TaskPaper adds just enough to stick
Thursday 1 November 2007 - Filed under mac + productivity + reviews
My favorite apps, the ones that slip easily into everyday use and stick there, just start with plain text and add some extra sauce. VoodooPad is a great example, and Hog Bay Software’s new app TaskPaper is, too.
I’ve used both kgtd and iGTD, and played around with a few others. I came closest to sticking with a system using kgtd, but switched to iGTD because manually syncing kgtd got old.
All the extra stuff in iGTD was appealing, but I left tasks in the inbox for weeks, and never reviewed much of my vast forest of projects. I eventually fell back into tending short lists in Stickies, with titles like “NOW:” and “BY TUESDAY!:”.
When I moved those Stickies lists into TaskPaper, all I had to do was copy and paste – it uses the same format I do when I get lazy, and that has to be a good sign. I haven’t found a reason to jot a note somewhere else yet.
Moving tasks from iGTD was more sobering. Half those “next actions” had been done for weeks, and the other half were clearly scheduled for next Neversday. As Merlin Mann pointed out, switching apps is a good excuse for a real review.
TaskPaper adds automatic formatting, tabs, search, and a bit of hyperlinking to plain text. Tasks are lines that start with a dash, and can be tagged by starting any word with an at-sign. Clicking a tag starts a search for that tag. I use them in a couple of ways – as contexts, and for scheduling. They can really be anything that makes sense as a visible search keyword.
I have been keeping a few tabs open – one to edit tasks, and a couple others with live searches to look at what’s on my plate. When I want to schedule something, I’ll tag it as @now or @tomorrow – I have those two as open tabs, and as I work I keep the @now tab open. Other tabs come and go to look at contexts, like @email or @errand.
I like that the tags can be part of the sentence, so I don’t have to tab through a bunch of controls to set tags – I just write something like ‘@email Bob @home’… easy.
I also set up an inbox project (by typing “Inbox:”, naturally) to collect notes quickly, and that’s worked pretty well so far.
As with any 1.0, there’s some room for improvement. It’s not very scriptable, but it is plain text, so it could be worked around. Quicksilver integration was important with both kGTD and iGTD, and I’m not sure yet if I’ll really miss that here. It can clean up tasks marked as done into an “Archive” project, but doesn’t yet note when they were finished, if that kind of thing matters to you. Finally, I’m not sure what the best way to sync with other devices would be, but there is a web interface in development – maybe that would be a good iPhone option.
TaskPaper is a solid, clear, and nicely minimalist app. Over the week I’ve been using it, it has made keeping to-dos in one place too easy to avoid, and added just enough functionality to sort through them without being distracting.
Note: When I downloaded the 1.0 release, I found a conflict with TextExtras and wrote a bug report. In reply, Jesse sent me a complimentary license. Nice guy. I was going to write about it anyway, but I thought I should mention that I got it for free, as a surprise.
2007-11-01 » mike
1 November 2007 @ 6:11 pm
I’m pleased to see this app get such a response. It’s simple and straight up.
Two things I like in your review, the notion that it sticks and that ties into it’s text+engine makeup, and defining contexts as a search term…
Jesse Grosjean is a class act and not just for writing some elegant software. I blogged on TaskPaper too, and he sent me a license. He included an update to WriteRoom (which I own) that he figured I didn’t have… which I didn’t. He endorses his competitors products, not because he’s a good guy (which he probably is…) but because he’s smart.
1 November 2007 @ 6:58 pm
Totally agree. I’ve been digging TaskPaper since the beginning… and I know you already saw, but it’s on sale today at 42% off from mupromo.com. Awesome.
And, looking forward to any kind of QuickSilver scripts you might cook up! ;)
1 November 2007 @ 10:26 pm
Great write up. I like the idea of TaskPaper, and I’d really like to use it, but for almost of the tasks I work on, I need a way to add notes.
For example, I may have a task that says “Call Bob re bid on upcoming job.” When I call Bob, I need to take detailed notes to share with my boss later.
How could I do something like that with TaskPaper?
1 November 2007 @ 10:46 pm
@Michael: You can add notes as regular text underneath the to-dos, but they aren’t attached, so when you Archive a done task, the notes wouldn’t come with.
However, and this is definitely a matter of preference, I would suggest that a to-do list isn’t the best place to keep notes about a call. When I have meetings or telecons, I tend to keep those notes in VoodooPad, where I keep my permanent notes and logs – that way I get WikiWord linking, metadata like timestamps and categories. I feel like it’s a better place for notes.
For example, a telecon I need to take notes on would get a new VoodooPad page “MeetingOn2007-11-1″ and I’d write any notes I neeed in there. The date would be there, and I could even use a script I wrote for Quicksilver to add new notes as timestampted entries in the page. If the meeting turned out to be important later, I might add a page alias to the VP page like “PromotionTelecon”. And it’d be around to be searchable.
So the todo note to make the call itself can be deleted, since if it needed to be a record after the fact, I’d have made a page for it.
2 November 2007 @ 1:38 am
I’d be interested in that QS/VoodooPad script.
I use VP for notes too. I use the Append to VP page QS plugin for my Inbox and then punch them into TaskPaper when reviewing. But I like the idea of datestamping…
2 November 2007 @ 9:47 am
@Tommy, I’ll send you the script separately. It needs a little bit of editing to be generally useful, but I should probably post it one of these days.
In fact, I thought I already had when I was writing that comment, but I couldn’t find it with google.
2 November 2007 @ 10:58 am
Hi Michael:
Thanks for the reply and the tip. I need to get my head around the idea of separating tasks and their results.
In my mind, I always have things grouped together like this:
Project (the goal; that which needs to be accomplished).
Tasks (the steps that, when completed, will achieve the goal of the Project).
Notes (details on the tasks and the results).
Resources (those external items that relate to the tasks, such as emails, pdf’s, and so on).
I have always tried to find a way to use just one program to rule them all, but something always falls short.
For example: OmniOutliner is superb for organizing, but not so good for attachments (of resources) and searching (I need to be able to see everything I have marked as “waiting,” without having to learn how to write scripts).
I may have to give up on the idea of an “all-in-one” solution.
That being said, TaskPaper does look great for managing just the task lists (but I wish I could drag and drop to rearrange things, like in OmniOutliner).
It’s always something :)