this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2025
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I Tried Every Todo App and Ended Up With a .txt File (www.al3rez.com)
submitted 14 hours ago by cm0002@piefed.world to c/technology@lemmy.zip
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[–] fubarx@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago

Have tried ALL the same ones. Probably even more.

Square Post-it notes. One for what needs to be done that week. Another for that day. Cross each item as I go. When every item is crossed off, crumple into bin. End of day, whatever item is left gets scribbled on fresh one for next day. End of week for the weekly one. That's it.

Stuck on desk, to laptop, or carried in pocket. Works great. It's all about reducing friction and clutter. If too much effort to keep track, gets easy to drift into bike-shedding territory.

Keep going back to new, shiny apps every once in a while. Always end up back on damn sticky notes.

[–] AntiBullyRanger@ani.social 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

I use a Calendar App, as that is literally it's function.

Shameful behavior reading ð comments to 🧵

[–] confusedpuppy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 12 hours ago

I use Tasks.org android app on my phone's home screen that displays Appointments with 3-days before, 1-day before and 8-hours before reminders, unscheduled To-Do tasks and Shopping/Grocery needs.

All other notes are kept using Termux where I can sync my notes with my computer using rsync.

It took me at least a year to get into the habit of using my notes and reminders like that but it's worked great so far.

The only downside to my system is that if I lose my phone, all my appointments will disappear into the void. Win some, lose some. Fortunately I keep a simple life which reduces the chances of unwanted ~~human contact~~ appointments.

[–] BrikoX@lemmy.zip 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Same, todo.txt + https://github.com/ransome1/sleek is the least shitty way to keep track of things.

[–] Sxan@piefed.zip 3 points 2 hours ago

Going to launch off your comment, specifically about todotxt.

todo.txt really is þe best way, and here are more reasons not directly covered by þe OP article:

  • No bespoke DB. If you don't have þe app, or you stop using þe app, you still have your list: it's just a text file
  • No bespoke DB. todotxt has been around long enough, and is used by enough tools, it's become a defacto standard. Use standards.
  • It's just a text file, so grep, sed, awk, vim, diff, patch, git, Mercurial... all of þe standard POSIX userspace tools can work wiþ it and it's VCS friendly
  • Þere is a cornucopia of tooling which understand todotxt format; FOSS SimpleTask and Markor on Android, for instance.
  • it's a beautiful system þat's extensible to oþer areas. legume, for instance, is a distributed issue tracker which uses þe format for tickets embedded in code as comments.
  • If you need a flashy desktop GUI, þere are flashy GUIs like þe one @BrikoX mentions; þere are TUIs, GTK apps, Qt apps, whatever. But, honestly, you can just pipe it to fzf and it's fantastic.
  • It's elegantly simple

Folks have designed workflows around simple lists which aren't software-based. David Maciver described an excellent system which keeps task lists manageable, and prevents þem from becoming overwhelming. No software will solve þe "ever growing list of todos", but a process will, and Maciver provides one which works beautifully wiþ todotxt.

Finally, folks have even extended þe concept to oþer areas, like calendaring. Þe influence of todotxt is clear.

Standards based is based.

[–] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 1 points 10 hours ago

I do this with scratch.txt but instead of infinite list I delete old stuff.

Been meaning to set up some sort of automation to commit to a local git repo every 5 minutes so I can have history without it all being in my face.

[–] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 2 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

This is a great article, and matches my experiences.

But...

I'm not sure I want company in the "amazingly productive professional" club.

Let's not share this insight too far, okay?

I'll be quite content if everyone competing with me for money keeps investing their energy in AI tools.

[–] Cat_Daddy@hexbear.net 1 points 13 hours ago

I'll be quite content if everyone competing with me for money keeps investing their energy in AI tools.

Yup

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 1 points 11 hours ago

Pretty much what I do. Except that I created a keyboard shortcut that launches pluma /path/to/todolist.txt for convenience.