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Ask HN: How are you tracking your tasks?

8 points by Gratsby ↗ HN
I'm looking for recommendations for either habits or software (I'm primarily using Android and OSX these days) that I can use to make myself more effective.

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.

But I haven't found a way to actually track my tasks that I find acceptable. I tried emacs org-mode. It's good feature-wise, but I simply don't use it consistently, and sharing what I'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't happen because I don't live in onenote. Jira works for software tasks, and maybe if I ran my own jira instance instead of the outdated/permissions-restricted version that I have access to at work, I would like it better.

I've looked through the Google Play store and I've done some googling. Everyone and their brother wrote a task-tracking app sometime in the last few years. I'm having trouble sorting the wheat from the chaff.

What do you use? What habits have you developed that keep you productive and help you communicate your workload status?

14 comments

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MalcolmDiggs
I put most things in Asana. Except groceries, for that I use evernote (just a list with checkboxes).
kiloreux
Todoist, it has been awesome and very helpful so far, exists on every platform and very simple and slick UI.
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

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.
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.
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.

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

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

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.
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.

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.

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.
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.