I used to drown in a sea of post-it notes and repetitive todo lists, my thoughts spread across unorganized Dropbox files, repetitive Evernote entries and various iPhone apps (Checklist, Notes, GoogleTasks).
Now that I am more comfortable with vim and bash scripting than I am with bulky GUI apps, I decided to code myself a thought management system. While researching I came across this beauty, Todo.txt, and have converted my ad-hoc method of todo lists and thought recording into an organized system.
So far, I’ve broken it up into three plain text files:
- todo.txt – mandatory actions, one liners (with abundant project names for sorting)
- Ideas.txt – ideas and notes on said ideas
- myday.txt – journal entries & freewriting, partitioned by day
This system is amazing. Very efficient, and perfect for cross-platform work on Dropbox.
add - add simple task to todo.txt
t add “task”
+ - associate a task with a project by including the project name with a + sign
t add “task +Project”
@ - note context
t add “task @Work”
list - see all tasks in todo.txt
t ls
show only the tasks related to Project
t ls +Project
show tasks with keyword
t ls keyword
pri - prioritize a task (depri)
t pri number priority
do - mark task complete
t do <line of task completed>