
Everything in your life is just a list - jessep
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/08/workflowy_the_note_taking_app_that_changed_the_way_i_organize_my_life_.single.html
======
swang
How do I say this without incurring the wrath of people here on HN... Is this
not what pg was talking about in this article?
<http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html>

This entire thing appears to be just a paid advertisement.

~~~
jessep
Haha. I'm a WorkFlowy founder. A few people have thought this because it is so
positive, but it really isn't. The author just contacted me on Twitter saying,
"I'm gonna write a story about you, cause I love your product" and then called
and did an interview. I guess he really just likes it.

~~~
marquis
As a pro WorkFlowy user, I understand where he is coming from. I've often
wondered what you could do improve the product but I haven't been able to
think of anything (yet).

~~~
jessep
Ha, thanks (I work on it). Both for the comment and for upgrading to pro.
There's still like a bajillion things we can do to improve it. A few big
features, but a bajillion smaller usability improvements that add up to a
really big deal.

~~~
salgernon
My first development job was on MORE, shortly after Dave Winer sold it to
Symantec, and your product comes as close as anything I've seen to the feel of
that product. As I'm sure you know, it had a fanatical following.

Even though I probably won't be able to use it for my day job, I'll buy a
license and toast your future development!

~~~
jessep
:) Thanks so much. Yeah, it's really interesting that after the golden era of
outliners, none of them still exist in a big way.

------
codemac
All Glory to the Church of Org.

Kidding aside, they did a great job with workflowy. I still only use org mode,
but I've suggested it to several people who wouldn't be comfortable with
emacs, and they've all loved it.

org-mode + mobileorg + git = my entire life.

~~~
ac
So can mobileorg synchronise via git now?

~~~
codemac
No, but the android mobileorg does do ssh/scp, so you can have a "dumb"
version of git support.

I have a post-receive hook that updates the working copy with git checkout.
`git push` is all I have to run, so to me it _feels_ like git support :)

------
chime
Self-plug: I've been working on a similar outline app for about 3 years now:
<https://zetabee.com/text/>

I made it because I was doing something very similar in my text editor all the
time, especially with collapsing/expanding sub-lists. It has pretty decent
keyboard support and very few unnecessary features. I was going to build a
'check' completed feature but I've realized I just don't care about things
I've already done. I only care about what's next. So Control+Del to delete a
line is enough. It is a slightly opinionated app but being mostly plain-text
with indents, you can use it however you want.

I don't plan on making money with it and it has near zero operating cost. So
it's free/secure/unlimited and will remain so forever.

~~~
tadfisher
Emacs' org-mode is pretty much the same philosophy. Not quite as simple,
though.

------
bootload
_"... The biggest problem with all of them is that they don’t support flexible
data structures—they don’t let you define things how you want,..."_

Just halved the audience.

When I read this I think of Hawking, _"A Brief History of Time"_ & the advice
his editor to remove equations. Does the same hold for Comp Science
references? (Must resist the urge to talk CS in main-street press. Must resist
the urge to talk CS in main-street press...)

------
marpstar
Discovered WorkFlowy last year, wrapped the page in an Android WebView and put
it free in the market. Seeing a huge boost in downloads today. It's already
tripled my best day yet, almost a 10% increase in active installs.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codysand.f...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codysand.flowydroid&hl=en)

~~~
hornbaker
And WorkFlowy is ok with that?

~~~
marpstar
It's been in the Android Market for 10 months now. They've almost certainly
seen it. I'm obviously not taking credit for what they've created. Just wanted
an app that would allow me to use it full-screen. Thousands of others did,
too. It's free, no ads. Was just becoming familiar with the Android SDK at the
time, and whipped it up in an hour.

~~~
jessep
Yeah, we're aware of it. Basically, we plan on doing an Android app but
haven't had time yet. No reason to squash something that's helpful to people.

~~~
marpstar
I appreciate that. Please contact me should it ever become a problem.

------
mseepgood
I thought this was about Lisp.

~~~
brudgers
I thought it would provide a sound reason to learn Lisp.

~~~
MordinSolus
(cadaddadadddar life)

Nutella

------
sophacles
Workflowy people: Please please please provide an API. I like your tool, but
99% of the time I'm doing something I need to make a todo, I need to do it
somewhere other than looking at your web page. For example, from within vim.
Or at the command line. Or while checking email. A nice API would allow me to
whip up tools that make it super easy to access from wherever.

Other than that, very nice tool :)

~~~
jessep
We do want to make an API, but we think it would be irresponsible based on our
current organizational status. We're still in scrappy-two-person-startup mode,
and we don't want to do the poorly supported, unstable API thing.

But yeah, it's clearly important.

------
narrator
Sounds like Emacs org-mode for non-geeks.

------
fabiandesimone
I absolutely love Workflowy. It has replaced every piece of software I have
used in the past for todos.

I actively recommend it to my coworkers. Is just fantastic.

Thank you. Really, thank you.

------
patrickgzill
Hah, mine is a directed acyclic graph!

