A frustrated user's thoughts on efficient task management for Apple users (and others)

Posted by MadaboutDana
Mar 28, 2022 at 02:50 PM

I have been reflecting, as a confirmed and obsessive CRIMPer, on the nature of task management.

What a cornucopia of wonderful apps there are out there. So. Many. Ways. To. Manage. Your. Life!

And I’ve tried and continue to try so many of them, not least out of sheer fascination at the ingenuity – and often, sheer beauty – of the approaches taken by so many very clever minds.

But I am gradually coming to a really important conclusion.

Just as when managing tasks with a pen and paper, what you really want is a minimum-touch approach. But one that allows you to highlight the tasks that are really, really important (for whatever reason), or which you can’t do unless someone else first does something critical first (dependencies). And that allows you to add quick but clear notes if you really, really need to.

I’ve been looking at all the task management apps I’ve used most recently: TickTick (does pretty much everything you could possibly want, and as a result allows you to follow more or less any approach you could possibly want). Things 3 and Pagico (both very impressive in very different ways). Todoist. NotePlan. Noteship (my favourite, but still confined to macOS only). Notebooks. So many others I’ve tried and abandoned.

Like most of you, I have a lot of stuff to keep track of. I mean, a lot. My basic task list of things I really need to do over the next week or so is rarely less than 30, with dozens more lined up in the equivalent of “Next” silos. It’s depressing, even frustrating, not least because even the most colourful task list can’t easily prevent this matrix of tasks from looking very dull and uniform. Like, well, a boring list. It IS a boring list! SEVERAL boring lists!

How, then, to make task management exciting? Perhaps using outliners! After all, they’re effectively a kind of rich-text writing tool, so you can highlight things, embolden things, and above all, tuck things away (as notes, attachments etc., depending on the outliner). And there are some really good ones out there! Workflowy, Dynalist, Zavala, Outlinely, OutlineEdit, not to mention others like NoteTaker, Tidy Mind (Pro), Dashword, SpringNotes, Cloud Outliner (Pro) etc. etc. etc. Todoist is a very capable outliner, for that matter. TickTick’s three-pane structure and subtasks means it, too, can be used as an outliner.

And yes, they’re pretty good. Folding has some significant advantages if you want to keep your list tight, but also need to keep copious notes (very typical of my lists). But there are complications. I like to keep an archive of completed tasks immediately to hand, because I must so often review them for specific reasons. This isn’t something task managers are generally very good at. Outliners are somewhat better at it. Task managers that are also outliners are perhaps best of all – as are notetaking apps that feature an “Archive” function (such as Bear, for example).

After having a particularly egregious fight with TickTick that left me feeling very depressed, in desperation I started using Apple Notes as a simple, fast way to keep my most urgent tasks right there under my eyes. Only to fall, in a very short time, prey to that most invidious of multi-app syndromes: decoupling. My new Notes task list swiftly began to look totally different from my TickTick task list. Not good.

How to solve this? In short: no idea.

But a couple of things have become very clear to me. The user should be able to write tasks down and embellish them as freely as possible. Not using specific, clever keystroke combinations or “smart syntax”. Not using multiple fiddly fields to enter start/due dates. Not using clever templates to manage project details (templates are a weakness of mine, but invariably end up looking like a hedgehog with alopecia). Fie upon kanban! Fie upon GANTT charts! Fie upon cunningly contrived tabular layouts!

But with some way to add detailed notes at the very least.

What have I resolved? Well, at the moment I’m using Craft to manage my tasks, because it has both an outlining mode but also a nesting mode (even better than folding for very lengthy notes). And does all kinds of highlighting etc. etc., while also being very keyboard-friendly. But is this the endpoint of my search? I very much doubt it! Not least because I haven’t even started transferring the majority of my tasks from TickTick to Craft, and may never get around to doing so.

But for the frustrated, overburdened Person Who Does, I increasingly feel that freeform text is the best way to go (hence can see the attraction of TaskPaper, which is unfortunately a little too minimalist for me). Extras can be added – but must be added with a delicate, super-light touch! A due date here – perhaps. A tagging option there – possibly. Or maybe I’m just having a spring CRIMPing crisis, like all the twittering feathered characters rushing about out there clutching bits of grass and straw in a sudden access of befuddled industry…

Or maybe I’ll end up going back to NotePlan after all.

Time, as ever, will tell.

Cheers,
Bill