a task list for people who like to be both lazy and organized
Welcome to my blurry, dumb task app that doesn't care about days.
First things first : this to do app uses PHP and writes txt files, so it needs a server.
In order to create tasks and start using this thing, you have to make some categories. Create a file called categories.txt. Here is an example of how it should be formatted:
🦚️, #000000, 50, Miscellaneous
🌊️, #8ADCE3, 55, Project Great Wave
🕳️, #FFAF00, 80, Diaper Golf
🐚️, #489B84, 80, Conch Congas
🚆️, #D35D65, 51, Train Drain
🚘️, #2C313E, 54, Cardar, cd car
🌟️, #945AA4, 75, Nord Star
💧️, #146EF0, 99, two.dew, dew
Each row has 4 values, with an optional 5th : emoji, hex color code, priority, category name, custom search shorthand
The emoji and hex color code are for visual purposes, while the priority number will sort projects by their importance within each time period.
The optional 5th will allow you to short circuit the task entry system to use the keyword of your choice, which is explained in more detail below.
Tasks are timestamped and automatically move up over time.
- You can create tasks using shorthand. Try entering this up top: 'Ride the great wave. \pgw \y'
- You can use acronym shorthand for task categories, and time periods.
- Shorthand is always initialized with a back slash.
- Shorthand for time periods: 0 (this week), 1 (next week), 2 (two weeks), 3 or m (next month), 4 or q (next quarter), 5 or h (next half), 6 or y (next year).
- Shorthand for categories uses acronyms. So 'Project Great Wave' is \pgw. You can add special search terms for categories in categories.txt, which is where categories are customized. This is especially useful if you have categories with similar acronyms. It happens!
- 'f' to show/hide future events. '/' to start typing a new task!
- if you ever make a profound mistake, there is a cache of deleted and edited tasks, so fret not! currently lives in a txt file, but perhaps can make this into a 'recover' feature at some point.
Despite my best aspirations I personally ended up not using this task app. Besides learning some personal preferences around limiting the number of apps I have to manage (ie. mail, calendar, and a digital task app is one too many things for me), the main issue I found with it was that some of the blurry time windows can overlap in weird ways. A great example : when its the last week of December, 'Next Week', 'Next Month', 'Next Half', 'Next Quarter', and 'Next Year' will all move your task ahead by the same amount. It's a little weird cognitively. A solution to this problem would be to use a time shorthand instead of categories, so that you can input things like '\4m' to mean '4 months from now'. But it was a fun experiment. I use my e-mail inbox and a whiteboard for task management and that works for me. But maybe you do things differently and this will work for you !