Text

TaskPaper 1.0 adds new features (and "fiddling" isn't one of them)

Merlin — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 13:49:12 -0400

Hog Bay Software's TaskPaper was recently released in a completed 1.0 version (previously), and if you're the sort of person who casts about for a simple way to manage projects and tasks from a Mac, this just may be your app.

But, even more significantly, if you're not looking for a simple action management system -- if you're that particularly pathetic sort of character who's convinced that features like tagging, syncing, collaboration, graph paper generation, and the introduction of an onboard artisanal breadmaker are all that stands between you and getting your stuff done -- well, you may need TaskPaper more than anybody. Because, friends, TaskPaper is just about fiddle-proof, and, frankly, I know a lot of people who could benefit from that today.

Here's what a simple document looks like in TaskPaper:

There's your projects, there's your tasks, there's your contexts, and there's your ability to see what you've ticked off. THAT, as John Hodgman might say, IS ALL.

So, first off and best off, TaskPaper is just text. Although documents created with TaskPaper will have the ".taskpaper" suffix, you'll find that you can open and edit the file with TextEdit, TextMate, or any other garden variety text app. Here's what my test document looks like when opened in TextMate:

I like the clarity and simplicity of the document's formatting, and how it virtually negates the ability to fiddle. Actually, on first glance, the magic of TaskPaper may look familiar to people who have used syntaxes like Chairman Gruber's peerless Markdown. I mean it really is just endlessly portable and mungeable text; it's TaskPaper's li'l engine that turns that formatting into the hooks that let you "do stuff" like view by context or project, and so on. This latest cut adds tabs for doing this neato functional stuff, and I have to say it's really appealing. The approach is similar to OmniFocus -- but even more obsessively concerned with keeping the system focused solely on completing tasks (rather than grooming and feeding them for months while they grow long hair and learn how to drive a stick).

Yes: absolutely -- TaskPaper will be way too simple for a lot of people's needs (including mine). But, if you're so overwhelmed with "flexibility" that you're getting close to throwing in the towel on an electronic system and are considering going back to paper, (while I'd never be one to stand in your way) you might want to give TaskPaper a whirl. If you love text and could benefit from the portability of a simple electronic document, it's definitely worth looking at.

TaskPaper is free to try, and it'll only set you back $18.95 if you decide to buy a copy. Download 'er now.

”TaskPaper 1.0 adds new features (and "fiddling" isn't one of them)” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on October 24, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

TaskPaper: Simple, text-based task management

Merlin — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 09:48:09 -0400

TaskPaper

Jesse Grosjean from Hog Bay Software has just begun sharing the first releases of a new task-tracking app which adopts a refreshingly stripped-down approach to managing action on a Mac. TaskPaper starts with the simplicity of text files then adds just a bit of Mac magic to make it both smarter and prettier, but without giving up portability and ease of use. Jesse says:

TaskPaper makes it easy to create a list of your projects and their tasks so that you always know what needs to be done. It's simple to reorganize the list, create new items, mark items as done, and delete items that your finished with. You can also assign contexts (such as "home", "office", or "car") to your tasks so that you can later generate lists of all tasks assigned to a specific context.

As Gina Trapani has shown, there's clearly a place out there for a smart, text-y task app. What a lot of folks need is not the taxonomical rabbit hutch of The Big GTD App™ -- they just need an easy way to structure tasks in a non-fiddly way. TaskPaper's easy tagging and fiddle-resistant stoicism could make it a go-to app for the overwhelmed knowledge worker (who's not quite ready to make the leap into the shell).

This is very young software, and Jesse assures us that it still needs some TLC before being ready for battlefield usage (context views are being balky, for one). But, I'll be keeping an eye on this, and -- if you struggle with rethinking your workflow around over-engineered productivity apps -- I encourage you to grab a copy.

If you do this stuff long and diligently enough, you eventually learn that when it comes to "task lists" you need to focus a lot more on the "task" than the "list" (cf.). I'm always encouraged to see an app that honors that arrangement from the get-go.

”TaskPaper: Simple, text-based task management” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on August 03, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Pick of the Week: Plain Text Wiki bundle for TextMate

Merlin — Tue, 22 May 2007 12:42:42 -0400

plain text wiki (20 May 2007, Interconnected)

TextMate users in search of a simple wiki should check out Matt Webb's new plain text wiki bundle. He's made it very easy to quickly generate new "pages" and links using nothing but TextMate, the Finder, and CamelCase words:

This is exactly what I need: A bunch of text documents that I'll be able to read at any point in the future, in a wiki structure that will be simple to implement in most extensible text editors.

