
Ask HN: How are you tracking your tasks? - Gratsby
I&#x27;m looking for recommendations for either habits or software (I&#x27;m primarily using Android and OSX these days) that I can use to make myself more effective.<p>I find the process of breaking down my workload and personal life into small tasks that I can accomplish changes things.  I feel like I got something done.  I can see progress on daunting big ticket items.  I think about the bigger picture a little bit more.<p>But I haven&#x27;t found a way to actually track my tasks that I find acceptable.  I tried emacs org-mode.  It&#x27;s good feature-wise, but I simply don&#x27;t use it consistently, and sharing what I&#x27;m up to requires others to have emacs and org-mode installed.  Outlook task tracking, meh.  Keeping a onenote file up to date... it just doesn&#x27;t happen because I don&#x27;t live in onenote.  Jira works for software tasks, and maybe if I ran my own jira instance instead of the outdated&#x2F;permissions-restricted version that I have access to at work, I would like it better.<p>I&#x27;ve looked through the Google Play store and I&#x27;ve done some googling.  Everyone and their brother wrote a task-tracking app sometime in the last few years.  I&#x27;m having trouble sorting the wheat from the chaff.<p>What do you use?  What habits have you developed that keep you productive and help you communicate your workload status?
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tmaly
Make a list on some app or on a paper pad.

I use Google Keep for simple todo lists like grocery or things I have to do
for short duration.

For bigger long term projects I like Trello

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OrionSeven
I used to have a yellow legal pad that I'd make lists on. Cross items off as
they were finished (always very satisfying) and add new things to the bottom.
When the page was full, too ratty, or whatever I'd rewrite the page. Towards
the end (I use Trello.com now) I had two columns to sort things.

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Zigurd
Many of my clients use JIRA. If you are in a situation where you have good
support for tools internally and need to interface to contractors and
consultants on a regular basis, JIRA will almost certainly do what you need.
BUT you'll need a JIRA guru to put it to use properly.

I've looked for simpler solutions for cost-sensitive clients who need only a
basic kanban board for task tracking. I've found that Freedcamp has a very
usable free tier and a usable UI. It's simple enough that nobody involved in
the scrums needed any training or support. I'm sure there are others that are
just as good but the difference was that the free tier wasn't so restricted as
to be useless.

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kennyfrc
Same as you, I tried a bunch of various to-do list apps before but none of
them worked out well for me.

Then I realized that the process of breaking down workload and personal life
into small tasks does not fit well in a to-do list app context.

What worked for me was using something like BusyCal, which is a souped-up
calendar. It was more aligned with the 'breaking down' process because I used
the 'banner' feature to help me define my weekly goals then I proceed with
tasks assigned with specific chunks of time.

I then track the planned vs actual time spent using letsfreckle.com, which is
a time tracking tool.

For the more higher-level stuff (ie. monthly goals, yearly goals), I just keep
them in Trello.

As for habits, I have a weekly review to check where I am vs monthly goals and
I also use that review to allocate tasks into my calendar.

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OrionSeven
I use Trello.com (and have for about 4 years) for tracking all of my work
tasks (from coding tasks, to making sure I reply to someone, misc things, and
more). If you're not familiar with Trello, think of an online kan-ban board.
They have a great web app, but also iOS and Android apps.

I have Trello organized with the following boards (from left to right on the
screen):

"Thing to Do" \- This is really my inbox. While I tend to make the cards in
the list they need to go, if I just don't know I place it here. About once a
month I go through it to make sure nothing has fallen off my radar that
shouldn't or more importantly see if I can just delete it because it doesn't
matter.

"Priority Tasks" \- These are bigger tasks that I know are things that need to
get done as workflow permits.

"Doing" \- What I'm currently working on. Usually 5-10 items depending on
dependencies.

"Dated Boards" \- At the start of each week I create a new board with the
title of being just the date. All tasks that I complete that week go onto that
board. For really long tasks I may copy a card and keep it in "Doing" but put
a copy in that weeks board.

Trello also has card labels, think colored flags to identify things quickly. I
always have the following labels:

Red - Critical, e.g. an emergency task that takes priority over all things.
Orange - Urgent, can wait, but not long. Yellow - Time sensitive, I don't
always use the date feature on Trello cards, so I use the yellow label for
things that need to be done by a set date Blue - Big tasks or Big wins. I want
to be able to find in past week when I had a big win. Green -
Interdepartmental dependency, either someone else needs this from me or I need
something from someone else.

At my current job I can see back nearly three years what I did week to week. I
can quickly search to see when something was done, or browse it. But more
importantly it's easy to make a Trello card and once it's in Trello I can
easily organize my time and tasks.

~~~
OrionSeven
One other thing I really like about Trello is it's extremely flexible so you
can tweak how you use it over time as you use it more.

~~~
luxpir
I was also big on Trello for a good while, but wanted to come away from third-
party, slightly bloaty services, so made a vertical kanban board in a plain
text file. Timestamps, autocompletion, tagging etc. all present, synced to a
rpi server for external access.

For tasks or events with dates I have a plaintext calendar. Similar setup
there.

Have a look here: [https://github.com/luxpir/plaintext-
productivity](https://github.com/luxpir/plaintext-productivity)

Not everyone's cup of tea, but mentions why it was developed over org-mode in
the linked post.

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romanr
Http://hitask.com - straightforward task manager that does not impose any
framework or workflow on you. Easy but can be as powerful as you want it, with
team features, Google sync, etc.

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dalerus
I use Nozbe to dump all my todos in via email or in the app. Then organize
every morning. It's based around GTD concept but can be customize to your
workflow.

I needed an easy place to dump everything. As work uses Trello and my startup
uses Basecamp.

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csallen
I use Taskforce (www.taskforceapp.com) to track my tasks. I spend a lot of
time in Gmail, dealing with clients and colleagues, so I built Taskforce for
myself and people like me.

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nvbhargava
I use Todoist to keep track of my tasks. But I started using toggl (toggl.com)
recently to keep track of how long I spend on a single task, and I started
becoming more productive because of this.

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skylark
Todoist is fantastic. Once you get the hang of their natural language date
parser, entering both one-off and repeated tasks becomes extremely fast.

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kiloreux
Todoist, it has been awesome and very helpful so far, exists on every platform
and very simple and slick UI.

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MalcolmDiggs
I put most things in Asana. Except groceries, for that I use evernote (just a
list with checkboxes).

