Virtual To-Do List
Rend
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hey guys, Rend here, again.
You may remember me from such H/A threads as "I need another taskbar" and "how do I macro my keyboard?" Those threads gave me Taskbar Shuffle and AutoHotkey, which are, easily, two of the most useful pieces of software I have ever installed on a machine. Ever.
And so, I come to you again, because my google-fu is (apparently) weak, and I have a burning desire to "overclock my employment experience."
Here's the short of it. My task list usually shuffles itself between 4 and 12 items. Today, though? 19 items. This has made me realize that my usual method of "write my tasks in a notebook and cross them off when I am finished with them" is not scalable. Though I like the method, paper is just not working out for me. I can't rearrange them via priority, I can't put a lot of notes next to it, etc, and most of that is because honestly there's just not enough room on one page to fit it all.
And screw copying 19 items down individually from one page to the next page in a notebook. *turn back* *turn forward* *transcribe* *turn back* *get fed up* *make a thread about it*
What I need from you lot is a piece of software that can track my tasks, that allows me to rearrange them and notate them, and which looks organized enough that I can keep track of what I need to do and about when I need to do it. Notepad would not be a good solution, because making those notes would quickly get cluttered. I have ADHD, so my working memory is completely shot, and I end up having to take extensive notes on my tasks when I move onto something else without finishing them, or else I have to almost relearn the whole thing when I come back to it, so that aspect is fairly important.
Also, this software should, if at all possible, be free. I don't think I want to spend money on it. If that eliminates this from the realm of possibility, well, I guess I'll have to deal with it!
You haven't yet failed me, H/A. Let's see what you've got.
You may remember me from such H/A threads as "I need another taskbar" and "how do I macro my keyboard?" Those threads gave me Taskbar Shuffle and AutoHotkey, which are, easily, two of the most useful pieces of software I have ever installed on a machine. Ever.
And so, I come to you again, because my google-fu is (apparently) weak, and I have a burning desire to "overclock my employment experience."
Here's the short of it. My task list usually shuffles itself between 4 and 12 items. Today, though? 19 items. This has made me realize that my usual method of "write my tasks in a notebook and cross them off when I am finished with them" is not scalable. Though I like the method, paper is just not working out for me. I can't rearrange them via priority, I can't put a lot of notes next to it, etc, and most of that is because honestly there's just not enough room on one page to fit it all.
And screw copying 19 items down individually from one page to the next page in a notebook. *turn back* *turn forward* *transcribe* *turn back* *get fed up* *make a thread about it*
What I need from you lot is a piece of software that can track my tasks, that allows me to rearrange them and notate them, and which looks organized enough that I can keep track of what I need to do and about when I need to do it. Notepad would not be a good solution, because making those notes would quickly get cluttered. I have ADHD, so my working memory is completely shot, and I end up having to take extensive notes on my tasks when I move onto something else without finishing them, or else I have to almost relearn the whole thing when I come back to it, so that aspect is fairly important.
Also, this software should, if at all possible, be free. I don't think I want to spend money on it. If that eliminates this from the realm of possibility, well, I guess I'll have to deal with it!
You haven't yet failed me, H/A. Let's see what you've got.
Rend on
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To go one step beyond that - you can put it in an email you send to yourself, and star it, so it doesn't easily get lost if you need to close the window for any reason
-Current W.I.P.
That's an alternative I will consider if I can't find some cool application to do it. There are a couple reasons I would rather have something a bit more robust than a text editor, but it's not a possibility I have written off.
I was actually considering, depending on how this thread went, doing the same thing myself (but in C#)
If you want to keep it more on the minimal side and don't need your list available anywhere at any time, you might want to try Todo.txt instead.
http://www.rememberthemilk.com/
http://todotxt.com/
Do you happen to have a iPhone or Android Phone? Both of them have a plethora of different kinds of task mangers and To-Do Lists. I have a Droid and use Astrid pretty frequently to good results. There is also gTasks which syncs with Google's To Do list feature as well.
