Months ago, I started my quest to refine task management. I was using Todoist at the time and wasn't satisfied. I barely trusted it anymore - it was lacking capabilities I wanted, such as a wait date as well as a difference between scheduled and due. Since it is a proprietary service, extending it would have been very challenging. I was also growing more accustomed and comfortable with the terminal and the UNIX philosophy. So I started exploring the CLI task managers and found [taskwarrior] - it seemed the perfect tool at first glance, with great customizability and control. But it too turned out to have some fundamental flaws. # The concept of trust I believe I first heard CGP Grey using this term, but I have not found it anywhere on the Internet with this meaning. Trusting a digital tool, such as a task manager, means you rely on it. If you don't trust a tool, you will use it less and tend towards alternatives e.g. pen and paper. To build trust with a task manager, you need to put all your tasks in it and set it up in a way that fits your workflow. For that, a task management system needs to enable these three actions: - quickly capture new information - planning & reviewing - retrieving tasks that should be done and can be done in the current context # Design The most important rule: Everything is a task. There is nothing else. Projects, Areas, Epics - they can all be mapped onto tasks, and doing so will allow you to leverage the same toolset on everything. A project or epic is a completable task with subtasks - it can itself be a subtask. If you want to divide your task list into areas, these can simply be uncompletable tasks at the root level. With everything being a task, areas and projects can also have all kinds of tags and attributes. And then subtasks may inherit these attributes (particularly tags). More fundamentals: - UNIX philosophy: use plain text is possible, separate into independent modules - Complete control: Inbuilt reports and attributes should use available configuration, so that the user can change fundamental parts of the system ## Task attributes A task has attributes, and each attribute is of one of the following types: - string, timestamp, number, date - a list of each of these(or only string?) is possible as well - it should be possible to restrict a property to a set of values (enum) Special attributes: - id: string - parent: string - entered, modified: timestamp - urgency: number-computed - status: enum-string-computed - virtual tags? - completable: boolean Standard attributes: - tags: list-string - annotations: list-string - wait,scheduled,due,until,recur: timestamp - relativeRecur: boolean - start,stop: timestamp Custom attributes - priority, size: enum-string - url: string ## User Stories - areas - housework projects - GTD - Agile ## Reports I need - Review active projects - Find out tasks to batch when going out - Find things I can do when I am (outside watching the babies e.g. cut nails | focused, wanting to do some (writing|programming) in the morning | unfocused in the afternoon e.g. check mails | taking a break from work on the computer e.g. do laundry | eating/snacking something e.g. watch a video/read a paper | listening to an audiobook e.g. digging, hang out the laundry) # Commands `add ` - add a new task ` add ` - add a new task with as parent ## Selected Task If there is no selected task, the selected task is assumed to be an empty invisible root task `cd ` - select the given task (alternative names: open,select,ct("change task")) `show` - show details for the currently selected task (maybe also subtasks) `list` - list all direct subtasks `tree` - recursively list subtasks ## More commands For more, see [taskwarrior] for now... # Inspirations ## Taskwarrior I have been using [taskwarrior] for a few weeks now, but I am already starting to lose trust again. I don't work on most of the tasks I've entered, and if I do, I rarely remember checking them off. ### Issues - A big issue holding me back is a missing notion of subtasks. You either have to use projects, dependencies or create a complete custom hack - either a script or hook. - Recurrence is a longstanding issue, but can somewhat be solved by plugins: https://github.com/tbabej/task.shift-recurrence and https://github.com/JensErat/task-relative-recur - UDAs have a lot less options than inbuilt properties - CLI can be too verbose: I am missing some way to set shorthands for attributes, e.g. "p" for project, dates are rather inflexible - Keeping all reports aligned with custom attributes is a hassle, since you can't base reports off each other - ids shift around annoyingly, so you constantly have to look them up ### What it does well - Great customizability with reports, UDAs, DOM etc - Great extendability with hooks - Integrates with many tools (e.g. vimwiki, powerlevel10k, timewarrior) # Links [taskwarrior]: https://taskwarrior.org/ https://tasklite.org/related.html https://www.wired.com/2016/03/best-to-do-list-app/