There is no end of software, apps and systems that all claim to offer the route to a well-organised, "mind like glass" life. Many of us will have been down this rabbit hole. You know how it goes: you read the blogposts and such, become convinced that *this* is the software that will solve your personal organisational problems. You try it with enthusiasm for a while and it goes well at first. You've found what you were looking for. You know exactly what you're doing, when things are due, all your priorities are in order.
But after a time, a few days, or weeks, or maybe months, your enthusiasm starts to fade. The new system isn't quite working for you anymore. And then you read about another app that promises to get you organised. You jump in with enthusiasm and it goes well at first. And so it goes, round and round.
And every time, the new software has its own file format, incompatible with the last...
todo.txt, is a simple text file, each task occupying a single line. It is fully described here
https://github.com/todotxt/todo.txt
There are no end of apps you can use to manage todo.txt, see here:
for example. But the point is, you don't need any of them. If you have the file and a device that can open it, you can use todo.txt. Any computer, tablet, laptop: if it has a text editor, it can use todo.txt
The format is simple enough. and each element of the format is optional. Tasks can be given a priority, a start date, due date, project(s), context(s). When the task is done, mark it complete by putting an x as the first character on the line.
So a typical task on my todo.txt list might look like this:
(A) email staff about project @computer +project
And when it's done, it becomes
x (A) email staff about...
I don't usually put dates on my tasks. I manage the list in vim, so :sort moves the completed tasks out of the way. Every few days, I run a small shell script to archive the completed tasks to a file done.txt. In theory, that will mean I will have a big long list of all the stuff I've done. You never know, it might make me feel good about myself!
I'm still not the best organised minister in the church. It would take a miraculous intervention to achieve that! But I do have a system that I can use consistently and that doesn't rely on any particular device.
I just wish I'd known about it 30 years ago.
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richard <AT> deckzero <DOT> uk