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For the past few months, for the first time since I was a wee teenager, I haven't used a task list. Well, almost, I still use p!n occasionally for things I actually need to remember. Other than that? Nothing. For someone who self-identified as dependent on TaskWarrior in order to be a functioning human, it's surprised me a little. I want to spend a little time to reflect on this.
Yet still, it is a significant change for me. I've been thinking about it, and what it means for me. I don't want to inundate you with statistics or my history with todo lists. My Life in Data from 2019 has some old metrics, from which you may glean some understanding. I've built extensions and small scripts around TaskWarrior since then, and am even going on to write Mast which I breifly mentioned before. What does it feel like for me, Obsessed as I am with the Aesthetic of Productivity Apps, to no longer use one?
On one hand, I'm kind of glad. No longer inundated by a whole mess of ideas and issues scribbled indiscriminately in my task list. Constantly being reminded of my chores, or blog ideas I hadn't even started was weighing on me to a degree. I started using a task list to free myself of the burden of remembering, something I struggled with a lot, only to replace it with the burden of remembering. I could attribute blame to my lack of process, or fear of clearing out digital spaces generally, but the outcome remains the same.
Similarly, a lot of the important tasks ended up getting done anyway. They've been around a long time, so perhaps that's why. The consequences of these were also fairly high, so I'd be less likely to forget. It's apparent that my life no longer would fall apart without a task list. At least, not in the short term. I'm competent and capable enough to work without one. I have a better grasp of my ADHD.
But between the tasks I know I won't do, and the tasks that would get done regardless, is a wide variety of you guessed it, yet more tasks. Issues for individual on-going software projects, and ideas for entirely new ones, small fixes and hours and hours of toil work that would make my digital landscape slightly less prone to papercuts. Improvements to the ops tooling for the self-hosted software to perpetuate itself. Lists of people to reach out to, and questions specifically for them that would spark conversation. Small gestures of love that I would like to remember, to bring a little more joy into the world. Buying food for someone, gift ideas, and recipes to try.
Some of these I'm better off without, while others would certainly improve my life, and that of others around me.
What I'm beginning to appreciate more is context. The only previous rule I had with regard to my task list is that the "work" list lives separately. Anything to do with my job would have to go somewhere else. I learnt early on that seeing work tasks alongside my "fun" tasks drained the fun from them. I seem to be learning that lesson once again. Maybe my blog ideas shouldn't live next to the pending "database schema" task for Mast, or that I once wanted to purchase a rug. What can I say, I'm a single pane of glass kinda person.
I'm not sure I'm ready to move to something more appropriate and split my tasks off everywhere. Using Forgejo's Issue system, despite being open source, is very non-portable. I often forget about the existence of lists that I make. I was (am?) still considering making a monorepo of all my projects and then adopting something akin to Poor Man's Issue Tracker, just to keep a semblance of the Single Pane. The irony is not lost on me.
As I think seriously about bringing about a task list designed for me, putting out an actual finished project (product?) into the world, I want to center not just beliefs about what makes a good web-app, but my extensive usage of them as well.