Adventures in TodoLand
I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, Sir, because I’m not myself you see.
~ Alice in Wonderland.
A long time ago, when I was still in school, I used pen and paper to make TODO lists. Stuff like “copy exercise #4 from V and submit tomorrow”. Yeah, I was kinda using GTD years before I heard the term.
Over the past five years, I have had a string of affairs with all the hottest todo apps out there - from Remember the Milk to Wunderlist, but I’ve remained married to pen and paper (or pencil and paper, just to spice things up every now and then). Nothing beats its simplicity, speed and flexibility, and crossing off items on a paper list is a great feeling.
Last week I think I finally found that one TODO app that’s closest to pen-and-paper. It’s called t. Let me warn you though, it’s not for everyone, but hackers should totally love it. It works in the terminal, and this is what it looks like:
adsahay$>t
2 - [blog] post on todo apps
4 - [email] mail someone about something
Creating a new task is this simple:
adsahay$> t [dev] fix some bug
2 - [blog] post on todo apps
4 - [email] mail someone about something
d - [dev] fix some bug
Done with a task? Strike it off the list.
adsahay$> t -f d
2 - [blog] post on todo apps
4 - [email] mail someone about something
Use all sorts of command line goodness to pipe the output of t to count the tasks in the list with wc -l or search by type with grep. Awesome, right? Wait, that’s not all. If you check out the t homepage you can see how to create multiple todo lists. It uses plain text files, so it’s easy to collaborate on a list by sharing a single file (for e.g., using Dropbox). Can you beat that?
Steve, the author of t, says this tool is for those who’d rather do things than organize their TODO list. So far he’s completely correct. Let’s see how long this affair lasts!
Tyranny of the Tools
Or to put it bluntly, when my wife wants me to mow the lawn, she can ask, she can email, or she can make a bright red note and stick it on the refrigerator where I have to look at it every time I get a snack. Guess which one gets results. Make me look at it — even when I’m doing something else — and I’ll figure out a way to make it go away.
I’ve made this mistake in the past - getting obsessed with improving a process beyond a point where the improvements provide a sufficient return. It was simply far more fun solving a problem and building a tool for it, than patching a two-year old code with an enhancement that a monkey could do. Thankfully I know better now, but the danger still lurks in many developers’ minds.
Here’s how xkcd puts it:
A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design
That’s the fundamental gesture in this technology. Sliding a finger along a flat surface.
There is almost nothing in the natural world that we manipulate in this way.
A great post on untapped potential of human hands in visions of the future of interaction design.
Productivity is for machines. If you can measure it, robots should do it.
Lessons from an internet blackout
I recently relocated, and my broadband company (hint: name starts with ‘A’ and has spent millions on redesigning its branding) took ten days instead of the promised three to transfer my connection.
Here’s what I learnt in those ten days:
- Facebook is overrated. Logging in once a week is enough.
- Twitter is important for stuff like #barkhagate which was blacked out by the otherwise insatiable Indian media. Otherwise you can live without it.
- Email can never be overrated. Seriously. Can’t be without email for too long.
- If you have enough documentation available offline, coding is actually far more productive without internet.
- RSS is amazing, specially with Feedly. You can catch up on top stories of the week in very little time.
Basically social media is quite a time-sink and productivity killer. I have now stopped accessing Twitter and Facebook on my Macbook, and only look at it from my iPod touch when I’m away from my laptop. Its been two days since this arrangement, and so far it looks good.
Ok, back to work now.
