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i am a very disorganized person so this file, which may seem like it is a bunch of tips on how to be well-organized from someone who is organized, is really just a bunch of notes to myself on things i've recently tried or that i'd like to try. Some of what is written here is more of an ideal rather than what i actually do. This is a learning experience.
ok now i have a todo system which seems to work pretty well:
On my Android smartphone, i use an app called Simpletask. Simpletask has a widget that i put on my homescreen, in a tall rectangle three boxes tall and two boxes across. This widget shows my top-priority todo items. If i want to see more, i can scroll down. Todo items can be prioritized as A,B,C,D, etc, or they can be unprioritized (which means they are lower priority than letter Z; the default is unprioritized). The widget has a "+" sign at the top, and if i click on it, i go to a screen to add a new todo item. I can delete an item by selecting it and then clicking a 'done' icon. The todo list is saved as a plaintext file in a simple standard format called 'todo.txt' by Gina Trapani et al. Simplelist Android app uses Dropbox to sync the todo.txt file with my computer.
I use priority 'B' to mean things that i won't go to sleep tonight until i do. Priority 'C' is things i am planning to do today but that won't keep me up if i don't. Priority 'D' is things i really should do in the next few days.
Priority 'A' is reserved; 'A' is like 'B' (do today) but is reserved in case things get really hectic and i start messing up and leaving things undone in 'B' -- 'A' should be empty almost all of the time.
I also have a text file in my computer called todoB.txt. Items that aren't important enough to go in todo.txt go here. These are usually things that i start out thinking 'i really need to do this in the next few days' and then later i realize that while it would be great to do them, there is really no deadline for them, at least not anytime soon. I also have a todoC.txt, todoD.txt, etc. I don't leave everything in todo.txt for some reason, not quite sure why. Maybe because when my todo widget isn't blank, i have to think for a moment to realize that all the items it is showing are low-priority, so i prefer to not have low priority items there at all?
When i encounter a new todo item while out, i add it to my todo.txt list from the widget. If it does not deserve to be an A,B, or C, i leave it unprioritized. Every now i then i edit the todo.txt file on my computer and move the unprioritized items to the other todo list files.
When there is an important todo with a distant deadline, i make two entries on my calendar, one at the due date, and one sometime before that when i need to add it to my todo.txt.
For the calendar, i have another Android widget, from an app called Agenda Widget. This widget is next to the todo.txt widget on my home screen. It's also 3 boxes high and 2 boxes wide. It shows the next few items on my calendar. If i want to see more, i can scroll down. I keep my calendar in Google Calendar.
So when i use my smartphone, usually the first thing i see is the next few items on my calendar and my top-priority todo items. This keeps me from forgetting them. Key principal: don't rely on my being rational enough to have the discipline of looking at my todo list multiple times a day on purpose.
Most of my home screen is taken up by the agenda (calendar) widget and the todo.txt widget. Below it there is only one row four boxes wide of free space. Three of those spaces are taken up by: an icon that takes me to edit a text files called 'notes.txt'; an icon that takes me to edit a text files called 'shop.txt'; Ringer Mode Timer Widget.
notes.txt is where i put notes and ideas of all kinds that i write on my smartphone when i'm out. this is just an inbox; i periodically go thru this and move these notes to other notes files.
shop.txt is where i put shopping list items. Both of these are synced with my computer via dropbox. Ringer Mode Timer Widget is a widget (that i wrote) that with one click cycles thru Ring, Vibrate, Silent, but reverts to Vibrate 9 hours afterwards. I use this when i go to sleep at night to set the phone to Silent, so that it'll automatically set itself back to Vibrate the next day. There is one empty spot on my homescreen that i can put other apps or icons in if i am using them a lot.
issues:
later:
trying something a little new. The previous system worked okay for A,B,C,D items, but less urgent items piled up at 'E' and i need to separate the must-do longer term items from the optional ones. So i'm adding meanings to more letters to differentiate these. Also, above i said 'B' is 'definitely do today', but in practice i used it as 'planning to do today' and used 'A' as 'definitely do today', which means that i no longer had any way to differentiate definitely-do-later-today-before-bed from definitely-do-today-really-soon; so i'm adding another letter in there, and also another letter to distinguish planning to do in the next few days from planning to do in the next week or so.
today and tomorrow:
next few weeks:
priority list/context/waiting-on/reactive items. Note: 'reactive' items, such as lists of things to say to a specific person when that person next contacts me, are always placed at these priority levels; A-I is for things that are only waiting on me to get done:
'scan boundary': A-M should be scanned through frequently, lower priority levels don't have to be looked at as often
must or really want to do:
should do:
project/waiting-on/reactive items (where the project itself is already a higher-prioritiy todo list item; so these items don't ever need to be scanned, they are just here so that they can appear when you filter by list or by tag. The difference between these and J,K,L is that J,K,L are above the 'scan boundary' and so you will be periodically reminded of those items even when you are not querying for a list that they are on, whereas you'll mostly only see the items here if you query for something that they match). Uses for these include: (1) sub-items within 'projects' that depend on each other (so you can't do the later ones until you finish the earlier ones); the project itself can be given a @list and go in A-I to remind you to query it, and then you put its subitems in a list (2) things that you can't do until someone else gets back to you or some external event occurs (this assumes that you don't need to followup if it's taking too long and also that you'll remember to check for the dependent items when the event occurs; otherwise, you should scan these every now and then):
for events that i am worried about forgetting about or for tasks that i don't want to start anytime soon but which need to be done later by a certain date, i use three things:
note: most of the todo list is just for tasks and need-to-do projects that might be forgotten, not for goals/larger optional projects. So for example 'buy milk' and 'taxes' both go on this list, but 'learn spanish' and 'do chapter 3 of spanish practice' do not. An exception is the W,X,Y priority levels, which are planned projects for the current week/month/quarter. Longer-term ideas that i may or may not want to ever do go into project folders, or into generic text files like "stuff_to_buy" (stuff to consider buying someday/maybe) or "read.txt" (books to consider reading someday/maybe).
note: i also use this list for reminders of things to remember through repetition; i write 'r ' at the left of the entry, and every time i read it, i move it down one priority level.
note: when i tried to use this sort of list to keep track of 'every task remaining to be done' for a project, i soon found that i had a zillion things under J-M and R-V, many of them duplicates of each other. It's better to have a separate per-project todo list for each project in addition to this one; that's also important so that you can share the per-project todo list with others working on the project with you. You can temporarily add items to this list when you think of them and then move them to the per-project todo list later. You can also, later, copy them back from the per-project todo list back to this one when you want to remember to do them in the next few days, or when you want to remember to mention them to someone else the next time you talk to that person.
later:
some issues:
some ideas:
later:
system worked well for awhile but did not survive when i got super busy due to covid and some family issues that took a lot of time while at the same time having an urgent and demanding work project. What happened is i started just piling stuff up at A and B and leaving it there because i knew i wouldn't have time to curate and i didn't want to forget these items. Eventually i curated a little but all i could do was move this stuff down into C and D, which destroyed the meaningfullness of C and D as 'today' items. I think i just need more space at the top to accomodate that when it happens. So new letter assignments (unrelated, but also note that the choice of M as dumping ground is based on the fact that it is the last letter shown on my phone screen without scrolling; this changes; on an older smaller phone, this was L):
'scan boundary': A-M should be scanned through frequently, lower priority levels don't have to be looked at as often
must or really want to do:
should do:
project/waiting-on/reactive items (where the project itself is already a higher-prioritiy todo list item; so these items don't ever need to be scanned, they are just here so that they can appear when you filter by list or by tag. The difference between these and J,K,L is that J,K,L are above the 'scan boundary' and so you will be periodically reminded of those items even when you are not querying for a list that they are on, whereas you'll mostly only see the items here if you query for something that they match). Uses for these include: (1) sub-items within 'projects' that depend on each other (so you can't do the later ones until you finish the earlier ones); the project itself can be given a @list and go in A-I to remind you to query it, and then you put its subitems in a list (2) things that you can't do until someone else gets back to you or some external event occurs (this assumes that you don't need to followup if it's taking too long and also that you'll remember to check for the dependent items when the event occurs; otherwise, you should scan these every now and then):
later notes on simpletask:
simpletask has 'lists' (todo.txt contexts). You can put something on a list by adding the listname prefixed with '@' in the item text (or by using the list icon when editing). simpletask also has 'tags' (todo.txt projects). You can attach a tag to something by adding the tagname prefixed with '+' in the item text (or by using the tag icon when editing). I don't know what the difference between them is; maybe they are just two distinct dimensions along which to organize, each of which operates identically to the other? One item can be on multiple lists and can have multiple tags.
If you swipe left on the main todo.txt page, a menu slides out from the left that lets you filter by any combination of lists and tags.
If you swipe right on the main todo.txt page, a menu slides out from the right that lets you recall saved filters, and save the current filter.
You can create 'hidden tasks' with placeholders to keep specific lists and tags in existence so that they appear in the various list and tag menus in the UI (by putting 'h:1' in their text).
simpletask allows you to set 'threshold dates' and then define filters that hide items before their threshold date (or put them at the end). It also allows you to set 'due dates'. It also allows you to 'manually' (via text) set recurring tasks (see Help documentation for that).
simpletask will add threshold and due date reminders to your calendar.
creativity is incompatible with getting things done, or with good time management.
In order to be creative you have to write down ideas on something when the fancy strikes you. In order to be creative you have to work out ideas on something when the fancy strikes you. Worse, the process of writing down and especially the process of working out an idea often leads to new ideas, which must then be immediately written down and worked out. This can go on all day.
The time for creativity cannot be pre-planned, because often a good idea will come from something tangentially related (e.g. seemingly unrelated).
You cannot just write down the superficial idea when you have it and then come back later at a planned time to write down the rest or to work it out. Most of the time, your planned time will not be a time when you happen to be inspiried for this sort of idea, so you will miss all the other ideas that might have come. (i am not sure about this paragraph but this is my guess).
Now, compare this to getting things done. Getting things done requires time management. Time management requires (a) planning times to do certain things, and when that time comes, actually doing them; and (b) planning times to STOP doing certain things, and when that time comes, actually stopped. But if you are being creative, you cannot always achieve (a) because sometimes the time when you had planned to do something will occur in the middle of a writing ideas down/working ideas out session. You cannot always achieve (b) because you if you are being creative, you cannot cut off a writing ideas down/working ideas out session.
It is important to realize this incompatibility because if you try to be creative AND to get things done at the same time, you will fail (or at least, i do). For years i tried to do this and the result was that i was very creative but i didn't get much done.
Is there any hope? Not much. But there is a little:
a crucial part of time management is putting bounds on elapsed time.
"The common denominator of success --- the secret of success of every man who has ever been successful --- lies in the fact that he formed the habit of doing things that failures don't like to do. "
think about what things you should be doing that you don't like to do
opposed: motivate yourself by allowing anything "productive" to be work
if a container is hard to get at, or hard to see inside of, then it's important to know what's inside of it. Such containers should either contain a well-defined category of items, or should be inventoried.
i usually end of keeping notes for various things in a plaintext computer file in reverse chronological order (newest note at top), with notes separated by '--' on a line by itself, like this:
note1 blah blah blah
--
note2 blah blah blah
i just do a search through this file to find stuff. i have a main 'notes' file for random notes, and for each project at work i have one too. for files where i'm just writing down ideas, i keep those in forward chronological order.
text files:
i spend a lot of my time reading tech news on websites like Hackernews. This is a problem. I'm trying to train myself to look at such things yet ignore as much of the content as possible, except when it is truly useful to me, but have not yet been successful.
