Wunderlist—an essential GTD app which I hate. I’m working on my own todo app to replace it
What features is it lacking that you’re looking for… I’ve tried quite a few productivity apps, and might know an answer without having to create one from scratch :).
Haha, thanks, but I already specced out and outsourced Stage 1 of the MVP :)))
Anyway, here’s what I find lacking in other personal Todo apps:
1. Recurring Task Fragility
I rely on recurring / repeating tasks a lot, I use them to automate my life. The problem is, in most todo apps recurring tasks are too brittle.
For example, I have a task on 15th of each month. One month I decide to do it earlier, on 12th of the month. The natural way would be to just reassign the due date from 15th to 12th, but doing that would change the recurrence condition of the task: it will now recur on 12th of each month! And God forbid I delete the task because I don’t need it this month—this would delete all future recurrences!
Because of all this, I’m forced to walk on eggshells around recurring tasks. I’m afraid to treat them as normal tasks. I can’t rename them, can’t delete them, can’t move them to another list, can’t change the due date.
This happens because most todo apps conflate the recurring task instance with the definition of recurring task. I want to de-conflate these concepts. In my app, the recurrence logic is defined by a Schedule Item, which ‘spawns’ recurring task instances that can be deleted, modified, renamed etc. You won’t accidentally change the recurrence settings of a task by editing it in the task list. If you want to modify the recurrence settings, go to Schedule and do that explicitly.
(As a bonus, in the above system all recurring tasks will be visible in one place, the Schedule. This is essentially my life program, my human crontab. I like the ability to edit my life in one place.)
(And there’s another bonus to this system: forward visibility of recurring tasks. Most todo apps don’t display recurring tasks in forecast views. My app will. When you define a Schedule Item in Schedule, the recurring tasks ‘spawned’ by it will be visible across the entire future timeline. That is, you can literally look at the day Sep 1st 3215 and see that you have to walk the dog, buy the groceries and arrange a check up with the doctor.)
2. Due Date Pollution
My personal productivity system is closer to Autofocus than to GTD, so when I have a task in my list, and don’t want or cannot do it at the moment, I want it to temporarily disappear from my list until I’m ready to do it.
The only way to “disappear” a task in most todo apps is to set its Due Date to Tomorrow or such, but if I do this to a dateless task, it would become dateful! Why the hell must I make my dateless tasks dateful just to dismiss them for a while?
A Due Date should only be used on tasks that must be done on that specific date, so it doesn’t make any sense on dateless tasks. Which brings us to the next topic, Dismiss:
3. Proper Dismiss.
So, to combat Due Date Pollution, I need a proper Dismiss Until command that hides the task until some condition is met without making the task dateful. For example, Dismiss Until Tomorrow Morning, or Dismiss Until September 1st, 2015. I would like this function to be easily accessible, for example via the swipe-away gesture on list items.
Now, Dismiss Until Tomorrow is nice, and Dismiss Until Evening is great, but I also want Dismiss until I’m at Work, Dismiss until I’m in Boston, Dismiss until I’m near Bob Smith, or even Dismiss Until (NASDAQ:AAPL < 100) AND (Weather in Moscow is Good). Which brings us to our next topic, Contexts and Triggers:
4. Contexts and Triggers
For example, I have a task which I want to do only on workdays, in the evening and outside of work. When these conditions are met, I want the task to be visible in my list, and otherwise it should stay hidden.
To implement this, my app will have an Active When field, which can specify activation conditions for the task. For the above task, that would be something along the lines of @workday AND @evening AND (NOT @work).
@work, @evening and @workday are Triggers. The terminology is not final, and I don’t yet know how to call them, but essentially Triggers are boolean functions that can be incorporated into tasks in order to activate them when certain events happen.
Triggers can also be used in Dismiss Until command, and I plan a version of Schedule based on Triggers. That is, you can specify conditions, and when these conditions are met, a specified task will appear in your task list.
