a few other differences).
[0] https://github.com/tbabej/taskwiki
[+] [-] amerine|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kchr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zwischenzug|8 years ago|reply
https://zwischenzugs.com/2017/12/03/how-i-manage-my-time/
if there's one takeaway, it's that you have to find your own way of getting what's in your head into a place you can trust, and there's no objectively right place for that. Just keep looking until you're comfortable with one and stick to it.
[+] [-] tra3|8 years ago|reply
That's definitely #1. I'm surprised I had to scroll so far down to find it. :)
For a long time I was looking for a system that would auto-prioritize tasks for me. I'd dump things in, and it would tell me what I had to do today, this week and this month. Long story short, it turned out to be a silly expectation.
So #2 rule should be, review your tasks periodically.
Basically, an 80/20 productivity system should be:
#1 write everything down #2 review and cull your list every day #3 do things off your list
[+] [-] fsiefken|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] konraditurbe|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brightball|8 years ago|reply
In hindsight I should have never left it.
IMO Dropbox needs to purchase them to integrate with their growing offering.
[+] [-] synthmeat|8 years ago|reply
But then I stopped being a lone wolf dev and it simply doesn’t work for teams. Yet.
[+] [-] ibnishak|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whack|8 years ago|reply
Eg: Mow my lawn on Sunday? Ok, I'll create an all-day event on Sunday to mow-my-lawn. And once I'm done, all I have to do is delete it. I can then periodically check my calendar from my phone/laptop/tablet, and see everything I have to do that day/week. If I want to get a head-start on anything that's coming up next week, it's all there on my calendar too. If I need a reminder, I can just have it send me a push-notification at a specific time. Best of all, I never have to be at my computer to get all these info/alerts. As long as I have my phone nearby, I can check my tasks, and get reminders for anything I've forgotten about.
[+] [-] veidr|8 years ago|reply
For me, this has been a solved problem for many years.
It's one of those things where everybody's different, I get that.
But using an email system to manage your tasks seems only one step less goofy than calling yourself and leaving yourself voice mails. You can make that work, I guess, but that's not what the tool is for.
I think modern calendars are one of the great software success stories, actually. They are rock solid reliable, based mainly on hackable open standards, and work everywhere. I don't delete things from my calendar, I just leave them in there as a fossil record of my life.
(What was I doing ten years ago on this day? I just checked; apparently I helped my girlfriend sell her car, bought my sister a plane ticket, and worked on software for most of the day.)
This data has moved with me from platform to platform and will be accessible my whole life. This is how computers are supposed to work! (But seldom do...)
[+] [-] delcaran|8 years ago|reply
- Here in Italy I can donate blood every 3 months. So I want to set a task "Now you can donate blood" on say June 1st and set it to repeat itself 3 months after the day I actually donate blood and in the meantime being shown on top of calendar in a special "to-do" section. And if I donate blood on June 5th, the next donation should be automatically set on September 5th. I achieve this with an external app that syncs to tasks, but being it integrated in calender would be wonderful.
- A task can have more dates to be set. An example is taxes: from April 1st I can review the documentation the governament send me, from May 1st I can submit the correct documents and at May 31st I must have submited the documents. Of course during this period the task should always be visibile on my calendar.
Thing is I have the feeling that todo lists, calendars, tasks and time-tracking should ALL be integrated in the same software. And as far as I know this software is emacs' org-mode... one day I will learn it.
[+] [-] rndstr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keslert|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LeanderK|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bshanks|8 years ago|reply
i don't know which todo.txt commandline clients, if any, can do this but i bet some can (topydo maybe?). Simpletask supports Lua scripting, i dunno if this is sufficent to allow dynamic prioritization of tasks, but it might be. I don't think Simpletask supports dependencies but topydo does.
todo.txt is a file format. The nice thing about todo.txt-based tools is that the todo list is stored in a plaintext file in a relatively readable and editable format, with one line per task. This allows you to edit it using ordinary text editors, grep it, and sync it using utilities (resolving conflicts on a line-by-line basis).
[+] [-] rhcom2|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spott|8 years ago|reply
Anyone have any experience with this?
[+] [-] platz|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neves|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] knight17|8 years ago|reply
http://gsd5.tiddlyspot.com/
[+] [-] el_cid|8 years ago|reply
I really like Notion (https://www.notion.so/), and I am sure I could do a great GTD system in it! However, I don't feel comfortable with subscriptions on apps where I keep MY data. Maybe because I grew up relatively poor, I always have the fear at the back of my mind, that maybe in the future I won't be able to afford it and what a big hassle that would be.
[+] [-] davidcamel|8 years ago|reply
Example:
task add project: support_customer_migration priority: H -- support#XYZ - analyze dependencies for customer X - github.com/repo/issue/number
[+] [-] reacharavindh|8 years ago|reply
I'm yearning for a tool that lets me drag & drop an email, and it automatically creates a task based on the content. I can obviously go and edit it after setting deadline or assign to project etc.
I was hoping to create this workflow with MS Outlook(on Mac) and its inbuilt Tasks, but apparently they don't support it :-(
I would pay for such a feature.
[+] [-] yodon|8 years ago|reply
[Edit to add] almost forgot the key piece, which is that I think it’s possible to retain that context but I haven’t quite been able to justify the time to actually complete the round tripping code.
[+] [-] grincho|8 years ago|reply
In general, I highlight recommend Things. It does all the typical GTD stuff, in a mostly Maclike way, and has a great iOS client.
[Edit: In fact, you can actually drag a mail right into a Things window as well, just as you propose. I never knew that!]
[+] [-] dithering|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eddiezane|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amichal|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arnoooooo|8 years ago|reply
I use mu4e for email and have configured it so that pressing the "t" key when viewing an email creates a Taskwarrior task.
[+] [-] marpstar|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lenzm|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] natex|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walterbell|8 years ago|reply