---
I've noticed that people who manage their time well have schedules that say how long they will allow themselves to spend on each thing. So this is probably the best thing to do. But of course, there are also interruptions, e.g. a coworker calls you and needs something, so this can't be the whole story.
One form of interruption is new ideas, see below.
---
it's important to get the more unpleasant things out of the way earlier in the day when you have more willpower.
it's good to periodically write down some visions/goals. This helps your mind focus on them and helps notice random related opportunities. This worked for Scott Adams. http://www.self-help-and-self-development.com/written-affirmations.html
it's good to focus on things you can change.
"small wins" help with motivation.
Many productivity things are habits that you form. You form a habit by doing something many times over, and by not giving up after you mess up.
---
formal todo systems:
---
successful people do one thing at a time. but suboptimal people like me are interested in many things.
perhaps a good compromise would be to have goals in 3s; e.g. have 1 primary project but also one secondary and tertiary project
(what would mine be? perhaps, thesis, katherine, ?; maybe ? is making money to support myself?)
---
the main time management problem for me is new ideas. i get some idea about something and so i want to write it down before i forget it. Then in the process of writing it down i have another related new idea. This can go on for over a week.
not sure what to do here. my PhD? advisor says he just doesn't write them down and if they are good he finds he remembers them, but i really do forget them if i don't write them down and occasionally they seem to be good ones.
see tips/roomOrganization.txt
todo
keyboard, mouse height is crucial (wrist angle) rest breaks are crucial stretching is crucial ergo chair foot pedals for pgup, pgdown barmouse vertical keyboard alternate cobra, soma
i use mutt as my email client.
i try to empty my primary inbox as often as possible. this is done mainly by sending any message that has already been viewed to a secondary inbox, named "mbox" (unless i've "flagged" the message, in which case it stays in the primary inbox). Mutt does this automatically whenever i fetch new mail (it asks me for confirmation first).
mbox is for mail that i need to do something about. i also have a tertiary inbox, my "treasure chest", for fun stuff (emails about politics, debates with friends, pictures, jokes, forwards, etc).
when reviewing new mail, i go down and try to either delete, or send to mbox, or send to treasure chest, as many messages as possible.
new mail is color coded (the background color is black):
i'm still not very good about actually reviewing and dealing with the messages in mbox, however.
mutt has a drafts/postpone function where you can start writing a message, stop in the middle, and postpone your draft. then whenever you try to start a new message, it asks you if you want to continue a draft. this gets cumbersome when you have like a million unfinished drafts. so, if anything is here for more than a day or so, i move it out of mutt's system and into a drafts folder:
if i have something i want to tell someone, but i'm still writing it, or for whatever reason i don't want to say it in email, i put it in a drafts folder ("say"). in this folder, there is one file for each person. within the file, any drafts intended to be sent to them are there, seperated by lines with dashes.
i have one general "notes" text file that i put all sorts of random notes in. i separate notes or sections of notes with "---" (or sometimes more dashes, e.g. "--------------------------", and sometimes multiple lines of dashes). i just use fulltext search to find the notes, so sometimes i write keywords in with the notes. i don't sweat about going thru this file and deleting old notes, although i've done that once or twice; if something goes in here, it means that i'm okay with it if i never see it again. this file is synced to my phone. this file is pretty much always open in an emacs buffer.
any notes that can be public, i try not to put in this file, but rather on the wiki version of my website (although if it's not important sometimes finding a place to put it on the website is too much bother). my wiki pages are compiled from folders full of plaintext files on my computer that i edit in my text editor. you are reading from one of these now. as you can see, they are organized into a hierarchy by subject, and the hierarchy is somewhat redundant, causing similar information to sometimes be spread over multiple files, until i notice and consolidate.
Because i try to put my personal notes on my public website, much of what is on that website is unimportant or unreadable. I highlight the "good stuff" using my blog.
i have another notes text file on my phone. unlike the general notes file, the notes in here are always processed, i.e. i frequently clean out the file, which usually involves transferring each note to some other computer file. the purpose of this is to allow me to jot something down quickly on my phone without hunting thru my folders to open the appropriate file first.
reminders about habits that i want to improve on go into a "remember" file, to be glanced at from time to time.
the file is synced to my phone, so that i can look at it while waiting in line etc.
most long-term projects have their own folder, and in that folder is their own notes file (called PROJECTNAMENotes.txt; if it was just called "notes" then the buffer would be hard to switch to using ido in emacs). many of them have their own todo file, too. some have multiple todo files, see below.
Using text files for todo lists. Using Google Calendar for calendars. All of these text files are synced to my phone. The homepage of my phone displays a shortcut to todo1 and a shortcut to todo2 (using the AnyCut? Android app; see notes-computer-android-apps), as well as a calendar widget (the Agenda Widget Android widget).
the format of these files is: i put a blank line in-between todo items
why have so many lists? The reason is mainly psychological. It's hard to admit that i'll never actually do a task; hence the existence of list 5. Similarly for many of the other lists. Many people recommend not having 5 different todo lists, and if i had the willpower, i'd agree. If not for th psychological consideration, three lists (todo12, todo34, and todo5) would probably do the trick.
the most crucial part is keeping todo1 and todo2 as short as possible, and looking thru them often. If you don't have time to "process" them, just read thru them once quickly; at least then you'll know you're not forgetting anything important. you can do this from time to time when you are waiting in line, etc.
you also have to look thru lists todo3 and todo4 from time to time, otherwise they become synonyms for todo5, and then you'll be reluctant to demote items to them.
it is important to demote items to the less important lists whenever you can bear it.
if i am waiting on some external person or event before i can do an item, i put a "W " in front of it.
if a todo item has some related information that only takes up a few lines of text, i put it right there below it. if it has more, i put the info in my general notes file.
if i have forgotten what a todo item means, i put it at the bottom of the list with a question mark in front of it, hoping i'll remember. eventually i delete it.
big projects have their own set of todoc thru todoe lists. there is only one todo1 and only one todob list, though; all projects get mixed in those.
i have the following calendars setup in Google Calendars:
Items with due dates which do not have to be done soon but which i don't want to forget about when the time comes go on the "Bayle Shanks reminders" Google Calendar.
My Agenda widget on my phone displays the Bayle Shanks calendar.
glance at:
(i don't actually do this yet but i want to)
(i don't actually do this yet but i want to)
--
the night before not even trips just a normal day pack everything up just the way you will carry it, and all in one place. this is not just for speed and ease, but mainly for not forgetting stuff.
--
priority: i define goal A to be higher priority than goal B iff working on A should preempt working on B.
Under this notion of priority, things of only instrumental value can be higher priority that the more 'important' instrinsically valuable goals. E.g. few people would say that the highest purpose of their life is to breathe; they would say things like raise children, love their family, have spiritual experiences, have novel experiences, enjoy themselves, etc. But if your ability to breathe is threatened, you have to immediately put off pursuing those other goals until after you solve the breathing problem; the breathing goal pre-empts almost all others, so it is of very high priority.
For people into meditation who do think that breathing is the most important thing ever, replace 'breathing' with 'defecating' in the above argument. Or 'drinking water'.
These others are actually an interesting case, because unlike breathing, you can sometimes put off e.g. drinking water while you pursue another, more important goal. But you can't put it off for very long; maybe an hour but not a week. So technically speaking, in order to know priorities you first must specify the timescale of interest. On the timescale of minutes, drinking water is often low-priority (you could easily put it off just to hear the end of a song, for example, or even because you don't feel like getting out of your chair), but on the timescale of weeks, it is high-priority.
Another interesting point to be made is that there are a lot of latent, high-priority negative goals, such as 'don't lose the ability to breath', 'don't get eaten by a lion', 'don't get smashed by a falling rock'. etc, which aren't usually in play (they are usually satisfied) but which are high-priority when they do come into play.
--
the key to organizing varied intellectual things, such as bookmarks, or pages on your personal website, is to think about how the user will be using using them.
this is contrary to my initial impulse, which is to organize things first by ontological category (e.g. on my website, is this page just notes aobut something already existing, or is it an idea for some project, or is it a list of recommendations?). but instead you should segment first by different user goals or user types, so that a user with a given goal can find everything they want in one place.
In the case of bookmarks, you also care about minimizing how many clicks it takes you to add a new bookmark, which means minimizing both the depth and breadth of the hierarchy (you don't want to have to click down many levels, but you also don't want to have to scroll too far in any given level). These considerations mean that you should lump more things together than you otherwise would.
For the consumer, too, you may want to lump things together; you want to avoid having your hierarchy be so refined that someone looking for something isn't sure where to look for it; better to make them look through a lot of things when they get there. Even if you are the only person doing the cataloging and also the only person using the catalog, even over a short period of time, i've found that i need to make things less refined than i think. (by 'more refined' i mean having more divisions (folders) rather than less, whether those are breadth or depth)
another tip is to explicitly segment things by priority (or quality). This allows you to make it easy to find the most important/best stuff without having to have the hierarchy be too refined. Consider having roughly geometrically increasing numbers of items as you go to lower priority.
--
control of your schedule and 'capturing' activities: it's important that you control your schedule, meaning that at least a few days a week you sit down and say, 'what am i going to work on for the next few hours?'. I'm not saying that the answer won't be predetermined (it might always be 'work on my thesis', for example), i'm just saying that you need to not get held up before that point by recurring tasks such as checking email, reading the news, etc.
Reading magazines is an example of a 'capturing' activity because if you feel you need to do it, the reason is probably because either you don't want to 'miss' any very useful information that everyone in your field 'should know', or because you want to slowly accumulate random useful information. In other words, you want to 'capture' that information.
When you do this, you need to have a way to cut off exploration of new information; e.g. you need to have a list of to-reads, rather than actually reading stuff. You also need to limit overall capturing by having ways to index stuff you want to look thru in a way that it won't ever go away, and then not to actually look thru it as it comes in. You can then do the 'important new stuff everyone else' knows separately by only glancing at the top-indexed items (but if you are prone to get caught up in such things, then see if you can even do without that).
--
--
email organization:
when browsing thru email, be quick to send it to 'mbox' using the single key you mapped above.
when on a trip without a laptop, and you don't want to go thru most of your email, use the Android Gmail client. Select a bunch of messages at once by long-pressing, then send them to your mbox folder. Upon return from the trip, look thru mbox.
it's okay to leave a few emails in your inbox as to-do items for a short period of time when you don't have much else in there, but if there is more than a few of these, or if you are about to go thru a period where you don't empty your inbox daily, or if any of them have been sitting there more than few days, then create todo items for them instead and delete or save the emails. (note: packages that need to be gotten from a PMB need to have individual todo items or emails, so that you can keep track of how many of them should be there)
aside from the few 'todo' emails indicated in the previous paragraph, your goal is to have an empty inbox each time you go thru your email, which should be at least every other day.