I'd also note that Matt's bundle works handsomely with Quicksilver's venerable prepend/append and new file functionalities, so, once you've taken the requisite 45 seconds to set this up, you don't necessarily need to even be in TextMate to make additions. You gotta love text.

Nice work, Matt.

Edit 2007-05-22 17:36:17 Forever confusing my British Matts; This bundle is by Matt Webb not the also-wonderfully-talented-and-funny Matt Jones. Many thanks to jjg for the correction. 43 Folders regrets the error.

”Pick of the Week: Plain Text Wiki bundle for TextMate” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on May 22, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

My txt setup

Merlin — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 08:39:42 -0500

The explications continue.

It's been a while since I talked about how I'm using text files, and my post a while ago on Quicksilver appending reminded me of a few little changes I've made over the past year or so that my fellow text geeks might find interesting.

Reviewing: Why text?

Like a lot of geeks and aspirational geeks, I do as many things as possible in plain text files. I've endlessly sung the praises of text on 43F, but in a nutshell, they're portable, efficient, tiny, and almost endlessly mungible. They're the lingua franca of Unix and most of the civilized world.

As you'll see, I use text files for any variety of things, although my favorite use is for making and maintaining lists. The aforementioned append functionality lets me quickly add items to any file with nothing but muscle memory and a few keystrokes. Best thing ever.

I also write in text files as well as store large amounts of reference information. Text is very easy to swap into HTML (I keep almost everything in Markdown format), and text is wonderfully searchable, whether using Spotlight, Find & Replace, or just via incremental search from within the editor.

Point being: I use applications like OmniOutliner, iCal, and (formerly) Entourage to organize the relationships between silos in my life; but text files are the living repositories for as much of the actual information as I can manage.

Getting a system

Like everything, this text system benefits from a loose organizational framework that lets me quickly create and change files without having to worry too much about what it's called, where it goes, and how I'll find it again. So here's a few high points from my text world.

One and only one place

I've whittled down to a single folder for all my active text files with just two sub-directories, "Archives" and "Old."

"Old" is simply where I dragged every text file I was pretty sure was dead or obviated (but you never know), and "Archives" is where I put the dearly-departed since making the move to the one folder to rule them all. Archiving is done...well...whenever I feel like it or notice that the top txt directory is starting to seem a little wooly.

Everything else sits in one directory. I use a little system of "meta symbols" and intuitive naming to keep things organized in the one big folder.

A smart name

Nearly all my files are named according to this structure:

Metasymbol SphereOfLife Project UniqueIntuitiveFilename VersionNumber.txt

where:

Metasymbol tells me whether the file is a running list, a reference file, or a static document (more on this in a minute)
Sphere of Life is simply something like "work" or "home" or "43 folders" -- any über-silo that represents, say, 20% or more of your time and attention (hint: abbreviations are good here)
Project is what it sounds like: "Make-Articles" or "Johns-Site" or whatever (hint: abbreviations are good here too)
The unique file name is the first and most intuitive name that pops into my head, sometimes augmented with redundant acronyms, etc. For me it's important to be able to find stuff quickly in Quicksilver, so I leave big fat hooks that account for whatever I'm likely to be looking for in the future
Version number is a slick little trick of mine. When I start a new version of a document, instead of adding a "2" or "3" to the most recent copy, I simply duplicate the document, then timestamp the old one -- ala "+ work haa site design proposal-2005-12-12_08-16-34.txt". That way I always know the unversioned copy is the most recent, but I still have backups I can roll back to any time. Neato.

Meta symbols

I've discovered I have three basic kinds of text files, and chose a simple method for marking the type of files they are for quick visual cueing.

This is super helpful for winnowing file names in Quicksilver: I start by typing one of these unusual (non-alpha-numeric) characters, and I can instantly pop to just a list of the types of files I want to see.

Running lists

Running lists are the majority of my files. They're the kinds of lists that I mentioned in the appending article -- ongoing places to park ideas of any kind over time. They begin with a ">". This is, as with all these, purely my own convention, so you should feel free to pick symbols that make sense for you. This yields file names like:

> broken.txt - items or functionalities in my world that need repair or fixes
> mom birthday gift ideas.txt - ways to delight the one what brung me
> webdav wish list and questions.txt - little projects for my newfound favorite technology

Reference

Reference items are evergreen and reusable content that I update fairly infrequently and refer to as needed.

