[HN Gopher] Lists, More Lists, and the Power of Checkboxes
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Lists, More Lists, and the Power of Checkboxes
Author : Tomte
Score : 62 points
Date : 2021-08-02 09:34 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| hanklazard wrote:
| I'm a big believer in checklists, ever since my medical residency
| when I realized that not having a _very_ clear, organized list of
| what I had and hadn't done could lead to someone getting hurt.
|
| My current todo list lives in Obsidian.MD which syncs via GitHub
| to my phone and computers.
|
| Question: are there any ways in standard markdown to indicate a
| partially complete checkbox as illustrated in this post? I've not
| found anything. Seems like a "[/]" would be a good way to
| indicate partial completion since an "[x]" (or another character)
| is usually checked box.
| jknecht wrote:
| I would challenge the need to track partial completion. A well-
| crafted item in a checklist is either done or it is not.
|
| If your concern is about indicating that you started something
| and are now waiting on results, then I would argue that there
| are actually 2 separate items there ("do the thing" and
| "receive the results").
|
| The problem with a "partial completion" indicator is that it
| doesn't really tell you anything about how much of the thing is
| still left to do. You'll have to think about it when you come
| back to it, which you will do anyway if you simply leave the
| item unchecked.
| thelastknowngod wrote:
| Agreed. Partially completed might be nice if you're tracking
| someone else's work (subordinates) but for my own, I would
| need at least one more item saying where I left off or why I
| didn't finish in one sitting.
|
| I'm sure this works for Adam making god knows what at ILM
| though.. its just not for me in a software dev environment.
| hanklazard wrote:
| Good point! (And this is how I'm currently operating). If
| your list will be stretched over a team or over multiple
| days, I think it's worth it to prioritize the specifics of
| what has been done and not done.
|
| However, for a single day, personal todo list, I'd prefer to
| have fewer lines in my list and keep the details of what
| exactly is still pending in that partially complete item in
| my head. Seems easier to glance at. It would be nice for
| markdown interpreters to have an option for this for those
| who want to use it. I wonder if this could be added as a CSS
| tweak ...
| herodoturtle wrote:
| In my Dropbox-synced todo list I use the following notation:
| [ ] Todo. [?] Pending feedback. [>] Currently
| underway. [X] Complete.
| nojvek wrote:
| I am a huge huge fan of nested checklists. The interesting thing
| is that there aren't many apps that fundamentally work with the
| notion of nested checklists that are collapsible and can be re-
| arranged in different views.
|
| I believe there's a unicorn startup waiting that specializes in
| checklists.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| I won't try to sell you anything, but this is the basis of
| Emacs org mode.
| User23 wrote:
| And then it adds note taking, literate programming, and
| hyperlinking to, well, anything you or someone else wrote a
| protocol handler for.
|
| I'm not as smart as I used to be and my short term memory and
| long term recall are both not what they were in my teens, but
| using org-mode as a prosthetic brain has kept me as if not
| more effective.
| AlanYx wrote:
| Good, easy support for nested checklists is probably the main
| reason that org-mode became so popular IMHO.
| egypturnash wrote:
| How do you make unicorn money off of techniques that are so
| simple they can be conveyed in a few paragraphs, and used with
| nothing more than pen and paper?
| molsongolden wrote:
| Templates for recurring projects. Task dependencies.
| Commenting. Assignments. Intuitive structure and UI.
|
| Checklists end up being a basic component for most project
| management software.
|
| Clickup is doing this pretty well right now.
| NomDePlum wrote:
| Is that not a close proximity to how you could describe
| Twitter?
| orev wrote:
| PalmOS had a few apps like this--SplashNotes is the only one I
| can find--and I'm still surprised that something like that
| hasn't been carried forward to newer platforms. The best one
| can do is use MS Word in "Outline View", and then you can
| indent items based on the heading style. That has served me
| well for a long time.
| ErikAugust wrote:
| https://www.npmjs.com/package/@eaj/todo-cli
|
| I built this todo CLI with it in mind. Items/actions are
| recursive.
| cborenstein wrote:
| Would love to get your feedback on bytebase.io - our checklist
| features is specifically inspired by this article, with three
| states: empty, half-filled, filled. You just hit 'X' to iterate
| through the states. Checklist items can be infinitely nested.
|
| https://intercom.help/bytebase/en/articles/4587112-to-dos-in...
| johnmaguire wrote:
| Have you seen Workflowy? https://workflowy.com/hello/
| prsvrnce wrote:
| I highly recommend checking out Workflowy.