--
i use the "todo.txt" app on Android. It keeps your todo list in a text file, and syncs the text file via Dropbox. That way i can edit the todo list using an ordinary text editor on my computer, or using the app on my phone.
The todo items in this app have priorities (from A to Z) but they don't have due dates, so if an item has a due date i also put it on my calendar.
Here is how i use the priorities.
I don't put big/obvious, unforgettable items on the todo list; the list is only for things i might forget.
I use Google Calendar.
Also, i have the Dropsync app on my phone, to automatically sync my Dropbox items.
---
the avoiding-getting-"into the weeds" thought pattern is useful
---
my goal is to glance at new email headers, and scan my SMS homescreen, about once a day. I often respond same-day to what looks like quick questions (esp. if i can do so from my phone while out). But for items that look like they could require more than a minute, i try to put them aside without reading and go back to working on what i had already planned to work on that day -- because otherwise i'd not ever get around to high-importance low-urgency tasks. Therefore, although sometimes i can get back to those things soon, more often i take more than a few days to respond. Especially when thought is required: often i like to write a draft, then sleep on it, etc.
i do try to respond quick when there are severe consequences to delay (physical danger or a lot of money at risk, and only i can stop it).
if someone whom i know really needs to get in touch with me fast, they might put URGENT at the beginning of an email subject header, or if it's an emergency, they might text me in all-caps and also call me on the phone twice -- i'd see that the next time i check my phone.
my goals are to respond within a day for critically important severely urgent things, within 2 days for urgent/important stuff and for quick questions, and within a week for most other 'work' things; or faster when possible.
---
200613
some thoughts
SimpleTask?, a todo.txt app, really works well for me for (a) capturing tasks so i don't totally forget them, (b) making lists of tasks/notes for right now, tasks for next, tasks for definitely to be done today, maybe to be done today, definitely to be done tomorrow, maybe done tomorrow (priorities A thru F, respectively) (c) letting me tag tasks by a person so that when i talk to that person i can bring up the list of things relevant to them, (d) rapidly capturing notes to self on my phone (the workflow for capturing a note or task is quicker in Simpletask than anything else i've found, surprisingly), (e) putting tasks with start dates ('threshold dates') and due dates onto my Google calendar.
Also, i really like plaintext formats; often i use my text editor on my computer to work with my todo.txt task file. It is great that Simpletask sorts in memory only and doesn't reorder the file; newer tasks are at the top of the file so if i want to browse tasks by date added in my text editor, that is easy, and i do do this (i guess i gotta watch out for other todo.txt clients that might resort the file).
However, i still have some trouble from the way i am using it. Tasks that are not assigned to today or tomorrow tend to get lost. Notes and tasks for various projects clutter up the list and crowd out urgent and important tasks that are not urgent enough to be in 'tomorrow'. Either i make the list really long, or i move everything that is project-specific or long-term to another file and then back again as it gets closer, or it can't contain items for the distant future.
An obvious thing to do to prevent my notes from cluttering my todo list would be to have a separate notes file. However, i looked at a few Android text file editors and none of them had a workflow as quick as Simpletask's for capturing a new note on the fly. Also, i want my notes to be viewable by priority and filterable by project, so this notes file should also be in todo.txt format.
It seems like an obvious thing to do would be to just have a second todo.txt file for notes, because Simpletask is so good at quickly capturing a note, but Simpletask has a flaw that you can't have two widgets at once which are viewing two separate todo.txt files; apparently adding this would be a lot of work so there are no plans to do that https://github.com/mpcjanssen/simpletask-android/issues/341 https://github.com/mpcjanssen/simpletask-android/issues/293 . Another idea for a workaround is to make a shortcut to opening a given todo.txt file in Simpletask, however https://github.com/mpcjanssen/simpletask-android/issues/959 , although a workaround to that workaround is to install two versions of simpletask.
In the meantime, one hack i should try is to have a second, distinct todo.txt client on my phone that is looking at the notes file. However, instead i'm considering capturing notes with orgmode.
I also would like:
Orgmode can have separate files each contributing some items that are merged into an agenda view. But I don't like the complexity, difficult-to-type-ness, or difficult-to-read-for-nonexperts of the orgmode markup format (i don't mind the complexity necessarily introduced by organizational metadata, just the markup; also, i think that for better or for worse, Markdown has won the lightweight markup standard wars, so i'd prefer if orgmode markup were based on Markdown). To elaborate on what i mean by difficult-to-read-for-nonexperts; i once had a long orgmode todo list for a project, and i had to print out a todo list for a contractor. I thought the orgmode list was too difficult to read for someone not familiar with it, and had too much extra junk taking up space, so i felt the need to manually turn it into a more readable plaintext list each time i met with the contractor, which was a waste of time.
Regarding tasks which are not near the top of the list, i was reading recently about ppl's opinions on issue trackers, and one person distinguished the functions of a TRACKER for work that is actually planned to be done, vs a DATABASE of issues, many of them old and forgotten with no plans to ever work on them. I feel like i need both of these; i need an issue tracker 'database' for old tasks and inactive projects that may or may not ever be revived, and i also need a 'tracker' for stuff i'm doing soon, with a way to easily move issues between them. I also feel like i need an 'issue tracker' for my life, with support for dependencies, statuses, task notes.
before i was thinking about goals, like many people have weekly and monthly goals, and i couldn't really think of how to do this effectively. But now i think weekly goals are kind of like sprints, and a 'tracker' tracks these and a 'database' tracks the stuff that isn't in the current sprint, and there is a pool of 'DO_SOON's which aren't in the current sprint but are hoped to be in one soon. Sprints, bullet journals, and Katherine's system share the system of explicit migration of undone tasks to the next 'sprint'.
for an example of the failure of the current system, i currently have a todo note with priority D, which means 'maybe today', with content '(D) ob/point loma, mission hills, pb'. That's to remind me to tell a friend, who asked about maybe moving here, that Katherine and I recommend e check out those areas of town. My problems with this:
Other topics related to issue trackers are:
Also, i notice that IRL, when i get busy my browser tabs pile up, and then as soon as i have some time i want to clear my tabs before doing anything else, which takes too much time, so i end up spending most of my time reading old tabs! Which is not as productive as i should be.
I looked at Bullet Journals ('bujo') before and i didn't like the idea but now i'm reconsidering it. I notice that Katherine has success with her one-day todo list with forced explicit migration every day; Bullet Journals also have migration, on larger timescales. I'm thinking of exploring a stripped down bujo textfile for weekly/monthly/quarterly/yearly and/or epic/sprint/milestone goals.
so some things that i have working:
some things that i still need:
i'm thinking of trying:
so a more concise list of what i'll probably try:
further detail is in the projects/mdtdNotes.txt file
ok, that's a plan, but i'm going to sleep on it for a week or three, and maybe try it manually, before i automated too much or any of it.
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todo: consider adding a C for near stuff, like B but after it
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i think i'm going to have to start learning/using orgmode. todo.txt is good for capture and near-term todos, and for a small list of really important long-term todos, but for me at least it's not working for multiple projects with todos with lots of dependencies and also tasks that i am waiting on different people for. It can handle most of this with projects and contexts and my weird system of priorities-as-categories, but if you do that your todo.txt file ends up with a zillion items in it, and it becomes hard to get an overview, or to scan through everything to make sure you didn't miss anything important. The obvious thing to do is put different areas of life into different todo.txt files, but (a) my favorite todo.txt client, Simpletask, doesn't handle this too well, and (b) there is no help provided for either (i) surveying all urgent todos over many todo.txt files, or for (ii) moving stuff between them. Also, attaching notes to todos, and dependencies (or at least subtasks) are sorely missed.
i don't like how orgmode invented its own markup language (i'd rather it extended Markdown, the emerging standard), but i don't have time to create my own alternative and make tooling for it.
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todo:
v_lisivka on May 8, 2019 [–]
I use just plain text file opened in plain text editor with following conventions:
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current plan:
so then my curation workflow would be:
some old stuff:
(note: some other task status keywords i considered: kill stop hold gave wait rely plan fixed firm set mayb dead nope fail gone flop latr asgn assn cant file sort)
(note: other things i considered in place of GIVE/GAVE were TOASSIGN/ASSIGN as tags, also HAND, PUT, PUSH, PLACE, TO, TAP, TELL, SAY, DGATE, SEND? I kind of like TOTAP, TAP. TAPPED is no shorter than ASSIGN. SEND, SENT? That could get confusing for tasks that involve sending things. TAP, TAPD)
(note: other things i considered in place of SAY was TELL, TEL)
(done, then later undone) consider creating task states for GIVE and TELL. GAVE can be lumped in with PLAN (or not), or could be renamed SEE. So maybe all of GIVE, GAVE, TELL. (done: DEC) for decisions; PICK/SELect/CHOO/CHOS/DECI/DECD/CUT/CULL/PREF/WILL/SET/ELECT/DETERMINE/DET/ORDER/SPEC/SORT/SETTLE/RESOLVE
(note: other things i considered in place of VERI were SHOW or SEND or TEST or SEE)
(nope) mb change the name 'PLAN' back to 'PLANNED', since PLAN really does sound like it is in the plannING stage. And still not sure if we also need a WAIT or DELEGATED or ASSIGNED status. Or, if we have ASSIGN as a tag, maybe PLANNED should be a tag too? one person considers the following synonyms: Pending/Waiting/Deferred/On Hold/Postponed
(mb): REF(er) or MV or SEEALSO or REDIRect or instead of DUP? i dunno, none of those are very clear either.
(done: SPEC good enuf for now): do we need a task status for IDEA/EXPLORING? or is SPEC good enuf?
(done): the previous item reveals a larger question: are the statuses tracking the state of the TASK, or the state of YOUR PERSONAL (or team's) ACCOUNTABILITY TOWARDS THE TASK? what we did with GAVE/RELY is revealing; with RELY we said we don't need to track the task because we delegated it. With GAVE we let the status represent the task itself, and then added a GAVE tag. really you want the direct product of a number of 'task-centric states' and 'self-centric states', which suggests that one or the other should be a tag, to prevent having O(k^2) statuses. even if you have a team, there is a distinction between what your team has to do, and what you are waiting on others to do - one simple solution would be to just have a multipurpose keyword WAIT which can be attached to various states. Now filter on that in most places. - - also need a standard thing to indicate things like GIVE/GAVE, TELL, SPEC when you need to ASK -- there is a distinction between when you need to ask a question/delegate something, and when you are waiting for the other person to answer you/do it - hmm that sounds like a substate (hierarchical states would be great; GIVE/GAVE are both substates of giving) - but in this case it can be accomplished via product states, which can be accomplished with a WAIT tag, since the distinction is really just whether you told the person/asked them something yet and are waiting for a reply/for them to do it
(done) i don't really like GIVE/GAVE for delegate, it's hard to remember. CALL/DELG? REQUEST (/require/requisition) - delegation is really its own thing. It's a pretty advanced/abstract concept, we shouldn't expect a short word for it. DELG might be the best we'll get. mb some other language? AENE from bulgarian (but this transliterates to dele...) DELE, DEL? WAY/WEI/WAYT/WEIT (from chinese), GEMA (dutch). nah those are even harder to remember! DELE DELE DELG. I think DELE is easiest to type if you want 4 letters. DEL is of course even easier but it makes me think if delete. DELG is easiest to read. Maybe DELG is best.
