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My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)

(jeffhuang.com)
242 points simonebrunozzi | 3 comments | 11 Dec 25 19:30 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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NickNaraghi ◴[11 Dec 25 21:15 UTC] No.46237279[source]▶
Have used this approach for 8 years. Only improvement I can recommend is creating a new txt every quarter (or so) and manually adding everything back to the list to declutter. Works better than any todo app I’ve used (dozens).
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1. jay_kyburz ◴[12 Dec 25 05:32 UTC] No.46241178[source]▶
I've been using this method for 25 years, but ruthlessly delete completed tasks and things I decided I don't want to do after all. Kind of like inbox 0, but for my _todo.txt

I would probably keep my notes if I had to report to anybody or needed to keep a track of what I was doing, but luckily I haven't needed to do that for a long time.

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2. empiko ◴[12 Dec 25 07:20 UTC] No.46241678[source]▶
Same, I have one living document that is constantly being updated with TODOs, questions, notes, but once they are done or irrelevant, I delete them. I am actually surprised how many people here use append-only approaches.
replies(1): >>46241890 #
3. recursivecaveat ◴[12 Dec 25 07:58 UTC] No.46241890[source]▶
Usually my experience is stuff just slowly drifts into irrelevance. Sometimes people ask me for performance numbers or error messages that are 3 months old and I can find them with a backsearch. On the other hand there's implementation ideas that are years old which are perfectly decent and would probably be improvements, but nobody has ever gotten around to them. Letting them gradually slide upwards out of mind seems appropriate. The only thing I do is archive the old file once a year at new-years to prevent any editor slowdown.