TKDO

TKDO is a CLI and PyGTK program designed to work with VimOutliner files. It takes all your todo.otl outlines, merges them into a single flat list, auto-sorts them, filters them, and adds support for things like contexts and recurring events. It also has one somewhat unusual feature -- a snooze button. It's easy to mark tasks as "don't bug me about this for a while".

The entire system is based on plain text files, with a GUI to make certain tasks easier and faster. Due to its plain text nature, it's easy to extend or customize the system with short scripts.

If you have a lot of todo lists scattered across many directories or even multiple computers, TKDO is useful as a "master list" to access all your lists at once. I like to keep a todo list in each project directory, and TKDO makes it easier for me to track all my projects from a single place. Otherwise, there would simply be too many lists to check.

A lot more details are in the README.

The current version is tkdo-0.4.1.tar.gz.

Older versions are also available: all versions

TKDO development is hosted on Launchpad.

This has moved to its own page: Using TKDO for Getting Things Done (GTD)

Some lists are useful to almost everyone. Here are a few you might want:

• One task file per project, stored as "todo.otl" in that project's directory. The name is just a convention, but it can make integration with other tools easier. For example, I have a shell hook which automatically displays the top 10 todo items whenever I enter a directory with a todo.otl file.
• Bills to pay. If you have any bills you need to pay regularly, this will give you reminders at the appropriate times.
• Birthdays. Don't want to forget those.
• Holidays. Okay, so TKDO doesn't automatically handle things like "first sunday after a full moon in May", but it's usually close enough to remind me that I need to do some gift shopping or put together a costume. Remember to set lead times long enough (or short enough) for each holiday, especially if that holiday's date moves around each year.
• Gifts. Every time you think of something someone might like, write it down! Then when a birthday or holiday comes up, you won't have to wrack your brain trying to think of a gift.
• Books to read, movies to watch, etc. This both helps remind you of things you might be interested in, and can let you know later if you saw a particular movie (and even what you thought of it, if you assigned it a rating or wrote any notes about it).
• Affirmations. If you want to remind yourself of something each day, make a task or task file for it, and make it a recurring event. Then, after you have read it each day, mark it as completed and move on with the rest of your tasks. (hint: this is also useful for reviewing lecture notes so you'll remember them for a test!)
• Borrowed stuff. This can help remind you to get/give things back later.

For task files containing only recurring or due tasks, I recommend setting the importance of the file higher than (default importance * active bonus). This makes sure that those tasks reach the top of your list before they are due. The default is an importance of 50, with active bonus of 1.25, so an active task gets a score of 62.5. I give my recurring task files a default importance of 70, usually.

It's also helpful to set a default lead time at the task file level, to avoid having to specify it for each task within.