(done) should we have a separate statuses for when you vs. someone else needs to make the decision/specification? probably. mb SPEC vs. NEED? NEEDI (needinfo?) WANT? INFO/IDEA/ASK/HELP also similarly for VERI when you vs. someone else need to verify (SHOW/REPORT/OKAY/GIVE vs CHECK/TEST/CERT/CONFIRM/VALID/OKAY/INSPECT/SIGNOFF/LOOK/RATIFY/SEE/WITNESS/ENDORSE/FINISH/END/VINDICATE/AVER/AVOW/SURE?). Otoh.. with a team you'd want to share one document and different ppl would be assigned to each thing.
so, i'm leaning towards:
(note: For VERI: CHECK/TEST/CONFIRM/LOOK vs SHOW/SEND or, REVIEW instead of veri. one person also uses REVIEW for retrospect
no i like VERI b/c the unusual letter V makes it stand out. MB CHECK/SEND/SHOW would be next actions tho? ) (note) SOON, NEAR, LOOM
(note: for exploring things?: IDEA/WISH/WANT/NEED/REQUIRE/CONSIDER/EXPLORE/THINK/marinate/incubate/nurture)
(nah): REQ/DEL may be hard to remember/read. Mb TODGATE, DGATE. Or, if you want short, AS (for ASSIGN) and TOAS. Or mb just DEL TODEL. otoh anything starting with TOD is even harder to read than REQ imo.
mb 'vault' instead of zzz
still not sure i got that right -- instead of tags, should i have task statuses for std next actions like req, ask?
(done) still bothered by calling the task status PLAN b/c that leaves no room (well, less room) for a next action tag PLAN, which could be important, and also it suggests that something is in the 'planning stage' which isn't correct. There's just not many good synonyms for 'planned' ('arranged', but that's long; 'sorted' but that's recent slang). Maybe expand the length limit to 5 and call it PLAND. Otoh the tag could be ORG for ORGanize. Could also call the task status SET or SETUP. Or could called the task status ORGD. Actually i am leaning towards SET, in this context there's not much else it could mean.
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200727
okay (as described above) i'm trying something new.
The main problem with my old system is that right now SimpleTask? really only makes it easy to work with one todo file (because you can't easily make multiple widgets on the same phone that autoload different todo files), so i was putting all of my tasks into one big file. But, i also wasn't taking the time to categorize each task using tags/projects (the '+' sigil), because (a) most notes/tasks are not long-lived/important enough to merit that amount of typing, and (b) often i jot down a task or note while talking to someone else and i don't want to make them wait. So, although most of the time the priorities kept the important things at top, every now and then i wanted to see if i was forgetting anything for some particular project (like when the construction contractor asks me if everything is okay to move to the next phase), which meant that i had to look thru the entire todo.txt file with all of my tasks and notes for my whole life.
other problems with todo.txt:
Everything is plaintext files in Dropbox (or some other file sync system).
There are two popular plaintext task list formats and we use of both of them: todo.txt and org-mode.
Todo.txt is used as a memory aide when you are not at your desk and when you are talking to someone. Specifically, it is used for:
Todo.txt is appropriate for this because there are todo.txt applications with very streamlined UIs, such as SimpleTask?, which make it very quick to (a) enter new notes, with priorities (b) scroll thru notes in priority order, and (c) restrict your view to notes meeting certain search criteria.
Org-mode is used for:
We use multiple org-mode files with an important distinction; some of these files are in the org-mode 'agenda' and some aren't.
Priorities are letters, with "A" being the highest priority and "Z" the lowest (things without any priority attached are sometimes treated as last priority, lower than Z). In some contexts (namely, in the todo.txt file and in the org-mode agenda files) we assign a special meaning to priorities A thru L; specifically, we use this to class items by how soon they need to be done/how soon they become relevant. There are 3 time periods: task, day, week. For each time period, we think of this one/next, e.g. today/tomorrow; and we think of high-priority/normal priority. For example, we have high-priority tasks for tomorrow; this is the day time period, next, priority high. So, we have 4 categories for each of 3 time period, and 4x3 = 12, which we line up with the letters A thru L:
Really, though, priorities are just a tool we use to cause the computer to sort items in a certain order. For example, priorities A thru C can be temporarily 'hijacked' to cause your todo.txt app to display a 3-level list of things that you want to remember to bring up in the next meeting. In fact, this sort of 'scratchpad' use is the primary purpose of A and B. 'Next' can also mean 'next few', e.g. C and D can be used to store information for the task after the next task too, and 'tomorrow' can be used to store information about the day after tomorrow too; i sometimes use it to mean one of these, and sometimes the other. I use 'this week' to mean 'the next 7 days or so' and 'next week' to mean 'the next 14 days or so' but you can use them to literally mean 'the current week' and 'the next week' if you want. You can also sometimes use L to mean 'next week' and other times 'next 30 days or so', etc. So this is all very flexible. The only specific one is 'today, high priority'; that should only be used for something that really 'must' be done today, which in practice means that it is important enough that you are willing to stay late at the office until it's done, stay up late to get it done at home, etc.
Priorities lower than M are used in various ways, for example:
todo how about
todo ideas:
quick but unimportant stuff? (used to be 'K') stuff to say to ppl? (used to be 'J') other list/context/waiting-on/reactive? importance? urgency? flag?
are A-L equivalent to 'flagging'? is there a TODO status (NEXT?) for 'flagged' items? are 'quick' things a TODO status, a priority level, a tag, a separate list/file? are 'quick things the same as stuff to say to ppl, and the same as list/context/waiting-on/reactive? (altho i think 'PLAN' and 'BLOCKED' and 'LATER' now take care of 'waiting-on', right?) how about importance and urgency; are they priorities or tags? do low-priority 'home' tasks still go in the 'home' file? what if they are quick? what if they aren't? does 'someday' have to be reviewed ever (thinking no)? analog of gmail's 'important and unread'?
insight: priority levels are just what makes the software sort stuff, no more than that
leaning towards:
incubate? projects list? mb just projects tag for emacs stuck proj func projects list? tickler file? task calendar in addition to agenda/agenda cal sync? use week/month/quarter as "ticker"s? this wk/next wk that works like today/tomorrow? https://github.com/alphapapa/org-super-agenda
todo doc (document) agenda contexts
2 this week, 2 next wk, 2 this minth, 2 next month etc priorities? 2 scratch pris and 2 next? that would be 24 already! thru next week is 12
someday evaluate the popular todo apps, not so that i can use them (i want plaintext), but so that i can learn about their way of doing things:
mb also:
mb see: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/best-todo-app-remember-the-milk/
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another idea:
"D" contains items actually SCHEDULED for today. After D, we see today/tomorrow/next few days/week/next few weeks/month/quarter, but items in those bins aren't actually 'scheduled' yet. I call these bins 'relative eras' and the action of putting something in those bins is 'protoscheduling'; if you put something in 'month', that isn't a solid plan to do it this month (if that's what you meant, you'd actually schedule it, not just 'proto'schedule it), it's just saying something like you think you'll do it this month; and/or you want to be reminded of it whenever you work on planning further out than the next week or two; and/or you want to be reminded of it more frequently than once a month.
IUQ:
The motivation for IUQ is that there's three very different kinds of reasons why you might consider doing one task before another:
importance semantics: 2: extreme importance 1: important 0: default -1: unimportant
urgency semantics: 1: urgent 0: default -1: non-urgent
size semantics: -1: big task (project; more than a few days of work) 0: average task +1: small task (quick; "just a few minutes")
examples:
so the above examples would be sorted:
Note that some of these items are things that you can choose whether or not to do (e.g. go to festival), and others are things you have to do sooner or later (e.g. taxes). This system is not intended to tell you that you must work on everything of higher rank before you consider doing anything of lower rank; rather, it's just a sorting system to make a list to help you remember to think about things you may or may not choose to do.
If you think items deserve more than a +2 on importance or more than a +1 on urgency, instead protoschedule or schedule them for today/tomorrow/next few days/this week. For example, if the trash is stinking and really needs to go out, schedule it for today.
Note that most items at -3 (e.g. "learn Spanish") are destined to be moved out of the lists of actively-tracked todo items into a low-priority/someday/maybe file, because these are mostly just ideas for optional projects that you might want to take on someday in the far future; similarly for most unimportant, non-urgent tasks of average size (which are at -2).
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another intro
Everything is plaintext files in Dropbox.
Uses two tools / standardized formats:
todo.txt is used as a quick memory aid when you are out and about:
org-mode is used to store, prioritize, and plan.
todo.txt is a good memory aid on mobile because it is simple, so it has spawned mobile clients (such as SimpleTask? on Android) with very streamlined UIs. org-mode is good for organizing tasks and your time because it has a ton of functionality, including organizating tasks in hierarchical outlines, attaching lengthly notes to tasks, displaying overviews of your schedule and your tasks with various filtering and sorting options (including drawing in tasks from multiple files), task statuses, and dependencies between tasks.
In both todo.txt and org-mode we assign what they call 'priorities' to tasks. Priorities are letters from A to Z. However, we don't really use them as priorities; in our system, if one task has an earlier priority letter than the other, that does NOT mean that you should necessarily do that task before the other one. Instead, we use the letters just to sort tasks when they are displayed.
There are 3 sorts of places that tasks can 'live':
Every task has a task status. Task statuses are divided into 'open' and 'closed'. Tasks are only tracked if they have an 'open' status AND they are in a 'tracked' file.
Below, we describe the meanings ascribed to priority letters and to task statuses. These only apply to 'tracked' files; each untracked file might use this system, or may use another system.
PRIORITY LETTER MEANINGS
We assign idiosyncratic meanings to the priority letters A-M and Z. There are 4 types of idiosyncratic meanings:
The letters are:
A-C don't have any fixed meaning, but rather are a scratchpad for things like agendas for a phone meeting, grocery lists, reminders to do something next, or prioritization within the current day.
D and E are things that are scheduled for today (D), or for the next few days (E).
F is a way to 'flag' tasks that you want to be top-of-mind.
G is for things that are scheduled for this week.
H-L are for tasks that aren't scheduled for this week, but that you wish to keep in mind.
X-Z is for things that you are planning to move to the 'untracked' org-mode files. These are tasks that you don't need to be reminded about.
Regarding the keep-in-mind tasks (letters H-L), there are some suggested semantics to help decide which letter to give a task. These are only suggestions; feel free to assign tasks to these letters however you want.
One suggestion is to assign tasks to letters H-L based on how soon you expect to do it (or alternately, how soon you want to be reminded about the task; or how frequently you need to be reminded of the task). The time periods are:
(we already have G for things that are definitely scheduled for this week; H could mean things that you'd like to get done this week but aren't scheduled for this week because you might not get to them)
week/month/quarter etc refers to the next 7/30/90 days
Alternately, you might assign a task to a letter based on its IUQ score (you can mix-and-match with the time-based system; so some tasks may be at a letter because of that, and others might simultaineously be at the same letter because of their IUQ score). The IUQ score is a number ranging from 0 to 7 that combines Importance, Urgency, and how Quickly you can do the task. The IUQ score is just the sum of three subscores I, U, and Q: I (importance) ranges from 0 (less important) to +6 (extremely important); U (urgency) ranges from 0 (less urgent) to +3 (urgent); and Q (quickness) ranges from 0 (this is a whole project) to +3 ("just a minutes"). For all of the subscores, the default value is 1, so the default score is 1+1+1=3.
