
Show HN: Chaoslist – A self-prioritizing todo-list - ArdentZeal
https://chaoslist.io/
======
derefr
Cool stuff!

But, complete tangent: given the words "chaos" and "self-prioritizing"
together in the headline, I was expecting something else.

Concept pitch: a to-do list manager with 1. generational garbage collection
and 2. probabilistic LRU cache-eviction.

1\. Generational GC: Tasks have a "re-evaluation deadline." Depending on the
type of task (short-term, medium-term, long-term) that deadline is either a
week, month, or year. When a task hits its deadline, you must choose to either
renew it for another period, or throw it away. When you renew a task, its
deadline grows to the next period size (short-term -> medium-term; medium-term
-> long-term.) And all tasks other than short-term tasks _must_ be broken down
into subtasks.

2\. Probabilistic cache-eviction: you can set a (soft) size limit on your task
list. Once you hit your list-size limit, every new task entered will evict an
old task from the list. So, every time you enter a new task on a "full" list,
the list software will select a random subset of your oldest tasks and force
you to choose one to evict one in order to replace it with the new task. (So
your newest tasks are highest priority, and your oldest tasks sort of "rot"
and fade away. But you can "bump" tasks at any time to manually move them back
to the top of the list. A task is also "bumped" when it hits its re-evaluation
deadline and you choose to renew it.)

Basically, this is the personal-productivity equivalent of how Red Tape
Reduction laws work :)

~~~
ArdentZeal
Thanks a lot :)

I like your idea, notify me when you hit the market with that :)

Maybe a small explanation to the chaos in the name.

So over the last couple years all the buzz seems to be about zen, zen here,
zen there. But what all (that i know of) these zen products have in common is
that the just force all the zen out of their users, by forcing them to put
exactly the data in they need and be careful when you did not dot your i's and
cross your t's.

But, at least in my experience, life can get messy and chaotic. So I would
like a new software generation, which just deals with that instead of forcing
that work onto me. I named it the chaos generation and with all the ai
advancements we might be on a good track to make that happen eventually :)

Also my family group on Whatsapp is named Chaosclan, so I got that in there :)

Cheers

------
ArdentZeal
A bit of background story...

I pretty much hated Todo-Lists all my life. Instead of doing what you are
supposed to do, you get the additional overhead of putting it also into a
list? F __* that! Instead of remembering the things I gotta do, I now have to
remember looking at my Todo-list. So at some point I was thinking... we are
close to self-driving cars... we are dreaming of setteling down on f __*ing
Mars. Why is there no Todo-list which can just tell me when and where a task
is important.

So you still have the overhead of putting the task in, but now the tradeoff
will be you being able to actually throw the task out of your head and focus
on the things which are important right here, right now.

I am in the process of finalizing the design for a first marketing offensive
and am looking here for more feedback to make it the best possible product it
can be. Mind helping me out? :)

Cheers

~~~
yakshaving_jgt
I can find no mention of pricing, other than that it’s free forever.

When you say you’re doing a “first marketing offensive”, it would suggest
you’ll be spending time/money on it, and I expect you expect to see some ROI.

I’d be hesitant to invest my time in any service without having a clear
understanding of what it’s going to cost me.

~~~
ArdentZeal
Hello there,

so when you start at first you do not even need to register for anything. I
want people to be able to jump in with minimal effort. After 3 days (or
earlier of your own choosing) you will be asked to register an account.

The app will be free forever if you have less than 6 active tasks at all time.
If you get over that threshold you have the option to enable advertisments
(one banner at the bottom) for unlimited access or stay for free and live with
the 6 task limit.

I am planning to give users the option to just buy the product for some euros
instead of using advertisements. But that will come at a later point when I
get around to it.

So basically at the moment, it is my own implementation of the fremium model
prevailent in many mobile apps :)

~~~
drusepth
There's absolutely nothing wrong with this model (and kudos to you for
providing a couple different options), but it's definitely worth outlining
what the future payment methods will (most likely) look like since people like
the comment you're responding to may be put off by the complete lack of
information on cost, especially when the app is something like to-do lists
where people want to just find a good one and stick to it for a long time.

~~~
ArdentZeal
Hmmm you might be right. I tought free would attract more people then laying
out the option, but being completely transparent might evaluate to more here.
I have to think about that. Thanks for the input :)

~~~
afarrell
I would probably only use this product if I could pay for it.

