A year ago I came across Taskwarrior and I was amazed at how this not very well known command line application really nailed the problem of managing tasks. Having started with paper organizers and then moving on to trying every task/todo app you can imagine, including failed attempts at writing my own, I wondered how Taskwarrior would hold up over time? The answer after a year is pretty darn good.
A year with Taskwarrior means I don’t keep a lot of stuff regarding things I need to do in my head even though there are quite a few of them. I’m not looping in my head on Friday night out with friends about things I need to remember for Monday. I also have a solid and daily-reinforcing idea about what projects are important to me and what things even though I find them interesting don’t interest me enough to commit time to them.
Taskwarrior is better than any other task/todo app because I’ve customized it to fit exactly how I think I want to manage my tasks. Having it at the command line means getting to my tasks is quick and easy, and it provides an exceptional api with a set of commands that allow multiple ways to do a single thing yet it doesn’t feel bloated or overwhelming.
One thing that I also like about Taskwarrior is that it’s not heavy handed with scheduling. I view task management as managing buckets of things and Taskwarrior excels at this, it’s very easy to organize tasks using tags and projects. Some Todo apps are designed to show you your tasks as part of a schedule, your tasks today, tomorrow, this week etc. That’s fine but my work and subsequently my schedule is somewhat unpredictable so organizing a task for 3:30 pm on Tuesday which will take 45 minutes is not worthwhile for me and I feel that’s the philosophy of how too many task apps are built upon. Taskwarrior doesn’t do this and I find it a joy to use. Now if only there was a decent mobile app for it…