Semantics of urgency and quickness subscores:
Urgency:
Quickness:
Tasks with subscores of 2 or higher are tagged IMPORTANT, URGENT, and/or QUICK respectively.
If you feel a task deserves a higher IUQ subscore than the limits, consider just scheduling it now. If you feel a task deserves an IUQ subscore below zero, perhaps this task shouldn't be tracked at all.
Here's how the scores correspond to the letters:
(is this too many degrees of freedom? Many systems just have URGENT and IMPORTANT tags, not integers ('quick' could also be a tag). I think it may be fine; we aren't doing TOO much more than those systems; URGENT/IMPORTANT/QUICK tags correspond to I/U/Q subscores of 2; no tag corresponds to I/U/Q subscores of 1; and we are adding new 'tags' of NONURGENT, UNIMPORTANT, PROJECT (the opposite of URGENT/IMPORTANT/QUICK). After all this, we also add two new kinds of 'super-importance': I subscores 3 and 4, which doesn't seem too crazy. Incidentally, the reason that we chose the range of 2-6 for keep-in-mind priority letters is that an 'IMPORTANT' task (one with an I subscore >=2) will be at least 2, even if it has zeros in U and Q, and that a task which is all of important and urgent and quick will be at least a 6.)
Putting all this together:
A task with no priority is sometimes treated as if it had priority K.
Note that our 'flagged' is different from org-mode tag :FLAGGED:, which i think has to do with resolving merge conflicts when syncing with.
TASK STATUS MEANINGS
The typical lifecycle of a task is:
Some other things that can happen are:
Commonly used statuses for tracked (open) tasks:
TODO: explain #+TODO: NEW SPEC TODO GIVE PLAN WAIT SOON NEXT WIP VERI
| LATER MAYBE RELY DONE HOLD NOPE CANT OSCOPE DUP |
Commonly used statuses for untracked (closed) tasks (recall that the difference between tracked and untracked is that you want to sometimes be reminded of tracked tasks):
For brevity, the infinitive is used for verbs, even though the past participle is what we mean (e.g. PLAN means PLANNED, BLOCK means BLOCKED, and CANCEL means CANCELED).
If something is BLOCKED but it doesn't deserve to be tracked, set it to LATER.
There are also some statuses that aren't so common; these are thought of as subtypes of the common ones:
Uncommon subtype statuses (these are all for tracked (open) tasks):
Note that the '-IFY' statuses (SPECIFY and VERIFY) are exceptions to our 'we mean the past participle' rule; these are things that need specification/verification, not things already specified/verified.
Note that the Kanban widget that we use in org-mode files won't display tasks in the uncommon statuses unless you reconfigure it to do so (it also is currently configured to only display open tasks).
FILES
tracked org-mode files:
TODO: -rec files for recurring tasks
Note: sometimes you want an org-heading to contain multiple tasks under it with different contexts; that's okay, put these in the contextless file (e.g. work.org rather than work-errands.org). The point of context-specific files like life-home.org and life-out.org is just to declutter life.org a little bit, but in those cases it's better to keep related tasks together. In general, everything that could go in a separate file under a topic can also go in the main topic file; and anything can go in the core/generic files.
untracked org-mode files (these are all in a subfolder called 'untracked', except for untracked.org and notes.org, which are in the main folder so that applications that only scan the main folder (like beorg) can see it):
TAGS (case-sensitive)
Two things orthogonal to the ordinary lifecycle of a task through various statuses are:
PROPERTIES
GETTING STARTED
Create the files in FILES.
Put these lines near the top of every tracked .org file, and probably most of the untracked .org files too:
| LATER MAYBE DONE CANCEL |
except replace the tag +organiz in FILETAGS with appropriate tags. The convention is to us @ for @contexts, and + for +topics. You can omit the kanban from new.org and recur.org and most untracked files. You can omit filetags for core/generic files, except for tasks.org.
Put something like the following in your init.el, adding any custom tracked project files at the end:
(setq org-agenda-files (quote ("~/org/new.org" "~/org/tasks.org" "~/org/recur.org" "~/org/life.org" "~/org/life-home.org" "~/org/life-out.org" "~/org/life-it.org" "~/org/life-money-legal.org" "~/org/fun.org" "~/org/work.org" "~/org/work-office.org" "~/org/work-out.org" "~/org/social.org" "~/org/trips.org" "~/org/organiz.org") ))
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TODO agenda view ideas: names: 'radar', upcoming, soon, watchlist, exploring, planned, anytime upcoming agenda view with flagged, urgent, scheduled soon. radar agenda view with flagged, important? Need a list with wait excluded, also stew, pause (paws?).
triage radar <-- good name, r is a secondary home key incoming Soon, Near, Upcoming Watching, Radar eXploring Person PLan anytime high priority needs attention <-- n is a primary home key important deleGated Backlog Go, Next, Do Overview / (Overload!) High priority
decision so far:
arst dgjh neio: a taken r Radar s taken t taken d do now? g ? j ? h ? high priority? n Now e Taken i Incoming o Overload
some things that we might need:
LATER how to deal with important recurring tasks, like taxes, without cluttering 'important' view -- because you DO want them on that view when they are near/scheduled for now, right? so maybe just show a 0-day or 1-day agenda, and otherwise exclude recurring tasks ('RECUR' tag) from the task lists?
LATER priority semantics ideas: currently i've been using priority P (maybe for 'plan' or 'project') for things that need action but not yet, but also not far enough off to be LATER (eg in the house, make sure the plumber signs the warranty card when they come by). To make this more mnemonic, should this be L, for Later? P could then be Probably. Or Person. Could also use N for Near or S for Soon. :STEW:
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FALLACIES
PRIORITIZE IMPORTANT TASKS BEFORE UNIMPORTANT (similar: prioritize 'MUST DO's before 'SHOULD DO's)
What about:
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notes:
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more principals toexplain:
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"highest priority": A-F or IMPORTANT+URGENT "high priority": A-G or IMPORTANT or URGENT
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instead of putting SET stuff in W, put it according to time:
G for week M for month Q for quarter >Q otherwise
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just thinking out loud:
so i'm settling on up to 6 agenda views:
Do now is the simplest to explain. Do now is about: i have some time to do something now, what should i do?
Overload is the view that should be the minimal that you have to look at so that you don't drop any balls.
Radar is what you look at to get the bigger picture. should be one or both of: (1) stuff that is 'looming' (ie important stuff even if not urgent) (2) a time-based view (what is coming up in the future)
Incoming should be one or both of: (1) moving NEW tasks into the system (2) moving non-NEW tasks 'through' the system, that is, planning/prioritizing/scheduling/selecting tasks out of the many TODOs for which ones will actually be worked on soon.
Not sure how 'planning' is different from incoming #2. Not sure how incoming #1 is different from just searching for status NEW.
High priority/importance should be a stripped down view that just shows you the most (important?) (high priority?) tasks. Is this different from radar?
The built in all tasks list lists all tasks sorted by priority.
Some questions:
some thoughts:
Seems to me that the answer is to add a new mechanism for 'soft scheduling'. Ideas:
(or both)
Then we'd have a movement from:
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some options:
later:
filtering those down:
filtering those down:
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a big confusion for me is does PLAN mean im planning within the task, or planning when to do the task? in some sense its a fuzzy boundary because before you plan within the task, you dont know your estimated duration, dependencies, when other ppl are available. so lets make it outside the task. does PLAN mean On ThE? PLAN or NEED TO MAKE A PLAN? i think the latter; we have DO and SET for the other thing.
does PLAN come before or after DO? we already have IDEA, are we moving approval to between todo and do? or can approved, unsched things be todo, and do is more of a do now? hmm:
so to summarize:
filtering those down:
yknow, i have this idea that DO is just a TODO with more committment to doing it (soon), but if you just look at the usual meaning of the word without my added meaning, obviously if you are going to PLAN at all, you PLAN before you DO, not after. So i think that decides it. Unless we want to change it to WILLDO or WILL.
however by this 'ordinary meaning' analysis, DO and GO would be synonyms, and SOON would probably precede both of them. So maybe that's not the way to think about it.
so questions:
( some words for chosen/elevated/committed-to things, and some tag names: Queued, selected, prioritized, chosen, will, elevated, near, next, soon, upcoming, looming, will do, DO, :NEED: :MUST: :COMMITTED: :LOOM: :WORRY FEAR:. some words for flagged lists: Flag highlight star. )
to summarize
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some concepts:
importance, urgency, quickness
note: quickness not duration b/c we want higher quickness to make you do it sooner
timing (week month qtr year soon, DE G HI)
necessity: MUST
degree of committment: IDEA, TODO, DO
readiness: WAIT, BLOC we don't have a READY state (and GO doesn't mean that) b/c we assume everything is ready unless it is BLOC or has WAIT? (mb not everything, but things in NEXT mb)
'next' for 'next action' within subtasks
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Agenda views:
Built-in agenda views (there are others, see the Agenda minibuffer menu): a: the week's Agenda t: all Tasks, sorted in order of priority. Unprioritized tasks are placed with priority H m: match tasks (like all tasks, but filtered)
Custom agenda views:
Most used:
Other:
Note: most of the most commonly used custom agenda views are on the home row buttons in Colemak
Longer descriptions:
General conventions: Many sections in custom views have logic to prevent tasks that were present in previous sections from showing up a second time in another section below. This is assumed (even though it is only sometimes present) and usually not called out/labeled/documented.
* Incoming This view is for processing new tasks, and for looking at the backlog of tasks, prioritizing them, and planning which ones to do soon.
It starts with NEW or unprioritized tasks, and then has a number of sections with progressively lower priorities, so that you can raise their priority or plan/schedlued them when the time comes. This agenda view is focused on tasks that are ready to be done and require processing, so it omits tasks that are not yet ready, or tasks for which there is already a trigger for them to be done.
The first section lists all new and all unprioritized tasks. New tasks are broken down into a few subsections so that you can deal with the unprioritized, unscheduled ones first (in case some of them turn out to be urgent).
The rest of this view focuses on tasks which are not yet "on the plan" to be done in one way or another, and which are ready to be done soon. If a task is either scheduled or status SET or tagged DG (delegated), then it won't appear here, because it is already "on the plan". If a task is either tagged WAIT or status BLOC, it won't appear here, because it is not ready to be done yet.
The second section is priorities A thru G (things scheduled for this week, or flagged (F)). The section is broken down by status. Tasks in statuses GO, WIP, VERI aren't listed because if something is in one of those statuses in the current week, it is already "on the plan".
The next section is priorities H and I. Any task in priorities H and I must have been put there manually, so you can use this as a sort of "on-deck" for tasks that didn't quite make the cut for this week but which you are planning to do Real Soon Now. This section, and all following sections, does have a subsection for GO, WIP, VERI, because you may still want to promote such a task to a higher priority.
The next section is tasks which are either (both IMPORTANT and URGENT), or WARN, or LOOM or KEY. These are things which may really need your attention for one reason or another.
