Ask HN: What Makes a Great To-Do App? Your Ideas?
What makes a great to-do app? Is it about features or a whole new way of using it? Could a different mindset be the key? Maybe a simple design?
I've tried all the famous apps: todoist, basecamp, linear, trello, asana, obsidian, and even github. But something feels missing. The process of researching, note-taking, logging, tracking, and completing tasks—it's not quite right.
Imagine you're making a to-do app from scratch. What would you focus on? What new ways of thinking or methods would you bring in? What could you leave out?
6 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 24.3 ms ] threadThe overall concept is tasks, notes, and bookmarks are integrated together. As I do a task, I often want to take notes on that task. Some bookmarks can be tasks to read/share later.
- Plaintext-based interaction + graphical views (markdown, calendar/timeline, etc...)
- TaskPaper-style tags like @due(2023-10-10)
- Drafts-style actions on text
- Multiplatform/sync like SimpleNote
The novel features of my to-do app:
- Priority is just the due-date: I usually want to work first on tasks that are due earlier.
- Larger tasks are broken down into sub-tasks. Those sub-tasks can have earlier due dates, bumping up the "effective priority."
- "Effective Priority" is a dynamic tag: its value is based on the first of the parent's or children's due-dates.
I've been making prototypes of subsets of the features, like:
- https://multi-launch.leftium.com/
- https://instant.leftium.com/
- https://todo-taskpaper.leftium.com/
- https://plaintext-press.leftium.com/https://www.dropbox.com/...
- https://github.com/Leftium/todo.html
Combining plain-text interaction with graphical views is cool. Multiplatform sync is a plus.
However, many of these features already exist in some apps.
In 2023, it's surprising that there's no app yet to plan our day based on priority and thought process, aided by AI and more.
Seems like AGI is still far off.