
Ask HN: How do you manage your day-to-day tasks? - 0xb100db1ade
I often find calendars too difficult to quickly read &amp; maintain.<p>My digital TODO-lists often become out-of-date since I don&#x27;t always have just phone&#x2F;laptop available to jot down notes.<p>My paper notes have worked for short-term tasks but seem to be lacking when it comes to long-term tasks&#x2F;events.<p>But perhaps I&#x27;m using these things incorrectly. What do HN users use?
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motiw
Work environment and needs are very personal but maybe you can learn from my
solution.

My frustration with most task manager is that they require me to manually
maintain a parallel universe to the other tools I use to execute a project
such emails, files, links, notes etc. This manual maintenance require a lot of
discipline and typing. When I am busy I am less likely to update the task list
and then few days after that my tasks are out-of-date and it takes even more
energy to fix, which I am less likely todo.

As a result I decided to develop my own task manager for Gmail
([https://www.centask.com/](https://www.centask.com/)) a tool that integrates
everything I need to complete a project, (emails, files, links, notes etc.)
organize it in any way I want it, and schedule single and nested items to
appear when I need them. Since it is Gmail centric I can email myself links
and notes from any app.

The key for me was that I process my email inbox within Centask so I must use
it, so it may get long when I am busy but never gets out-of-date.

When I have paper notes, I either type them into Centask as separate items or
email myself an image of it and add the image as sub-task of the main task.

Hope that helps

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cimmanom
You need a system, not a tool. Once you have a system, you can find the tool
(or more likely, small set of tools) that help you best implement it.

My system is loosely based on Getting Things Done (GTD). At different times
over the last 15 years I’ve implemented it using pen and paper; dedicated
apps; simple to do list apps; a word processor; etc.

Find a couple systems and try them out. Then adopt the principles of each that
you find most useful.