The next section is tasks which are either IMPORTANT, or URGENT, or MUST. These are tasks which may really need your attention, but not as badly as the previous section. We say "IMPORTANT xor URGENT" because if a task was both IMPORTANT and URGENT, it would have already appeared above in the previous section, and so won't appear here (i should probably just change that to "IMPORTANT or URGENT" to follow the convention of not mentioning logic whose only effect is to prevent duplicates).
The last section just the rest of the priorities J thru W.
* do Now This view is for you to look at when you are free to do something, to see which task you should do next. The sections in this view are ordered so that if you still have time after dealing with the items in one section, you want to think about doing the tasks in the next section down.
This view doesn't have tasks tagged WAIT or DG, so even in the short term you'll want to also look at the Overload view to catch those.
The first three sections are for Today (priorities A,B,C,D), the Next Few Days (priority E), and this Week (priorities F and G). In each section= there are three subsections; (1) calendar view (2) tasks ready to be done by you right now (in one of the statuses DO, NEXT, GO, WIP, VERI, and not tagged with any of WAIT, STEW, DG) (3) tasks not in (2), and not tagged with any of WAIT, STEW, DG. The last subsection are tasks which may not really be read to be done by you right now, but since they are supposed to be done so soon we list them anyways. For the Week section, we break it down further; there is one subsection for DO, WIP, VERI (and not WAIT STEW DG), and another subsection for either statuses TODO, PLAN, DO, SET, SOON, NEXT, or tag STEW, and not WAIT, DG. This is because if you marked something TODO, PLAN, DO, SET, SOON, NEXT, or STEW, and you marked something else GO, WIP or VERI, you might have intended to focus on the GO/WIP/VERI task first. But we still list the others because you're intending to do all tasks with priority G or above this week (except maybe the F=Flagged tasks, which might be there just to remind you; but in that case we still want to list them whereever we list G tasks).
The next section is priority H, statuses GO, WIP, VERI, and not tagged any of WAIT STEW DG. These are tasks which you have already started and/or selected to be 'on deck' or 'next up' to be scheduled/done, after the 'this week' tasks.
The next section is H, I, or tasks which are all of IMPORTANT and URGENT and QUICK. We only list tasks with statuses DO
| NEXT | GO | WIP | VERI, and which are not tagged WAIT or DG. Note that as this criteria is looser than the previous section, we list tasks in H which were statuses DO | NEXT or which were tagged STEW in this section. The motivation for excluding WAIT or DG is that these tasks are not ready/do not need to be done by you right now; the subsequent sections also exclude those, except for one at the end. The motivation for excluding task statuses IDEA, TODO, PLAN, SET, SOON is that IDEA and TODO have not yet been 'selected' to be done soon, SET tasks are already "on the plan"/scheduled in some other way, and SOON tasks aren't supposed to be done before GO tasks (and so have to be moved to GO in a planning view before they show up here). |
The next section is tasks which are either IMPORTANT and URGENT (but not QUICK), or tasks which are at least one of IMPORTANT or URGENT, and which are also tagged either LOOM or WARN (what about things which are neither LOOM nor WARN? Those are not treated specially in this view; if the task is neither urgent nor important, then the priority level suffices to sort the task, at least for deciding what to do next; LOOM or WARN may be more relevant for some of the other views used for planning, rather than doing).
Next we have tasks which are IMPORTANT or URGENT and QUICK, and then IMPORTANT or URGENT (from here on we also exclude Scheduled tasks, because those are already "on the plan" for some other time, until one of the last sections), and then tasks which are neither important nor urgent. This last section is divided into subsections depending on status; first we have DO
| NEXT | GO | WIP | VERI, and then all other statuses except NEW | IDEA | BLOC | SET. Then we have tasks which are scheduled or SET, and finally we have the tasks which were excluded above (NEW | IDEA | BLOC | WAIT | DG), just so you can see what was left out above. |
* Overload
This view is the one thing you have to look at when you're busy to ensure that you don't drop any balls (at least, balls which are urgent and important). It has a few sections with progressively lower priorities, and for each section it lists every task that falls under those priorities, so that you don't forget anything.
The first few sections are Today (A-D), Next Few Days (E), and Week (F-G). Each section starts with a calendar agenda, and then has a number of subsections. The subsections are (supposed to be) a partition, namedly, every task in the relevant priority levels (that is, every task that belongs in this section) should appear in one and only one of these subsections, except that tasks that appear under WARN also appear in another subsection.
The subsections are:
In more detail:
After this we have a section for (H-I or IMPORTANT&URGENT or WARN). Here we add a new subsection, scheduled/SET. The rationale is that, if a task is in status SET or if it is scheduled, there is already a plan in place to trigger it to be done, so it may not need your attention right now. In the earlier sections, since those were tasks planning to be done this week, we figure that the 'plan to trigger it to be done' has probably already 'triggered' and if not it will real soon, so you'd better just do it.
After this section we have a list of unprioritized, unscheduled, NEW tasks, because maybe some of these are actually things that need to be worked on really soon, so you'd better skim them.
Finally we have a section for RELY tasks which are high priority (which means different things in different places, but here it means I+ or IMPORTANT&URGENT or WARN). These are things that you've delegated to someone else and decided you don't need to track closely, but since they are high priority you might want to at least glance at them now.
* Radar
This view is for getting a sense of upcoming/impending tasks. It is not about what is going on right now, it's about the future. It's pretty similar to the Overload view except that it's more focused on things farther out.
The subsections are the same as the Overload view except that WARN is listed in its own section rather than a WARN subsection, and DEC is included with STEW. DEC is items which need a decision.
For events even farther out, see the Quarter view. I originally had the Quarter view at the end of this one, but it was taking too long for Org-mode to generate the view, so i broke them up into two separate views.
The sections are:
NOTE: in the SCHEDULED/SET parts of those sections, only items scheduled in the next month are listed TODO: so far i've only enforced this for (IMPORTANT xor URGENT) or MUST TODO test that spot TODO: should have a place in QTR, or elsewhere, that shows SCHEDULED tasks that are far out? Or mb the 'deferred' is enough (is that already there?)
and then two chronological sections:
The WEEK section includes all of:
The MONTH section includes all of:
I would have put the chronological sections at the top, but it made generating the view slower for some reason.
* High priority
A compact, straightforward listing of high-priority tasks, so that you can get a sense of them. There are two sections, 'Unscheduled, not SET', and 'Scheduled or SET'; the motivation is that things that are either scheduled or SET already have a plan that will trigger them to be done, so they may not need as much attention from you right now. The subsections in each part are:
There are four sections:
etd-people should have the format (character . string), where the character is the key to access this person-view, and the string is the person's name.
A person-view shows all (open) tasks tagged with @NAME, where name is the person's name. These are divided into sections:
This was meant to be the second part to the Radar agenda view. It took too long to generate when they were in one view, so i split them into two. This shows the rest of the tasks that didn't make it into Radar (P-W but not unprioritized, and neither IMPORTANT nor URGENT), and then a view for the next 90 days (omitting the first 30 days, because that's already in the MONTH view). The 90-day view includes things tagged QTR, or scheduled or with a deadline in the given time period.
* eVerything This shows all tasks, broken down into the same subsections used in Overload, Radar, and Quarter (TODO: i think some of those use STEW and DEC and others only use STEW).
Then it shows all Scheduled or SET tasks.
* deleGated This view shows all tasks that have been delegated (with the tag DG or the status RELY), or are to-be-delegated (tag TODG).
How the views could be used.
Every now and then, you check the Incoming view. You identify the NEW tasks and go and file and prioritize them and give them a task status. You identify the unprioritized tasks and prioritize them. You look at the other tasks and decide which ones to do in the next week, raising their priority to G or higher, and which tasks to do soon after that, raising their priority to H or I. You decide which TODOs to move on to PLAN or DO status, indicating that you plan to do them somewhat soon, and move some to SOON status if they are coming up even sooner. You mark some tasks as TODG along with the person to delegate them to; other tasks you may mark as STEW if you need to think about them a bit.
Frequently, you check the 'do Now' view. This gives you a menu of tasks that you should do now.
Fairly frequently, you check the Overload view. This lets you keep tabs on what's going on so that you don't forget anything.
Every now and then, you:
.. take a look at the Radar view, to get a sense of what's coming up, and to make sure that you start on big projects early enough. .. check the High priority view, to make sure you don't forget anything important/urgent. .. check the Deferred view, to make sure you aren't forgetting about some deferred task that needs to be reactivated
Before a meeting with someone, you bring up their Person view, to see if there's anything you're supposed to say to them, and to remind you what delegated tasks, if any, you have given them.
Infrequently, you check the Quarter view, to get a sense of what's coming up later on.
You don't use the eVerything or deleGated views very often, but they're there if you want them.
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by the way, i think ETD in its current form is probably way over-engineered. I added all this stuff in because, as you can see in the evolution above, i started slightly simpler (but still very complicated) but found that that structure wasn't yet complicated enough to express what i wanted to say about my tasks. Perhaps after i use ETD for awhile i'll be able to identify how it should be simplified.
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differences between similar-sounding things (TODO)
DG RELY Both of these mark tasks that have been delegated. DG is a tag and RELY is a status. RELY is a closed status, so tasks in status RELY are not considered 'tracked' and will not show up in agenda views unless they specifically query RELY or closed tasks.
DG is intended to be used for delegated tasks that still need to be tracked/checked up on frequently, and RELY is intended to be used for delegated tasks that do not need to be checked up on very much or at all.
SET BLOC Both of these are task statuses that mark tasks that are awaiting some dependency or trigger. The difference is that SET is intended for tasks for which everything is going according to plan and need no further attention until the dependency or trigger occurs, at which time you or whoever is going to do the task will be reminded through other means. BLOC is intended for tasks which require vigilance, perhaps because they require your attention to 'unblock' them, or perhaps just so that you remember to activate them when the dependency/blocker is taken care of.
PLAN SET Scheduled All of these have to do with planning. PLAN status means that something is in the plannING stage, not that it has been planned. SET means that there is some sort of plan to trigger activity on this task when the time comes, so you don't have to worry too much about remembering to do it using the ETD system. Scheduled means that a specific starting date (or reminder date) has been set for this task.
TODO NEXT DO SOON GO All of these have to do with indicating a task to be done that is in (or near) a state of readiness. NEXT is the odd one out here; it is to indicate which task(s) among sibling tasks on a project is a 'next action'; otherwise it is similar to TODO. The states TODO DO SOON GO are a progression of committment/imminence. TODO is the initial state of a task (aside from NEW, which indicates that the task has not yet been processed/filed/prioritized/initialized/fully inducted into the system). TODO implies only 'should do'. Out of all the TODOs, those tasks selected to be done (sometime soonish) progress to state DO. Those tasks which are coming up soon are changed to SOON. And those tasks ready to start now are changed to GO.
LOOM WARN These are both tags indicating some sort of worry, unease, or trouble. LOOM merely indicates a future task which is 'looming', implying some unease about whether you shouldn't have already started, or whether you have allowed enough time or will be able to finish the task successfully in the time required; but no actual 'trouble'. WARN indicates some sort of a problem that need attention.
STEW DEC These are both tags indicating that some sort of decision must be made. STEW indicates that a decision won't be made immediately, so the task has been temporarily 'paused' while you mull it over. DEC indicates merely that a decision is needed.