I don't want to invest in a system that will disappear because it isn't paying
a thoughtful UX designer's rent. Most ads are poorly-targeted distractions,
even those by Amazon. That is the last thing I want in a tool that I'm trying
to use to help my brain tame the chaos of my tasks and obligations. Unless I
had some way of knowing that the ads would be high-quality ones with really
effective targeting based on either the content of my todo-list or a box where
you let me complain about my problems

~~~
ArdentZeal
that is fine. If you happen to be on iOS there is an abonement already
available which basically is the "I like what you are doing and would love to
support more"-option for now. If you are more interested in a one-time
payment, there is no option for that yet, but I would like to have one in the
near(er) future.

Cheers

------
monkpit
A note on your trailer video - “cancel handy contract” might not make sense to
American English speakers, since “handy” is not a term we use to refer to a
cell phone.

~~~
Pharmakon
I would add that the accepted meaning of “handy” as a noun rather than an
adjective in the U.S. and U.K. is ah... a sex act.

~~~
ArdentZeal
Uha Im intrigued now it is suitable enough to share the details? :D

~~~
lazyasciiart
Wikipedia "handjob", article starts with a nfsw picture.

~~~
ArdentZeal
I think I should have been able to figure that one out :facepalm: :D

TIL, thanks

------
chrisweekly
Very cool. I'm reminded of a terrific book, "Algorithms to Live By", which
inspired me to create a simple prioritization workflow that helps me sort
todos by their "value density", so to speak. One of these days I'll make time
to write it up and share it....

~~~
afarrell
If it would help you for you to talk your your ideas out to a human who then
takes notes, asks questions, or helps you clarify your ideas for a first or
second draft, please email me (address in my profile). I am earnestly
struggling to find ways to learn task-prioritization so would love to listen
to someone else's thoughts on it.

------
SkyMarshal
Interesting, downloaded and will give it a try. I've been looking for a todo
list that can sort based on priority, either manually or automatically.

A couple questions:

1\. Your front page bullet point says it prioritizes based on impending
deadline and vicinity. Are there any other inputs for prioritization?

I ask b/c one of the main challenges of time management is prioritizing
urgent+important > important+not urgent > urgent+not important (or striking an
effective balance b/t the latter two). The "important" part isn't necessarily
signified by deadlines or vicinity.

2\. Offline capable: Excellent! What are the best ways of implementing
offline-capable/first mobile apps these days? A sync'ing datastore like
Couchdb or Pouchdb? Or something else?

~~~
ArdentZeal
1\. I am using datetime (enddate or "how long in your list"), vicinity,
opening times, shared users and parent to childtask hierarchy at the moment.

And yes you are absolutely right, that there are several factors which
determine importancy. So as I am not yet able to reading my users' minds (Im
working on it, believe me :)) the result will never be 100% accurate. But I
think it is already good enough to be of valuable help and it will only get
better from here.

2\. There are frameworks out there which you can use, but as the sync is
mission critical to my app I do not like to be dependent on any framework. So
I rolled my own sync solution, based on Nodejs with a postgresdb in the back
:)

------
rufius
So... what's the monetization strategy? A lot of things you'd expect to see
charged for in a smaller service like this are things you're saying are free
forever.

No details needed - I'm just curious at how you plan to sustain it longterm. I
don't want my todo items turning into ad monetization :).

~~~
ArdentZeal
Hello there,

so when you start at first you do not even need to register for anything. I
want people to be able to jump in with minimal effort. After 3 days (or
earlier of your own choosing) you will be asked to register an account.

The app will be free forever if you have less than 6 active tasks at all time.
If you get over that threshold you have the option to enable advertisments
(one banner at the bottom) for unlimited access or stay for free and live with
the 6 task limit.

I am planning to give users the option to just buy the product for some euros
instead of using advertisements. But that will come at a later point when I
get around to it.

So basically at the moment, it is my own implementation of the fremium model
prevailent in many mobile apps :)

------
drchaos
Any plans for a web frontend? Letting my mobile remind me of things based on
location is something I wanted to have for a long time, but typing stuff and
organizing things is much more comfortable with a real screen + keyboard.

~~~
ArdentZeal
I would love to be able to. I also have some deeper plans even I would like to
take the product.

But at the moment I am doing this on my own, ios, android version and the
server, while doing a normal 40-hour job at SAP.

So while it is on my roadmap, don't hold your breath just yet :)

------
pierrefar
Congrats on the launch.

The privacy policy is very not suited for this service. The most important
point is that you're based in Germany based on the address in the policy, but
there isn't a single mention of the GDPR. That and the ePrivacy Directive are
what count for you the most. My recommendation is don't use a free policy
generator and get proper advice. I appreciate this isn't something commonly
seen as a launch blocker, but it's important to sort it out properly.

Find your German state data protection authority, and invariably you'll find
they have great guidance.