5. Multi-line Todo Items.
I need multi-line todo items in order to word my tasks properly. A task titled “Widgets!” is much less meaningful than a task “Decide which Widget to buy. Ask Bob, he’s the expert on Widgets.” This may sound trivial, but many popular todo apps display todo items as single-line—and Wunderlist is among them!
I’m not worried about the screen real estate occupied by multiline items. The primary way to consume a todo app these days is mobile, and scrolling on mobile is effortless.
So, to sum up, this is a hybrid of a todo app and IFTTT / Tasker for humans. I don’t think that there’s currently anything on the market that offers that. Anyway, the work is already underway, and the MVP should be ready by the end of the year. I’ll announce it here on Lesswrong.
Haha, thanks, but I already specced out and outsourced Stage 1 of the MVP :)))
Thats true, but at this point that’s a sunk cost :).
However, as far as I know, there’s nothing that has all these features together.
Things and Google Calendar have the best support for non-fragile recurring tasks,
Todoist has all your other features, but not quite in the way you want them.
-Location aware and time aware tasks, but not other, smarter contexts. (I assume you’re going to be doing plugins for individual smart contexts, otherwise I don’t see how this would work).
-Does multiple lines, but hidden in that you have to press Ctrl + M
Just checked out Google Calendar and indeed, it handles recurring tasks much better than most todo apps I’ve seen. When I enter a recurring task, it fills it into my future schedule, and lets me edit a concrete instance of that task, as opposed to editing the entire future schedule. Thanks for the tip!
As for Todoist and other features: does it allow to dismiss a dateless task temporarily without making it dateful? I have Todoist installed on my phone but haven’t found how to do that.
This question doesn’t make sense in the context of todoist. The default view is a completely customizable filter, and the default filter doesn’t show dateless tasks. You can create any number of custom filters and rules to show or not show tasks based on arbitrary criteria.
I run into some of the same problems you listed above in my own use of productivity apps. I look forward to hearing more about your project! If you have a blog or some place you post progress, I’d be interested in following you there as well.
I don’t have a blog or even Twitter for it yet, and I guess I need to set these up, but I still haven’t came up with the final product name. (Am I yak-shaving? Maybe it would be better to just start blogging and worry about the name later?)
What features is it lacking that you’re looking for… I’ve tried quite a few productivity apps, and might know an answer without having to create one from scratch :).
Haha, thanks, but I already specced out and outsourced Stage 1 of the MVP :)))
Anyway, here’s what I find lacking in other personal Todo apps:
1. Recurring Task Fragility
I rely on recurring / repeating tasks a lot, I use them to automate my life. The problem is, in most todo apps recurring tasks are too brittle.
For example, I have a task on 15th of each month. One month I decide to do it earlier, on 12th of the month. The natural way would be to just reassign the due date from 15th to 12th, but doing that would change the recurrence condition of the task: it will now recur on 12th of each month! And God forbid I delete the task because I don’t need it this month—this would delete all future recurrences!
Because of all this, I’m forced to walk on eggshells around recurring tasks. I’m afraid to treat them as normal tasks. I can’t rename them, can’t delete them, can’t move them to another list, can’t change the due date.
This happens because most todo apps conflate the recurring task instance with the definition of recurring task. I want to de-conflate these concepts. In my app, the recurrence logic is defined by a Schedule Item, which ‘spawns’ recurring task instances that can be deleted, modified, renamed etc. You won’t accidentally change the recurrence settings of a task by editing it in the task list. If you want to modify the recurrence settings, go to Schedule and do that explicitly.
(As a bonus, in the above system all recurring tasks will be visible in one place, the Schedule. This is essentially my life program, my human crontab. I like the ability to edit my life in one place.)
(And there’s another bonus to this system: forward visibility of recurring tasks. Most todo apps don’t display recurring tasks in forecast views. My app will. When you define a Schedule Item in Schedule, the recurring tasks ‘spawned’ by it will be visible across the entire future timeline. That is, you can literally look at the day Sep 1st 3215 and see that you have to walk the dog, buy the groceries and arrange a check up with the doctor.)