^ work resume.txt
^ 43f site bio.txt
^ work domains I'm not using.txt

Static files

These are things like blog posts, articles, and any kind of nonce content that will be used once, and then probably not needed again (making them very quick to archive every month or so).

+ 43f post new text setup.txt (this document)
+ 5ives post five ways to make the party all about you.txt (potential list for 5ives)
+ work letter larry tate 2005-10-23.txt

So that's my current system. It's actually not as byzantine as it sounds. It really comes down to:

fast creation
fast addition
fast archiving
invisibility and intuitiveness

Your mileage will certainly vary, but I hope this stuff helps if you've been working to tame your own text beast.

”My txt setup” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on December 12, 2005. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Textmate: Recent enhancements

Merlin — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 07:52:31 -0400

TextMate: The Missing Editor for OS X

It's been a while since I've checked in on Textmate--my steady date this last year for most text editing work.

The updates have been coming fast and furious lately, and have included tons of tiny features I love. In the last couple days, we've gotten a cool little menu bar that lets you change code highlighting language or run bundle-based commands, macros, and snippets (how I love you, snippets).

The lack of polish that a lot of people ragged in the app's early days keeps being corrected with smart, good-looking little tweaks. It's still a lean and mean geek app, but I like where it's headed. Might be worth having another look at if it's been a while for you.

(Also, here's the appcasting RSS feed of the changelog. Yes, thanks, I am a huge dork.)

”Textmate: Recent enhancements” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on October 26, 2005. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Life inside one big text file

Merlin — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 07:28:02 -0400

O’Reilly Network Weblogs: Living in text files

Giles takes one of the biggest, geekiest leaps you can—moving all of his stuff into a single big-ass plain text file.

As Danny O’Brien discovered during his research into effective organizational habits of geeks, text is the simplest, most platform-independent, fastest-to-search format we have for storing information. So everything I need - from todos, blog posts in progress, article ideas, addresses, my list of books to read, the shopping list, and much more besides, lives in just the one file. In effect, I live in that file. When I’m sitting in front of my computer, it feels like home.

This ambitious strategy—usually only whispered about among the lower geek echelons in which I dwell—seems to require a lot of confidence, planning, and familiarity with your favorite flavor of text editor. Mine’s currently TextMate, but, given what I’ve seen people like Danny do with Vim (and its incremental search-on-steroids, scripting functions, and endless shortcuts and configurability), this really reignites my resolve to hit the book and thumb through all my bookmarks again.

So. Questions for people who are already living in one text file:

What tips do you have for people considering the big move?
What tricks do you use to organize, automate, and move around in your huge-ass text file?
How do you decide where new stuff goes within a mutli-thousand line document?
Are you using section and sub-section headings to jump around?
How do you handle versions and multiple drafts of subsections (like, say, blog posts)
Got any sweet Vim tricks to share?
Any point where this approach starts to fall apart?
Have you found you think about your work differently when you work inside only one file?

Spill whatever you like about your one-file system (and, curious folks, feel free to ask questions).

Related Stuff

”Life inside one big text file” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on August 17, 2005. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

How does a geek hack GTD?

Merlin — Wed, 15 Sep 2004 10:52:09 -0400

Productivity programs like Getting Things Done obviously have been developed around the needs of managers, sales people, and entrepreneurs. This makes sense given that those are largely the people who are buying the books, listening to the CDs, and attending the seminars (or certainly represent the largest market share of potential customers).

But, one of my main goals with this site was to discuss the way that productivity plans and methods designed for the business world can be reframed in a context that's useful for developers, programmers, and garden-variety geeks. This is not to say that geeks don't fill many or all of these managerial roles in their work, but they also tend to have work styles, deliverables, and skillsets that are markedly different from the average, notional GTD user.

The prime example: "@computer." Man, geeks don't just use a computer for occasional work or to "look something up on 'The Interweb.'" They live on their laptop and take it anywhere they'd bring their wallet. They eat wireless like potato chips and crank out code for a living. They have an IM window and an IRC channel running all day. They're streaming conferences in and live-blogging conferences out. In short, if they follow the stock GTD setup, they will have a very, very long "@computer" list.

So I wanted to start a conversation about how geeks handle their lists, their projects, and their agendas--not so much in terms of the tool they use to store the information, although that's fair game--as with how they segment the information and decide when to break it into pieces. I'll start by providing the setup used by a San Francisco web developer who spends a lot of time on his PowerBook: me.

