For those of us who use to-do lists, where do you keep them?
My experiences:
- Colornote, the best i have found. You can have a to-do list without any distraction. Click and it’s crossed over, click again and its unchecked again. Only android, no sync, both are problems.
- Todoist, has some misguided notion that i want my to-do to have anything to do with a calendar. When you open the app, fist task is always to close the calendar, and go to the todo list. Will either delete or reorder checked tasks, annoying. Will auto-calendar items if you write something like ”Something today”, ARGGHH. But, it will work anywhere, and sync everything across devices, so my current choice.
- I need to get into the habit of using it every day.
- I need to like using it. For me, a lack of friction is vital.
- I need something flexible enough for me to add extra detail if I need it (e.g. notes) or change my workflow as my situation changes.
I found that a plain text file works very well for me. I always have my terminal open, editing a file is quick, and I can store notes with tasks easily. I don't need my list to look beautiful -- I just need to be able to pull it up no matter where I am.
[edit]: And going up one step, there's the meta-issue that there are, what, hundreds of to-do apps to choose from? Frankly, I found myself paralyzed by options.
I'm not sure what you're talking about. I've been using Todoist since 2013 and have never encountered a calendar open on app startup. To be honest, I'm not sure I could get a pure calendar view if I tried.
In settings you can change the default view to any project or filter if you want that.
You can also disable smart date recognition (switch that says 'smart date recognition' in the general section of settings).
Checked tasks aren't deleted. They are collapsed by default, but you can choose to show them (under three dot menu). You can also set up recurring tasks if you want something to be checked off every day.
Well, this perhaps goes into my preferences more than can be expected from a generic app, but:
- I mean the scheduling feature as a whole is something i do not use. I would prefer to disable it alltogether. Views menus and all.
- I would prefer the app to display a list of list, so i can go to a to-do directly with one click.
- It seems i can disable the auto calendar feature, great :)
- I would prefer the behaviour of checking an item to be: The checkbox becomes checked. Nothing else. I usually manually order the lists the way i want. Any automated hiding or reordering is annoying.
In my document management system. I've built a bastardized gemtext/orgmode parser because other people's software and servers keeps updating and breaking and I want to be able to access and update it from any device or location.
My experiences:
- Colornote, the best i have found. You can have a to-do list without any distraction. Click and it’s crossed over, click again and its unchecked again. Only android, no sync, both are problems.
- Todoist, has some misguided notion that i want my to-do to have anything to do with a calendar. When you open the app, fist task is always to close the calendar, and go to the todo list. Will either delete or reorder checked tasks, annoying. Will auto-calendar items if you write something like ”Something today”, ARGGHH. But, it will work anywhere, and sync everything across devices, so my current choice.