2. Due Date Pollution
My personal productivity system is closer to Autofocus than to GTD, so when I have a task in my list, and don’t want or cannot do it at the moment, I want it to temporarily disappear from my list until I’m ready to do it.
The only way to “disappear” a task in most todo apps is to set its Due Date to Tomorrow or such, but if I do this to a dateless task, it would become dateful! Why the hell must I make my dateless tasks dateful just to dismiss them for a while?
A Due Date should only be used on tasks that must be done on that specific date, so it doesn’t make any sense on dateless tasks. Which brings us to the next topic, Dismiss:
3. Proper Dismiss.
So, to combat Due Date Pollution, I need a proper Dismiss Until command that hides the task until some condition is met without making the task dateful. For example, Dismiss Until Tomorrow Morning, or Dismiss Until September 1st, 2015. I would like this function to be easily accessible, for example via the swipe-away gesture on list items.
Now, Dismiss Until Tomorrow is nice, and Dismiss Until Evening is great, but I also want Dismiss until I’m at Work, Dismiss until I’m in Boston, Dismiss until I’m near Bob Smith, or even Dismiss Until (NASDAQ:AAPL < 100) AND (Weather in Moscow is Good). Which brings us to our next topic, Contexts and Triggers:
4. Contexts and Triggers
For example, I have a task which I want to do only on workdays, in the evening and outside of work. When these conditions are met, I want the task to be visible in my list, and otherwise it should stay hidden.
To implement this, my app will have an Active When field, which can specify activation conditions for the task. For the above task, that would be something along the lines of @workday AND @evening AND (NOT @work).
@work, @evening and @workday are Triggers. The terminology is not final, and I don’t yet know how to call them, but essentially Triggers are boolean functions that can be incorporated into tasks in order to activate them when certain events happen.
Triggers can also be used in Dismiss Until command, and I plan a version of Schedule based on Triggers. That is, you can specify conditions, and when these conditions are met, a specified task will appear in your task list.
5. Multi-line Todo Items.
I need multi-line todo items in order to word my tasks properly. A task titled “Widgets!” is much less meaningful than a task “Decide which Widget to buy. Ask Bob, he’s the expert on Widgets.” This may sound trivial, but many popular todo apps display todo items as single-line—and Wunderlist is among them!
I’m not worried about the screen real estate occupied by multiline items. The primary way to consume a todo app these days is mobile, and scrolling on mobile is effortless.
So, to sum up, this is a hybrid of a todo app and IFTTT / Tasker for humans. I don’t think that there’s currently anything on the market that offers that. Anyway, the work is already underway, and the MVP should be ready by the end of the year. I’ll announce it here on Lesswrong.
Thats true, but at this point that’s a sunk cost :).
However, as far as I know, there’s nothing that has all these features together.
Things and Google Calendar have the best support for non-fragile recurring tasks,
Todoist has all your other features, but not quite in the way you want them. -Location aware and time aware tasks, but not other, smarter contexts. (I assume you’re going to be doing plugins for individual smart contexts, otherwise I don’t see how this would work). -Does multiple lines, but hidden in that you have to press Ctrl + M
Just checked out Google Calendar and indeed, it handles recurring tasks much better than most todo apps I’ve seen. When I enter a recurring task, it fills it into my future schedule, and lets me edit a concrete instance of that task, as opposed to editing the entire future schedule. Thanks for the tip!
As for Todoist and other features: does it allow to dismiss a dateless task temporarily without making it dateful? I have Todoist installed on my phone but haven’t found how to do that.
This question doesn’t make sense in the context of todoist. The default view is a completely customizable filter, and the default filter doesn’t show dateless tasks. You can create any number of custom filters and rules to show or not show tasks based on arbitrary criteria.
I run into some of the same problems you listed above in my own use of productivity apps. I look forward to hearing more about your project! If you have a blog or some place you post progress, I’d be interested in following you there as well.
I don’t have a blog or even Twitter for it yet, and I guess I need to set these up, but I still haven’t came up with the final product name. (Am I yak-shaving? Maybe it would be better to just start blogging and worry about the name later?)