IMPORTANT MUST These are both tags showing that a task is 'important' in some sense or another. IMPORTANT refers to the magnitude of the consequence of completing (nor not completing, or completing well or poorly); tasks with an IUQ IMPORTANCE subscore of 2 or more are tagged IMPORTANT. MUST is necessity; it is a tag for tasks that indicates that choosing not to complete the task would be an invalid choice. There can be tasks which must be done but which are not 'important', for example, refilling your car with gas, and there can be tasks which are 'important' but not necessary, for example an optional task that if completed can earn a lot of money.
IMPORTANT priority These are both ways of saying which task is 'important' in some sense or another. IMPORTANT is as above, while 'priority' refers to the 'priority' mechanic of org-mode which is here used to sort tasks (with some semantics, for example D+ is today, E is the next few days, G is the week, etc).
LATER HOLD These are both closed task statuses that are ways of saying that a task has been deferred or suspended until later. LATER means that the task is expected to be done at some later time, with the implication that there is some state of affairs that would imply that now it's time to do the task, while HOLD means that the task is currently on hold until further notice, with the implication that there is a choice whether or not to ever reactivate the task at all.
LATER HOLD WAIT BLOC SET Scheduled These are all ways of indicating that a is planned to be done at some later time. LATER HOLD BLOC SET are task statuses, WAIT is a tag, and Scheduled is a property. LATER and HOLD are closed statuses, meaning that you don't have to worry too much about them for the time being (the distinction between LATER and HOLD is explained in a previous entry). WAIT is similar to both BLOC and SET in that it indicates that some external event has to occur before progress can continue; but WAIT is a tag and BLOCK and SET are task statuses; so WAIT is appropriate when you want the task to have some other status. The distinction between BLOC and SET is explained in a previous entry. Scheduled is similar to SET but indicates that a particular day has been chosen for this task (or at least as a time to be reminded of this task).
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TODO: you can have space as an agenda command key " "
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when you delegate something, does Urgency and Quickness refer to FOR YOU, or FOR THE PERSON ACTUALLY DOING IT? For example, it may take you a little while to hire someone to fix something at your house, but it will take them even longer to do it; and if you have a general contractor and you've engaged them to fix it, but they have a lot of other stuff they have to do first, then the urgency of the task might not be important, if they're already going to do it as soon as the other blocking stuff is done.
I think you can decide this on a case-by-case basis, based on how high up in the various task lists you want to see this task.You could also decide to manually put some delegated tasks at manual low priorities (S-W).
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another exposition of the task open status progression:
Pre-TODO:
TODO:
Chosen to be done but not time to do it yet:
Ready or in progress:
Also, delegation:
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@ prefix for tags is for CONTEXTS or PEOPLE (you can think of a person as a type of context)
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gitlab issue ontology ideas
gitlab default labels:
bug
confirmed
critical
discussion
documentation
enhancement
suggestion
supportgitlab Scoped labels: mutually exclusive sublabels
gitlab label priority (binary function on labels)
" If you sort by Priority, GitLab? uses this sort comparison order:
Items with milestones that have due dates, where the soonest assigned milestone is listed first.
Items with milestones with no due dates.
Items with a higher priority label.
Items without a prioritized label."State State (open or closed) Health status (on track, needs attention, or at risk) Confidentiality Tasks (completed vs. outstanding)
" Health status ultimate gold Version history
To help you track the status of your issues, you can assign a status to each issue to flag work that’s progressing as planned or needs attention to keep on schedule:
On track (green)
Needs attention (amber)
At risk (red)"related issues: can be just "related", or "blocking" or "blocked by"
Planning and tracking Milestone Due date Weight
weight in gitlab is a nonnegative integer (but i would like just any integer, with 0 being the default weight, so that you can go both above and below the default)
" Milestones in GitLab? are a way to track issues and merge requests created to achieve a broader goal in a certain period of time.
Milestones allow you to organize issues and merge requests into a cohesive group, with an optional start date and an optional due date. "
" Special milestone filters
When filtering by milestone, in addition to choosing a specific project milestone or group milestone, you can choose a special milestone filter.
None: Show issues or merge requests with no assigned milestone.
Any: Show issues or merge requests that have an assigned milestone.
Upcoming: Show issues or merge requests that have been assigned the open milestone that has the next upcoming due date (i.e. nearest due date in the future).
Started: Show issues or merge requests that have an open assigned milestone with a start date that is before today."Multiple issue boards
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weird things about current todo system:
and todo systems in general:
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key things:
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should i add priorities in Oot toreads, bookmarks to read, etc?
should i have a small set of priority levels, or a large set of intergers (both + and -, with 0 as default)?
should i above urgent/importance levels and just have them be binary, and have a priority level?
should i use tags for day/next few days/week, etc instead of priority letters, and use tags for urgent/important/flagged/starred, and then use the letters for something else (e.g. overall importance or overall priority)? This wouldn't sort right on simpletask, but could convert between orgmode and todo.txt formatted items
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backlog, todo, in progress, in review, done, canceled priority: none, super high, high, med, low
bug/feature/improvement
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tasks, subtasks, task relations: blocking, blockedby, related
group tasks into: task/subtask; tasks under milestone; tasks under project/department; tasks under "epic"/cross-department project
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"So the team created commitfest.postgresql.org. Contributors now register the patches on this site for final review. Several times per year committers stop their own work and make time to accept/defer/reject/apply the patches."
" Patchwork is a similar tool that is not tied to Postgres and is more suitable for general use. Patchwork supplements a mailing list by subscribing to the list just like a person would, and capturing patches from the emails. For each patch it creates a web page. It doesn’t fragment discussion because it doesn’t allow commenting through the web interface, it merely reflects any comments from the emails, and allows maintainers to mark patches with a state such as Accepted, Rejected, or Under Review. "
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https://github.com/driusan/PoormanIssueTracker
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" You have stuff to do today, stuff to do tomorrow, and stuff you might or might not do. Each day you roll the active lists forward.
Squint, and it’s just personal Kanban, with TODO and DOING, along with PARKING. " -- [2]
" Most teams I've seen that hate Jira et al usually have an overly complicated process, with far too many "states" for a ticket, a million mandatory fields, multiple assignees, etc. This naturally results in people spending far more time in the tool, which is time they could be spending actually doing productive work. Conversely, teams that like Jira tend to have very few ticket statuses/fields. Standups are quick, sprint planning is quick, everyone wins. " -- [3]
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" jvanderbot on Dec 30, 2019 [–]
Similarly, I use todo.md, and have VIM highlight "[ ]", "[x]", "[>]", "[v]", and "[-]" for bullet-journal-like TODO, DONE, Deferred, Dropped, and FAILED, respectively. " https://github.com/jodavaho/bashlog
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idea: since it's easy to go to the beginning or end of text files, use both ends. E.g. prioritized todos at the top, 'brainstorm' todos at the bottom. Or short term at the top, long term at the bottom. Or urgent at the bottom, important at the top. Or active todo at the top, waiting-on at the bottom. Or tasks at the top, notes at the bottom.
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"I use github projects with a Research/Maybe, Todo, In Progress, Testing, and Done columns. Each"
" Each item has a checklist of steps needed to complete the item. For example, I might have an item that is "Workers have an inventory" and a bunch of steps to do that "Add an inventory component, add a take item event, etc." that are markdown checkboxes. "
" I do pretty much the same manually with Kanbanflow (columns represent days, leftmost is "now/current", rightmost is whatever's pushed later to my next sprint). I combine this with a pomodoro color-code for "short/easy" (1 pomo), "medium" (2-3 pomo), "long/hard" (4+) and plan my day.
I took this from uncle Bob, you just give things a rating (unitless). "Oh, that's a 6, no less!", "oh that's a 2 at most". It's enough for development (I find it's only management that wants more 'reporting' and 'estimates', being solo I do that in medias res, i.e. on the spot). "
" I'll also often keep one text file with very tactical todos, stuff I was in the middle of typing out when interrupted, so I can quickly get back into flow state. "
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"
ww520 on Dec 30, 2019 [–]
I use an org-mode text file for simple project management. It has two sections: Todo and Release. The Todo section has the todo items; some are marked as #feature for high level functionality and as #bug for bugs. Todo's have a life cycle of TODO/WORKING/DONE/CANCELED. When a release is made, the done items are moved to the Release section. A release has two lists: Feature and Changes. The done features are moved under the Feature list and other done items are moved under the Changes list. The Todo section manages the current tasks and the Release section captures the history.
Add new feature or ideas to the end of the todo list. Add related todo's under a feature line. Add bugs as they are found. The order of the todo items is the priority. Move them around as needed. When canceling a todo, record the reason, so in case if it comes up again, you have a record of decision. That's it. It's pretty simple.
Below is a sample from one of my side projects (solo dev).
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gantt chart
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ready for development, in development, ready for review, ready for deploy
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unclear backlog planned in progress completed
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mb extend char limit on statuses to 7 chars, then we can have PLANNED. Or do we want just PLAND?
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new open team_help stalled rejected resolved deleted
open resolved abandoned
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new wip done deferred not started, outlining, wip, reviewing, done ready for review, changed requested, approved not drafted, in draft, in review, ready to publish, published planning, in beta, A/B testing not started, waiting, wip, done, on hold
suggestion: color states by Red = least done (leftmost state) to Blue = most done (rightmost state)?? Or mb green = done??
assignee, due date, priority, point of contact
new open pending(=waiting for client) on-hold(waiting) solved closed
maturity levels: planned minimal viable complete lovable see gitlab's defns: https://about.gitlab.com/direction/maturity/ " Planned: Not yet implemented in GitLab?, but on our roadmap. Minimal: Available in the product, but may not be ready for production use, yet. Viable: Significant use at GitLab? the company. CM Scorecard at least 3.14 for the job to be done (JTBD) when tested with internal users. No assessment of related jobs to be done. Complete: GitLab? the company dogfoods it exclusively. At least 100 customers use it. CM Scorecard score at least 3.63 for the identified JTBDs when tested with external users. Lovable: CM score of at least 3.95 for the JTBD (and related JTBDs, if applicable) when tested with external users. "
note: when they talk about scores, they mean average scores on a UI questionnaire from 1 thru 5
(see also NASA TRLs)
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thoughts about next version of etd:
ideas for smaller group of statuses:
see gumroad roadmap: https://www.notion.so/Roadmap-ce2ad07c483046e7941227ad7810730d
mb "roadmap" instead of "planned"?
