Text file productivity
Ever since I started using *nix operating systems I’ve been a fan of text files.
When I started working as a programmer I was given lots of bugs to fix (it really is the best job, lots of problem solving and detective work). To keep track of everything I was working on I started using a text file format for day to day work:
2007/11/25: Sunday todo: x catch the 0807 eurostar home x sit and idle for a while while eating toast and drinking tea > blog about text file productivity x mention how all this began > explain my system . talk about TaskPaper . go out and buy some tomatoes for a kickass pasta sauce later . enjoy a glass of wine
As you can see Sundays are busy at gatezero HQ.
This simple text file based system works really well for listing and crossing off tasks. I just list out what I need to get done for the day preceded with ‘.’ and then as I get things done I mark it ‘x’, things underway sometimes get a ‘>’ indicator if I don’t get them finished and need to come back and remember where I am. Simple indenting (programmers love it) deals with hierachical tasks.
So what? Well, I never have to worry about licensing some new software, I can use the task lisk from any computer that has a network connection and a terminal program and I don’t really have to justify myself to you anyway. Also it is simple and just works.
But it doesn’t work really well for managing projects over time, like if I have things to do on a project that carry over into the next day. Lots of copying and pasting of text happens and that bit sucks. It works well as a To Do list but not as a project management tool.
So I’m looking for something a little better. I’ve played with OmniFocus a little, I like it but… it has some weird underlying database structure that I can’t read in vi. It is cool, don’t get me wrong… just not sold yet and they’re about to start asking real money for it.
I just downloaded TaskPaper and I quite like it so far. It is simple, like a text file… actually, it is a text file. But with a bit of Cocoa goodness on top to turn it into an OS X application. The structure:
or:
Sunday 25 November 2007: - catch the 0807 eurostar home @done - sit and idle for a while while eating toast and drinking tea @done - blog about text file productivity - mention how all this began @done - explain my system - talk about TaskPaper - go out and buy some tomatoes for a kickass pasta sauce later - enjoy a glass of wine
That’s it. Pure, lovely, text.
You can then slice and dice that text by tag or focus on a single project or archive old tasks. Wonderful! Oh, and you can get VIM syntax files for the format, or Textmate. It’s all text underneath so you’re set if you want to shell into your computer and update the file from a remote location. And if the company goes belly up and there is no new version for OS XI or whatever, well, you’re all good again, you can just o back to vi.
TaskPaper is $19 and I’ll let you know if I buy it.