GTD Wannabe

TodoPaper: A light-weight GTD/ToDo Manager

I’d like to take some time today and introduce you to a “new” task/next action management system that I quite like.  Caveat: I should be receiving a free license to the application by writing a review, but that’s at my request, not the developer’s.

By the way, don’t be thrown off by the whole Getting Things Done (GTD) label.  This application can also be used for just good old-fashioned todo list/brainstorming/project planning.

Background

I was busy surfing the other day, and came upon the Interactive GTD Software Comparison Table (102 Researched GTD Software Titles and Counting).  Longtime readers will know how promiscuous I am with software, so it should be no surprise that I was intrigued by this list.

One of the applications that caught my eye was TodoPaper.  I was initially caught by its description, “light-weight GTD to-do manager”.  I like light-weight.  When I went to the homepage, I was intrigued by the look - I do love a nice clean look.  So, I downloaded it and have been using it for a few days.

Now, I’ll be honest here, I’m not going to replace Outlook as my main GTD application.  But sometimes, I need a place to keep track of a bunch of open loops in a very quick and dirty fashion.  I’m talking here about the stuff that needs to be done to research and write a particular paper.  These are things that I need to capture, but don’t necessarily have to make it all the way into my most trusted system, i.e., Outlook.  I’ve been using TodoPaper for about a week now, while writing a couple of papers, and I like what I see.

Good Things

I’ve created a small test database, and here’s a screenshot of it in action.  I want to point out the following good things about TodoPaper:

• Basically everything is customizable.  I happen to like the Sketchy font and a yellow background for my project headings.  Your tastes may vary.
• You can also change the font of tasks, the colour/font of contexts (or tags).

• One of *the* coolest things about TodoPaper is that it’s based on a plain text file.  If you wanted to, you could create a text file (with a few rules, discussed below) and have TodoPaper read it.  In fact, TodoPaper is related to the Mac’s TaskPaper, using the same underlying format.  So, if you need data portability between Mac and Windows, here’s one way of achieving it.  (In this vein, check out the related works at the bottom of this page.  They include applications/discussion re TaskPaper on the web, in vim, textmate, etc.)

• When adding projects, tasks, to TodoPaper, you can use the following conventions (either in TodoPaper, or in the text file):
• A project name ends in a colon (:).
• A task starts with a hyphen (-).
• You can have subprojects - simply tab once under a project and type the subproject name, with a colon.  (See “Related Work:” in the first screenshot above.)
• You can have subtasks - just tab under a task and add another task. 
• Notes are possible as well; they’re just lines that don’t start with a hyphen, or end with a colon.
• I find the interface quite simple and elegant.  As you can see, you can customize the look pretty much the way you like.  In addition, there are features such as folding, and cute little checkboxes for marking a task as done.
• It’s possible to archive done tasks; they get pushed to the bottom of the pane/file.
• You can have multiple contexts on any task - just add as many tags as you like.  Tags are identified by the @ at the beginning.  One of the things that I really like about TodoPaper is that the tags are recognized automatically; I don’t have to do anything extra, like adding them in a separate field.  And, you can ctrl+click on a tag to get taken to a view of just that tag.  (Double-clicking and a right-click option are supposedly coming soon to make pure mousing a possibility.)
• Another awesome feature is a “quicklog” function.  You set a hotkey combination that you like, and you can use that to quickly enter a new task.  (Or a project name, or a note, or a combination of all these.)  The latest version of the quicklog requires some mousing action, so pure keyboarding is not quite possible, but again, that’s going to be fixed in the next version.
• Finally, the last good thing I want to point out is the customer service.  This is another application being developed by one guy (I think), but there is a forum, and the author, Jordan, is good about responding.  Already, I’ve had some points for him, and he’s responded positively.  I’m truly a big fan of good customer service.

Final Word

I’m a firm believer that there is no one perfect GTD application; however, it is possible to find the perfect application for you.  One of the reasons that I wouldn’t switch to this application as my primary GTD tool is because my needs include support for dates and recurring tasks.  However, I’m finding that TodoPaper is an excellent tool for brainstorming and building quick (hierarchical) lists of actions that need to be done for detail-rich projects.  The fact that there is an underlying text file that I can access without proprietary software, combined with the ability to quickly enter new actions from the keyboard, make this application a winner for me.  It has replaced the numerous stickies and disposable text files for my brainstorming.

If you’re in the market for a lightweight, clean-looking, GTD app (and let’s be honest, a true GTD implementation doesn’t use due dates or recurring actions ;)), check out TodoPaper.