~~~
username3
What do you use?

~~~
jrockway
An outline is technically a tree. Each node can have zero or more children.
Since children cannot link to any node other than their own children, there
are no cycles. Since each children cannot refer to their parent, the graph is
directed. (Technically, all acyclic graphs must be directed, as a
bidirectional link would result in a two-node cycle. But if you don't count
those...)

A list would either be a zero or more equal-rank siblings, or a tree where
each node had exactly one child. Since that's not how most people take notes,
technically they are using a directed acyclic graph rather than a list.

In conclusion, words differ in meaning depending on context :)

~~~
zem
for full generality a dag would require that a node be able to have multiple
parents :)

------
ajju
I offload my brain to Workflowy once a day. It's awesome, but it would be
better if they had to mobile app I could use to reload my brain on the move ;)

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mcantelon
Is there anything more to Workflowy than an outliner with search capability?
Outliners have been around for decades.

~~~
chime
You could say the same about absolutely anything. You have to try it to
appreciate how much of a positive impact it can have on your
life/plans/schedule. I cannot function without a detailed outline. Every
single thing I do - personal, work, long-term projects, social obligations,
house chores - is part of an outline. It's nice to be able to offload your
brain to an app that will remember it forever so that you can concentrate on
better things. I even take minutes in real-time during all meetings in the
form of nested outlines.

Plus, Matt Cutts uses Workflowy. So you have to wonder how much of an impact a
good outline can have on the world!

~~~
mcantelon
Yeah, I like outliners. I've used them since the DOS days. I just wanted to
know how this one is better/different than what's currently out there. The
fact that it's web-based isn't new.

i.e. <http://thenextweb.com/2008/10/22/online-outliners/> (2008)

The article starts with "For as long as I’ve been using computers, I’ve been
searching for the perfect way to take digital notes" and then the author went
through a list of popular tools previously evaluated and this made me think
the author was going to talk about a new kind of tool.

Anyways, it's good that this article will expose people to outliners (and
awesome Matt Cutts is using one).

------
justjimmy
Tried it out, it's pretty smooth and 'flowy' (due to the little slick
animations). Nicely done :)

I like how you kept it simple, clean and straight forward. Hope you don't over
complicate it in future versions by bombarding it with due dates, try to
implement bill payment features, calendars, etc etc. I just want a _list_!

------
barking
David Allen commenting on productivity tools says that, in essence, all you
need is the ability to create and maintain lists.

In Evernote I have a bunch of notes. One is called 'Projects', one is called
'someday maybe' one is called 'stuff' and then there are a batch of context
notes, office, home, etc all the usual GTD notes.

Each of these notes is a list. So when I open evernote, what I see is a list
of lists. I find this depth of nesting optimal.

It works great. I mainly use it on my phone but, of course, it's available on
my PC.

I use evernote only because it means I have an online backup and if I change
my phone there's no messy data transfer to arrange.

Used in conjunction with Google calendar it supports GTD perfectly.

I have tried a lot of GTD apps and none beats the simplicity of this when it
comes to supporting GTD methodology

------
cyrus_
I use <http://www.checkvist.com/>, fully keyboard-driven interface with all
sorts of perks. Haven't compared it directly to Workflowy, just putting it out
there. No affiliation.

~~~
knitatoms
Thanks for the link. I'd never heard of CheckVist or WorkFlowy. Having just
tried them both, CheckVist is certainly more feature rich (due dates,
formatting, multiple lists etc) whilst still being simple and keyboard driven.

------
raju
Something similar that comes to mind is TaskPaper
(<http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/taskpaper/>) [Mac Only] that does
things very similar to Workflowly. Minimal, short-cut driven, supports tags
with powerful search capabilities.

That, along with Dropbox to save the .taskpaper files, and you are good to go.
It even has a iPhone app (Haven't used that yet).

------
pkrein
I'm a paid user of WorkFlowy, love it. The hash tags and @person references
are really useful for working on shared workflowys. What we really need next
though, is a way to transform the nested "mind map" (which is useful for
getting stuff out of your head) to a flat time-series of tasks. Two different
steps in the process: dumping your thoughts and then executing the tasks.

------
y3di
I'm building a discussions platform that works in a similar fashion to
workflowy. I guess you could say it's a collaborative workflowy. for Check it
out: <http://ec2-50-16-106-77.compute-1.amazonaws.com/>

I think the idea of infinitely nested lists are useful for many things. The
tree structure is quite powerful.

~~~
desireco42
I really like what you did there. Looking forward to see what comes out of it.

------
ww520
Not in Emacs Org mode?

------
Daegalus
I found workflowy a few months ago. Used it for a while, and realized how
useful it is for me. More-so than any todo list or mindmap ever was.

I went pro 2 weeks ago. Worth every penny. Hope they keep up the good work.

Only wish it worked better on WP7's browser, but thats probably MS' fault more
than Workflowy's

------
tbatterii
needs 2 way syncing with org-mode.

~~~
slurgfest
Do they have a REST API? It should be pretty easy to write clients if they do.

------
calebmadrigal
One big problem: a picture is worth a thousand words, and there is no photo
capabilities.

------
ngokevin
If you're looking for a REALLY non-complicated list app, check out
<http://minimalist.ngokevin.com> which makes use of local storage and app
cache to work offline.

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cyscott
Reminds me of a list version of a mindmap -- which is great. I am addicted to
mindmaps to organize my thoughts but navigating the elements by panning around
a giant map can get cumbersome. Looks like a good alternative.

------
Derbasti
I simply refuse to look at websites that slap a giant-ass ad thing across my
screen before letting me access their content. (on iPad/Chrome)

------
based2
More > <http://www.omnigroup.com/omnioutliner>

------
herdrick
Wow! Congrats to the Workflowy people!

------
gregstoll
I'm a paid user of WorkFlowy and love it...now if it only worked in the
browser on Windows Phone!

------
econner
Go Workflowy! Love this thing.

------
sethmazow
It is good.

------
fatbob
how do you do due dates or start dates on your todos?

~~~
hu_me
i usually add a tag #Date

