TLDR. I’m using Obsidian tasks to control my tasks, it is painful in some aspects, but I will stick with it for now
I was feeling lost in regards to tasks for a long time. I used to use Wunderlist, but on later years, I didn’t use it really often and it was not very efficient. I was basically relying on whatever the work has to offer, and managing tasks on my head. Which is basically a mess.
I switched to Google Tasks for a while but it was way too simple and I missed the ability to having notes for each task, good notes, not a text area.
The ideal
One place to keep notes and tasks on a format that is future proof, where I have control over it.
- It should be easy to use from a mobile phone
- Be able to store notes related to one task
- Be able to create recurrent tasks
- Be able to have projects and easily filter by projects
- Integrates with my calendar
- Be able organise my current day
- Be able to quickly capture something to do (inbox)
- Be able to process my inbox and organise into projects/context
- Be able to list all tasks from multiple projects in the same place
Obsidian with obsidian-tasks
seems to do the job! I can have tasks everywhere and use queries to organize how to show them. I love it.
Using DayPlanner on obsidian is working really well for me.
Bad things:
- reminders, I can’t make them work (using iCal for that)
- no reminders on android
Other tasks that I used
I’ve tried a lot of different ones, these are the systems I used in the last year or 2
Supernote
I like to write using my hand, but I got a stage where I had two places to organise my day, which is a bit annoying. I also miss a way to edit my notes outside of Supernote, if they open their format, I might come back. Awesome product, it feels like writing on paper.
Saying that, for what I’m using today, just random notes here and there, a paper notebook works better.
I see myself using it less and less. I think I will switch to a tablet with obsidian on it. And may use Excalidraw to write shit down.
Goolge Tasks
Keeping my tasks on google tasks
Good things:
- Easy to add dates
- Support recurrent tasks
- Shows on my calendar when I put a date
- I’m able to define priority by moving tasks up and down
- I’m able to add notes for each task
- I’m able to quickly add a new task from my mobile device
Bad things:
- It’s hard to organise multiple projects, I can create a new task list, but they don’t talk to each other
- I may be able to create them and define a date for the tasks that I want to achieve on a certain day. Yes
- It would be annoying as I have to go through each list to define what I will do on the day
- It is not a future proof format
- I don’t control my data
This solution was good enough, but I naturally switched to Obsidian.
org-mode
I look at org-mode from emacs, but it seems to be hard to use on mobile even with orgzly, and the plugin for vim does not work properly. I like the idea of keeping it all in one file and have support for recurrent tasks, seems like a complete solution. But for notes, I am used to write using markdown format.
todo.txt
Looking a todo.txt, it seems like a good approach, it has most o my requirements in place, but it lacks notes related to each todo.