~~~
ArdentZeal
Thanks - I have not looked too deep into that yet, basically just scratching
the surface and back to coding, but I have it on MY chaoslist :)

------
work_is_play
You misspelled "plethora" as "phletora" on the front page.

~~~
ArdentZeal
Uh thanks a lot, every bit helps :)

~~~
ArdentZeal
_fixed_ thanks again

------
anotheryou
So basically org-modes agenda mixed with its priorities on mobile, right?
Nothing automatic beyond that except of locations.

Putting the nice stuff of org-mode in an _easy to use_ app sounds very good :)

~~~
ArdentZeal
I had to google that and I am still not sure I found the right thing :)

So let me maybe clarify the algorithm running a bit. Im trying to pull in as
much information for a task as I can reasonably get. One important information
source is the things you as user give me voluntarily, e.g. and end date, a
location, shared users, ... Then there is information a user gives me kind of
by accident as in "how long has this task been unfulfilled in your list?" A
third information source is correlated data from the internet, like the
distance to a location and the opening times of said location if applicable.

I use all this information (if you give me access to) correlate them with the
same information of your other tasks and some common sense, put in a
tablespoon of salt and pepper and stir for about 2 and a half minutes. Out of
that falls a priority sorted list ==> chaoslist

~~~
anotheryou
Org-mode is a really powerful tool for todos in the emacs text editor. It's
totally convoluted though and hard to get in to.

It allows for quick sorting, schedules, deadlines and importance. You can than
display an calendar/agenda view or sort by importance.

Mushing all you can get together to do the hierarchy sounds awesome. So you
basically can do the GTD-Method automatically :). Org-mode does not do that
(but who knows, usually there is some plugin doing it :) )

Mildly important, can be done right here and little effort: do next. Very
important, can't be done here, not urgent: later. Right?

~~~
ArdentZeal
You are correct, that is basically what it boils down to. :)

------
snvzz
The concept of a tasklist as a service worries me.

Whoever runs this service can schedule the tasks as he wishes, effectively
having the users at his command.

At a scale, this is terrifying.

~~~
ArdentZeal
Well you are a master of your own mind and life. Feel free to just ignore
chaoslist notifications when they inevitably lead humanity into certain doom.

------
xiphias2
Cool, please add Google Play link as I almost closed the web site after only
seeing Apple store image.

~~~
ArdentZeal
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.chaoslist.a...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.chaoslist.android)

here you go, happy doing :)

------
ribs
I’m very interested, but I’ll need a way to get tasks in there using Siri or
something similar.

~~~
ArdentZeal
Voice input is on the road map, but there is no timeline for it yet. But you
know how it works... the more I hear it, the more likely it will get
prioritized higher :)

------
PaulBGD_
On Android it crashes as soon as I try to delete any of the default tasks.

~~~
ArdentZeal
would you mind giving me the android version you are running on? I will look
into this.

~~~
PaulBGD_
1+5t with Android 9.0.

~~~
ArdentZeal
I uploaded a new version some hours ago, which should fix your problem. Thanks
for reporting it and the additional details.

------
chabes
Looks like the app won’t run without enabling location services. Bummer..

~~~
ArdentZeal
You should be able to run the app without location services. Of course
everything related to that will not be included when prioritising your tasks.
Are you running the iOS or Android version?

~~~
chabes
iOS

~~~
ArdentZeal
Hey you are right there is a step you can not get over without location
services enabled. this is not intentionally though. I will fix this in the
next version.

If you are willing to give me your email-address I can add you to the beta
testers, which will give you earlier access to the bugfix. Hit me up at
team@chaoslist.io if interested.

Cheers

------
xfitm3
Are there a lot of people who don't use a to do list?

~~~
ArdentZeal
There are a lot of ppl for basically anything.

There are also a lot of ppl not using my todo-list yet, so I am focusing on
that part a tad more :)

------
crb002
Crashed after install and wouldn't start up again.

~~~
ArdentZeal
Are you on the iOS or Android Version? And could you give me some more
information e.g. device / modell / ios / android version. I will look into
this.

------
fforflo
I expected the "BogoSort" of time management

~~~
ArdentZeal
Jeez thanks for telling me now, I could have saved a year development with
your method ;)

------
ahstilde
are the apps native?

~~~
ArdentZeal
both apps are completely native yes. As I use a lot of low level functionality
tuned to its fullest capabilities, I chose to go native directly to not end up
being blocked by any framework.