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bug feature chore (is chore = recurring task?) process_improvement refactor
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sprint/epic-based task management (clubhouse), vs due date-based, vs priority-based, vs ordered queue
also kanban view vs list view
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tasks can stand in subtask/supertask relationships tasks can be members of projects (and multiple projects, which means you can have cross-project projects, or 'epics') is a project different from a supertask? not really.. project can have status, etc. Just call it a task. tasks can have effort estimates due dates can be hard or soft custom fields can be associated with tasks; can include enums, dates, strings, floats, integers, what else? tasks can have vote counts tasks can be assigned to people people can subscribe to tasks tasks can mention people tasks can have tags tasks can link to hyperlinks tasks can have file attachments tasks can have attached comments projects can have members project members can have permissions: read-only, read and comment, full editing, owner/admin (can add/remove others' permissions) project members can have custom roles (strings/enums) members can be grouped into teams teams can be given permissions on projects (as if the team were a member; this permission is then the permission of all members on the team, unless overridden by a specific permission grant) tasks and projects can be starred tasks have a status at least todo/done statuses can have substatuses (eg. todo can be 'todo' vs 'soon', done can be replaced by 'done' vs 'cancelled' vs 'hold', so in total we can have active/todo, active/soon, inactive/done, inactive/cancelled, inactive/hold) people are notified when tasks are assigned to them tasks can have dependencies (blocked by, blocking) tasks can have data private to each person (e.g. private priorities and statuses, eg today/upcoming/later, 'new/unseen', 'newly assigned to you', etc)
... so basically i think orgmode does all this except maybe for the ordered queue
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unscheduled, ready for development, in dev, ready for review, ready for deploy, completed backlog, to be prioritized, low impact, high impact, out of scope unstarted, started, done
not started, draft, edit, done low, normal, high, urgent open, pending, solved (like "not started, wip, done", but for support tickets) question, incident, problem, task, suggestion, other on track, at risk, off track, hold (green, yellow, red, blue) active, inactive, new, open, stalled, resolved, rejected open, overdue, completed open tasks: overdue, today, tomorrow. all tasks: open, completed new, followup, under review, demo, negotiation, won, lost analyst, competitor, customer, integrator, investor, partner, press, prospect, reseller, other how you met: networking, college, employer, hobby, service people, friends, family suggested, approved, wip, completed ---
for updates:
title, current status (on track, at risk, off track, hold), summary, what's been accomplished, what's blocked
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a support task queue has the property that you want to get to ALL the tasks, quickly. And 'getting to' them often means writing a response, like email.
so this is like email, and support queues should be (able to be) done in email
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so far it seems like org-mode does almost everything that other todo systems do. Why is org-mode lacking?
where do the other things fall down?
suggests that what is needed is less of a new tool, and more of a sync tool between org-mode and existing tools. But my past experience suggests that a new tool may be better
so what would be better than Asana would be something like org-mode, but:
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someone once said that emacs is a general TUI platform. I agree, but i'm not sure that it's a great one -- it seems unclear to me how to make a new TUI easily, and it also seems to me like existing once (e.g. magit) aren't particularly discoverable
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new email folder ideas:
what is the problem i'm trying to solve?
thoughts:
proposal:
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i'm thinking of creating separate 'ideas' folders on my website again. ideas vs projects vs notes are really pretty different.
i guess 'thoughts' too. Maybe these should be subfolders, or just file name suffixes? not top-level classifications like before.
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due soon, overdue, aged, next action single action list, someday/maybe, projects
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so main todo item status classes:
so mb: new, idea, active, inactive, closed -- what states inside active? find that blog post about sticky notes (that says to use string? and dont worry about colors initially?)
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https://trello.com/b/kZsVVrc8/front-product-roadmap has: ideas, coming soon, and then an entry for each of the next 4 quarters (they have the current quarter too but it's empty, so i'm guessing that stuff was moved to 'coming soon'; so the next 4 is really what they got)
they have about 7 things in each of 'ideas' and 'coming soon', and about 10-25 items in each of the next quarters.
anyone with a trello account can vote but no one can otherwise edit it
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"
" sbov on Jan 12, 2019 [–]
Here's my setup, it's pretty similar to the other person's:
Followup: stuff that I'm blocked on (e.g. maybe I'm waiting on someone, maybe I have to let something run for some time, etc)
Doing: stuff I'm actively working on
To Do: stuff I plan to do in the near term
Inbox: everything starts here
Backlog: stuff I want to eventually do
Anything I finish I archive. "
"
forgotmypw on Dec 30, 2019 [–]
I have a file called todo.txt, with the current tasks at the top, and everything else below that. It is in version control.
As I finish stuff, I delete it out of the file.
I add new stuff towards the top if I want to do it soon, towards the bottom if I want to save it for later.
For things which are just ideas, I have a second file called brainstorm.txt.
cacozen on Dec 30, 2019 [–]
I use a todo.diff - so the text editor color codes my lines started with `+` and `-`
jvanderbot on Dec 30, 2019 [–]
Similarly, I use todo.md, and have VIM highlight "[ ]", "[x]", "[>]", "[v]", and "[-]" for bullet-journal-like TODO, DONE, Deferred, Dropped, and FAILED, respectively.
osrec on Dec 30, 2019 [–]
I actually settled on 2 text markdown files. One for short term and one for long term tasks and notes. I usually have a list pending tasks and a list of done tasks in each file somewhere (usually at the top). Sometimes I include some very detailed notes in there too, giving each one it's own h2 title (##) and new sections almost always get added to the top of the file rather than the bottom. I also never delete anything, but I have an '## Archive' section at the bottom where I'll periodically move stuff to. I'll also rearrange the sections sometimes to make them all hang together better.
It gets messy, but it's flexible, and when I run it through a markdown formatter it looks fairly nice.
huydotnet on Dec 30, 2019 [–]
I also use a text file to keep a daily development note, like a blog post but keep it in the project’s root just for me to see what’s I’ve done and what I’m planning to do in the next day.
muzani on Dec 30, 2019 [–]
Most tools have a lot of overhead. As a solo dev, your advantage is speed, but a little friction and grist is needed sometimes.
It takes only an hour or so to restructure it for more than one person, so cross the bridge when you get there.
For to do lists I use Sublime+PlainTasks? plugin. It's fast, sticks in your head. If you want something cloud, Workflowy might be good too.
Without a product manager or scrum master it's also easy to get into tunnel vision and stray. I sometimes enjoy having an extra person to bounce ideas off and tell me to keep on track. If it's a startup, get a co-founder, give them 10%-50% just to tell you listen to you. It seems a little unfair, but it's worked for me.
Another trick would be a design doc to remind you of design decisions. I'm happiest with this format: https://random-character-generator.com/whatisthis
geniium on Dec 30, 2019 [–]
As many other have suggested, I found ClubHouse? [1] to be the best balance for solo dev.
I have tested and worked with many. Asana, JIRA, Trello were all tested alone and with small or medium sized teams. None were as simple to use and clean as clubhouse.
It was always hard to keep the big picture while going into details with theses software. But with Clubhouse am using Iteration to define the big picture and the planning of the upcoming weeks and it just works great.
Their support team is on Slack and reactive to feedback. The software seems really progressing well and the UX is polished and well thought. They really are building a cool product.
Note that I have no affiliation of any kind with any of theses software. It's just my personal taste and experience of the last ~ 10 years of software development and project management (am a Product Owner in a software company).
Wondering what will be the next one I'll use after Clubhouse.. time will tell!
[1] see https://app.clubhouse.io for more
eashman on Dec 31, 2019 [–]
I will second Clubhouse as a great tool. It’s far better thought out than Jira and attuned to software life cycles unlike Trello.
Pfhreak on Dec 30, 2019 [–]
I use github projects with a Research/Maybe, Todo, In Progress, Testing, and Done columns. Each item has a checklist of steps needed to complete the item. For example, I might have an item that is "Workers have an inventory" and a bunch of steps to do that "Add an inventory component, add a take item event, etc." that are markdown checkboxes.
This lets me do some 'design' via listing out all the classes/touchpoints, while still giving me the flexibility to tear stuff up, shuffle it around, and not lose state.
I'll also often keep one text file with very tactical todos, stuff I was in the middle of typing out when interrupted, so I can quickly get back into flow state.
ww520 on Dec 30, 2019 [–]
I use an org-mode text file for simple project management. It has two sections: Todo and Release. The Todo section has the todo items; some are marked as #feature for high level functionality and as #bug for bugs. Todo's have a life cycle of TODO/WORKING/DONE/CANCELED. When a release is made, the done items are moved to the Release section. A release has two lists: Feature and Changes. The done features are moved under the Feature list and other done items are moved under the Changes list. The Todo section manages the current tasks and the Release section captures the history.
Add new feature or ideas to the end of the todo list. Add related todo's under a feature line. Add bugs as they are found. The order of the todo items is the priority. Move them around as needed. When canceling a todo, record the reason, so in case if it comes up again, you have a record of decision. That's it. It's pretty simple.
Below is a sample from one of my side projects (solo dev).
dejv on Dec 30, 2019 [–]
I use two paper notebooks per project: one for planning/architecture/schematics which is used for more long form writing.
Second notebook is for todo items (like add name validation for model Item). When I finish something I cross it out. I usually scan past two or three pages, so many things are left in void. Thats actually a good thing, if something is important I just write it again on fresh page + I occasionally go through wider history to check if something important was not left behind.
+ I keep Notes app open all the times with note per project. Here I keep list similar to the Todo notebook but it contains things that have to be done. Once I am done with task I delete the line.
Basically paper notebooks are for development of fresh features and Notes is for bugs and fixes of production code.
NohatCoder? on Dec 30, 2019 [–]
Fancy tools are for teams, because everyone editing todo.txt eventually gets messy. It is not like you can't use the fancy tools, but if you expect them to somehow improve your work flow, prepare to be disappointed.
The thing about working solo is that you can get away with a lot less communication and writing stuff down. Depending on your memory you probably still should put a few core ideas on paper/file. As long as you are prepared to delete as necessary, putting ideas in code right away might work.
--- stickynote kanban
https://williampietri.com/writing/2015/the-big-board/
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so we're coming closer to a set of semi-common set of todo categories:
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from https://web.archive.org/web/20180412165759/https://blog.fogcreek.com/how-we-make-trello/ 
(backlog, i guess), bugs for this week, doing, waiting for test/review, ready for merge, staging unshippable, jellydonut-20
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" I use todo.md, and have VIM highlight "[ ]", "[x]", "[>]", "[v]", and "[-]" for bullet-journal-like TODO, DONE, Deferred, Dropped, and FAILED, respectively. " -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21905423 Ask HN: Solo devs, how do you plan your development?
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https://almad.blog/essays/no-bugs-just-todos/
priorization algorithm eg
" If there is downtime, it’s the top priority of everyone affected If there is an incident, it’s the top priority for an on-call agent My deployed issue waiting for my verification Reviewed pull request waiting for deployment My pull request with completed code review that requested changes Outstanding pull request waiting for code review Customer escalation received through email. For valid ones, create incident and delegate to on-call. For invalid ones, reply, apologize and provide customer support link Top issue in the sprint backlogs Any issue in the “when engineers have time” backlog "
"I advise to start with the “Todo”, “Doing” and “Done” triad and only add more if absolutely required. Moving issues from one state to another needs to be associated with an explicit action. If you add more states, make sure that you have an explicit agreement with everyone that the latest-stage ticket has the highest priority unless you want to get all tickets stuck in the most boring stage, such as “verification”."
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(note: you can use :exec what-key to see the name of a key in Mutt)
current email keyboard:
Home row: arst d h neio
a t n o: movement r: reply s: mbox e: delete i: treasure_chest h: flag
Big keys: enter, space: both display-message TODO: opportunity for something else here backspace: unbound Esc: leader key
Other index finger keys:
List of obvious opportunities:
enter, space: one of them could be something different backspace: unbound
consider a key for adding an email to a TODO list and also archiving it