| tunesmith wrote:
| I just wonder if anyone can identify with me, thinking it's
| absolutely crazy to invest energy in any feature or app that
| has to do with "nested" (hierarchical, tree) todo items, when
| for any project with dependencies, what you need is a graph
| structure - meaning, items that can be blocked by multiple
| parents. I know it's a hard problem, but we haven't even
| scratched the surface of what kind of UI/UX features there are
| to make it easier to deal with. This is the problem people
| should be iterating on, but it's like no one wants to deal with
| graph data structures.
|
| Outside of the apps with way too many features, I know of only
| two pieces of software that try to tackle this in a graphical
| sense: Flying Logic and Taskheat. Taskwarrior has some support
| for it but it's clunky. Orgmode _barely_ has support for it via
| org-brain but still clunky.
| anthonygarcia21 wrote:
| I'm rather fond of MyLifeOrganized
| (https://www.mylifeorganized.net/), an outliner available on
| Windows/MacOS/Android/iOS. It offers the ability to zoom into a
| branch of a tree, which I find very valuable. The developer
| offers a subscription sync service, which I use to keep my tree
| sync'd between desktop and mobile.
| oDot wrote:
| Worry not! I'm almost done with Nestful:
|
| https://www.nestful.app
|
| Need to squash some bugs, add labels, add state ("checkboxes"),
| a sync indicator and then I think it'll be good for early
| adopters.
| oehpr wrote:
| If you're on linux, Check out Minder, An open source mind
| mapping tool. It has a task list feature where you can convert
| sub items to tasks and it's just PERFECT for this style of task
| tracking.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/7Q6QHgo.png
|
| completed tasks are full circles, unfinished is empty circles,
| You can also see notes here, and folded items.
|
| also a highly keyboard focused application. F for fold unfold,
| T for task set and complete.
| johnxie wrote:
| Founder of Taskade here. We've been tackling this exact problem
| for the past few years, building a tree-structured nested
| checklists that spans across multiple visualizations and views,
| from boards, org charts, to mind maps. It is also collaborative
| and syncs in real-time cross device.
|
| You can give it a try here no signup needed:
| https://www.taskade.com/new
|
| Would love to hear your thoughts!
| C19is20 wrote:
| Prices?
| aphit wrote:
| Dynalist.io serves this purpose for me.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I've been frustrated as well with that; my mind is inherently
| hierarchical/nested, so when I plan, document or checklist
| something, I _neeed_ levels and indentations.
|
| I've been using ToDoist for a while now and it's worked well.
| Some of the recent features/changes have clearly been for
| people with workflow different than mine, but the overall easy-
| nasting of tasks/subtasks to multiple levels and easy-drag-drop
| rearranging works well, and it's available on both web and
| phones.
|
| todoist.com/app/
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| I have a full app very close to public launch that makes nested
| lists and checklists easy and powerful. It's a personal app
| I've used for years and finally decided over covid to turn into
| a true product. I'm garbage at fundraising and have 0 wealth in
| my network so I'm just bootstrapping as best I can... but
| nested lists are insanely powerful, I'm probably in the 1% of
| high context switching costs, context switching is absolutely
| painful for me which is why I built this for myself, easy, fast
| structure means I can live in the structure of what I'm doing
| and by always knowing my place it transforms many "context
| switching" events in my brain to simpler "working the next task
| node" events which has insanely less cognitive overhead for me.
| It's the only productivity software that has helped me do more.
| dchuk wrote:
| Post a link to your project or landing page
| valbaca wrote:
| Reminders on Mac/iPhone/etc does just this.
|
| make a list and you can easily drag and drop between items to
| create items sub-items, collapse sublists, move them between
| different lists, etc.
| bob1029 wrote:
| Checklists are one of the most powerful tools at your disposal
| when coordinating complex work efforts (either with yourself or
| others).
|
| Even totally solo, I will draw up a checklist in the morning and
| then execute it in the afternoon. If I just start working my
| tasks without making a plan, I will forget ~20% of the tasks or
| detailed feature items I had originally intended to handle. Rinse
| and repeat this for multiple days and we have a problem.
|
| We have customer implementations that can require months of
| detailed work. Making sure some critical configuration flag isn't
| dropped on the floor along the way is the most important thing. I
| have seen checklists that take years to fully execute.
| memco wrote:
| To me, it's not a checkbox so much as it is a tri-state progress
| bar: no progress, some progress, complete; and also the outlining
| of them sounds much like a compressed gantt chart [0]. As for the
| idea and power of lists, there's a great talk by Atul Gawande on
| Youtube[1], which I'd highly recommend.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfl8Xt8W09A
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