(Please note: since I'd love to see a lot of discussion about this, please post your response on your own site and just send a single trackback ping to this post (hit: http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/1128456). Comments below are ok for short responses or for posting links to your non-tracback-able site, but please try to limit yourself to a paragraph or so. Thanks.)

My basic tool setup

To get the tool part out of the way, everything I mention here is maintained in the following way (for today, anyway: ask again tomorrow)

all lists in text files, kept in directory "~/Documents/txt"
all main GTD lists set to backup automatically on Save to "~/Documents/txtbak"
PsyncX backs up both directories to an external drive each night
primary GTD lists kept open all day in BBEdit
- Currently running a demo of 8.0, so they're all in one document/drawer
Finder labels
- primary David-style GTD lists: red
- current hot agendas and contexts: orange
- 43 Folders-specific files: yellow
list items usually added via append using my Quicksilver trick
all documents maintained in Markdown for easy HTML conversion

My lists

classic GTD lists

PROJECTS - every multiple-action outcome to which I'm committed
_@nextactions - next physical action toward project completion or resolution (note "_" at beginning pulls it to the top of alpha lists)
@inbox - unprocessed items
@waiting - things I need from other people
@someday - projects and actions for "someday, maybe, later, or on-hold"
@agenda_foo - separate agendas for each client and important person in my life

my additional non-geek lists

@dailysweep - the emergency work pileup file that I generate when I need to lock-down on the "Seven Things" hack mentioned the other day
@groceries - Although lately, I've been leaning toward SplashShopper for the Palm

my additional geek lists

@tech - somewhat similar to a generic "@computer," but functionally more similar to "@someday." A dumping ground for any skill I want to learn, tool I want to play with, or setup item I want to tweak. This could be about sites, applications, or what have you. It's the parking lot for every random item I might want to follow-up on someday. Once I commit to a given item, it gets moved to PROJECTS and a next action is generated.
@geekbench - this is a new project I'm working on to share questions and projects with other interested geeks (think: Ask MeFi meets LazyWeb meets Lifehacks meets advice column...all via RSS and Trackback). More on this in a later post
@palm - stuff I want to play with and experiment with on my newly-resuscitated Palm Vx
scratch.txt - not a list but a great little hack; leave a "scratch pad" text file open all day and use it as the place for typing odd bits of information you'll soon put someplace else. (Keeps you from having a dozen Temp files or "Untitled Document"s)

I also have a bunch of other ad hoc lists that are specific to a certain context or that I only need for a short period of time. My rule of thumb--and arguably the core of my own system--is to group like items for as long as possible, but then break them into pieces as soon as they start becoming a horizontal distraction.

My approach and where I get value

I suspect that I probably have more buckets than most of you do, but that might be written off to my modest regular expression skills.

But I also believe it's vitally important to honor the sanctity of the "classic" GTD lists; if anything stays on one list that really belongs somewhere else (or in its own new area), you risk losing a lot of value and trust in your system. I'm rigid about moving "super-TODOs" from "@nextactions" to "PROJECTS"--but only if I really am committed to it as a desirable outcome. That's the critical distinction over other productivity hacks. You aren't just shuttling TODOs from list to list; you're actually negotiating a future for yourself.

This additional layer of refactoring and evaluation has been a terrific aid for me, so I've tried to set myself up in a way that makes that examination easy and desirable. I now constantly find myself asking whether I really want to commit myself to something, so my TODO list doesn't feel like a millstone around my neck anymore. It just seems like a series of simple, miniature tasks that get me incrementally closer to the goals I've set for myself. And that feels pretty good.

How about you?

So, I guess my questions to you practicing GTD geeks are these:

What additional contexts and buckets have you added to replace or augment "@computer," "@online," and the other standard GTD buckets?
At what point do you feel the need to create a new bucket, and how long do you maintain it?
Given that your job may involve an endless series of tiny tasks and bug fixes, how do you use your @nextactions list? Do you use a tool outside your list?
Any other great hacks you're particularly proud of or find really productive?

Important: Trackbacks preferred, please

As above if you have a site that can send a trackback to this entry please post your reply on your site and just ping this entry once. Commenting or linking to your response below is fine, of course, but keep it short, pelase.

So tell me: how are you hacking Getting Things Done?

Edit: 2006-03-21 - Nomenclature fixed: changed "nerd" to "geek."

”How does a geek hack GTD?” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on September 15, 2004. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"