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yeah, well hit me up if you would like a C++ version or if things don't pan out or w/e, hope u get what ur looking for, peace
Has text editing so you can make it a to do, also mobile friendly
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go!
It's called To Do's List for iPad and I think it is also available for iphone/ipod touch.
Features:
- Input text notes per task
- creation and due dates
- whether you want it to repeat every day, week, two weeks, month or year
- set priority to low, medium, or high with a corresponding indicator
- tags for friends, home, or work
- completed yes or no.
- and you can connect them all through facebook, email, or twitter
So far this app seems pretty tight and its free.
Not on their lists, but I've used Task Coach in the past (not sure if it's helpful, but it also has a portable app version).
If you are okay with dealing with Emacs, I recently discovered orgmode which is insane and also pretty awesome and everything is in plain text so you can just copy/dropbox the files around if you like. It's well-suited to taking notes and for marking tasks in the middle of taking notes as it was initially developed as an outliner. (Also there is an Iphone/Android app if you want that.)
I never knew that Microsoft Outlook had this task list feature, but after I read your post, I figured they must. So I went and found it, and it is almost exactly what I am looking for. The only issues I see are that you cannot change the order of tasks by clicking and dragging (but you can't do that on paper either) and, if for some reason my share server is down, I will be unable to access it (but then, I will also be unable to work!). Other than that, it has been working the past two days like a charm.
Thank you to everyone for your suggestions, great stuff in this thread. I always know I can count on you guys when it comes to streamlining my computing in a user-centric sense.
Thread won!
GTD is pretty badass.
If you're running an OS X or iOS device, OmniFocus and Things are both GTD clients that are beyond fantastic.
Actually what I did was I added a custom field called Priority Number and made my own key as to what the numbers I assign each task mean, that way I can tell not only what should be first but why it should be first, just by looking at the number.
I might look into this.
I have ADHD, so one of my biggest problems is not being able to remember what needs done or where I am in the progress of a task when I've stopped working on it temporarily.
the bread and butter of reQall is the "Here and Now" screen, which shows you current tasks you should complete based on your location and the date. it also has easy to use setups for shopping lists, projects, task lists, and appointments/reminders.
on the reminder front, has both outlook and google calendar integration (and will both add reminders you set in reQall to your calendar, and show calendar events in your list of tasks in reQall), a multitude of alerts/notifications, and can be configured to send you a "memory jog" email every morning reminding you of what's on the agenda for the day and what you may have forgotten to do yesterday. it's been really useful, though I did have to spring for the Pro account (at $3/mo or $25/yr) to get the functionality I needed out of it.
it also has a neat Evernote integration (which I use to store links, reference materials, and really all non-todo related items) where it searches your Evernote account based on the text in the reQall item and tries to find related things. EG: if I add a few things to Evernote with subjects like "gift idea for Molly: thingname", and then add a task in reQall that says "Buy a gift for Molly", tapping on that item in reQall will show me all of those evernotes I created earlier.
Then the GTD process might be helpful. You basically have the Inbox, where you write down anything that needs to be added, whenever you remember it.
Then you sort the stuff in the Inbox - it goes in either Today, Next or Some Day.
Today is the important stuff that needs to be taken care of right away. Next is the "well, I'm done with Today, might as well pick some more stuff off". Some Day is the least important stuff that you can do whenever, really.
I use Things, so I also have a Scheduled folder - in there I put repeated stuff like pay the bills (to make sure it's done on time and not two days into the next month), a quarterly loan payment, testing the smoke alarm every 6 months... I've set all that stuff up to appear in the Today folder X days before they need to be done so I have some time to take care of it.
Overall I think it's a very simple but effective method to, well, Get Things Done.
Found this in a google: http://todoist.com/
Eclipse has a nice todo list also; but more for development tasks.
Excel/Open Office would be customizable.
If you have a smart phone of any time, there is probably a dozen for it.