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Sort of a poll: What is your favorite task manager/to do app?
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Posted by MadaboutDana
Jan 11, 2019 at 05:20 PM
NotePlan is one of those infuriating apps that’s actually really clever, and does that most desirable of things (keeping tasks/events and notes separate, but enabling you to link them together), but needs a lot of thought to use properly.
Its greatest virtue is simplicity. With support for basic markdown, plus the (in my view highly desirable) feature of keeping all notes and day-related task lists as separate text files in clearly marked iCloud folders, it’s very open. Having thought it was a bit too simplistic, I’ve just discovered (to my personal embarrassment) that it allows you to keep multiple windows open on the macOS desktop (on an iPad, the iOS desktop gives you a twinned view of calendar next to apps). So you can have the list of e.g. today’s tasks open next to your calendar.
Once you understand how it works, the “scheduled” function is very clever: you can schedule a task for a few days’ time, but keep a link to it in your current task list. However, it would be even better to have an “upcoming” list option somewhere. You can also (see below) schedule tasks from Notes.
In particular, tags are clever, but not really explained. If you use a hashtag in Notes (useful for categorising them), you can click on the equivalent hashtag in the Calendar and it’ll immediately bring up the relevant notes (but not any calendar entries with that hashtag!); conversely, you can put “at”-sign tags (@tag) in Notes and if you click on them, the relevant Calendar entries are listed (but not any notes with that particular tag). It’s actually rather clever, but you have to puzzle it out. You can schedule tasks (in your Calendar) directly from Notes, but there’s no reciprocal relationship - if you mark the task as completed in your Calendar, it won’t automatically be marked as complete in the related note. However, using “at”-tags you can relate tasks to notes very precisely, regardless of the date of the task. And vice versa using [[note links]] in tasks. To expand on that a little: links to notes can be created using the classic [[name of note]] syntax. So in principle it’s easy to create simple task entries in your task list, then keep an extensive linked note on each task.
Everything is supported by keyboard shortcuts, which is cool. I’d love to see more direct organisation (such as note folders, for example), but I can kind of see why the developer has avoided complicating the app in this way. It integrates Apple Calendar and Reminders in any case, which is a nice feature.
Sorry, I’m meandering a bit here. In short: NotePlan is a very interesting, highly streamlined take on a task manager with calendar that also supports notes (as many as you like).
Posted by Christian Tietze
Jan 11, 2019 at 07:24 PM
I switched to Emacs last year, and got sufficiently proficient at navigating around in Org mode. I love that my project notes can contain the todos, and that todos can contain extensive notes, without cluttering the rest. Just fold it all way, like in an outliner. Bam!
I still have a ton of old stuff in OmniFocus, which is a great app. But I cannot go back now that I experienced Emacs. Sheesh.
Arnold wrote:
> I must be an outsider.
>
>EMACS orgmode for the last few years, prior to that it was Ecco Pro
>followed by Time and Chaos on Windows.
Posted by Beck
Jan 11, 2019 at 11:40 PM
MadaboutDana wrote:
NotePlan is one of those infuriating apps that’s actually really clever,
>and does that most desirable of things (keeping tasks/events and notes
>separate, but enabling you to link them together), but needs a lot of
>thought to use properly.
Very interesting! MadaboutDana, do you use it exclusively to manage your tasks? Did you play with it to learn these things or was there a source you found particularly helpful? Also, have you consider (or have you already) recorded some of these use cases to share?
Thanks,
Beck
Posted by satis
Jan 12, 2019 at 02:19 PM
MadaboutDana wrote:
> NotePlan is one of those infuriating apps that’s actually really clever,
>and does that most desirable of things (keeping tasks/events and notes
>separate, but enabling you to link them together), but needs a lot of
>thought to use properly.
It *is* clever, but for my needs it’s half-baked. It’s all well and good to pull in calendar events from Apple Calendar but I need two-way sync because I am in my calendar (which has a different, more focused design for my needs) much more than a notetaking app with some calendar-view functionality. I want my calendar to be the hub in which I can see calendar events made in my notetaking app and be able to edit/move them and have the changes reflected in the notetaking app. This is what I do with Todoist (which offers 2-way sync with Google Calendar), although I don’t use Todoist for long notes, for which it is unsuited.
So while NotePlan has nice features I wouldn’t use most of them, so the app has few advantages over my current notes app(s).
Ultimately, I think if I update my own note-taking to integrate with a calendar I’ll end up with an app that allows for a Zapier integration with Google Calendar.
Posted by Paul Korm
Jan 12, 2019 at 04:38 PM
There’s an “updated” macOS / iOS version of the old OS X “Opus Domini” app—now renamed Opus One—that integrates calendar and note-taking into a single app. The update seems to be making most features into a subscription. At least, there’s a one-month subscription at a low enough price to allow experimentation. The interface is horribly skeuomorphic—to the point of distraction.