'I Tried Every Todo App and Ended Up With a .txt File'

Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Aug 12, 2025 at 05:42 PM

Ha. You’re right about the post’s author. He quit Things 3 because he didn’t remember to check it, but he does remember to check his text file! I guess he never heard of notifications or alerts. I mean, a text file might be the best choice, but the reasons his other apps didn’t work out are not necessarily solved with a text file—as you point out. It’s like he’s gaming himself instead of the system. I guess if that works, great.

satis wrote:

>The software dev who wrote about this is kind of ridiculous. He gave up
>on Todoist because he lacked the self-control to turn off an optional
>gamification feature in the app, “Great until I realized I was gaming
>the points system instead of doing actual work. Turns out completing
>“drink water” 8 times a day doesn’t make you
>productive.” He gave himself B.S. tasks so he could gamify a *completely
>optional* points-based system in the app.
> >Not really impressed with text-only todos except for very limited
>personal use.
> >Todo.text is cumbersome for sub-tasks or hierarchical structures, it
>lacks notifications, has no automated recurring items, you can’t easily
>deal with large notes (which makes the file difficult to scroll through
>and stops visual flow), you can’t automatically group higher priority
>items for a given day, and there’s no linking to a calendar - which is
>incredibly useful. And no location-based reminders, also very useful.
> >When I’m on the go I can tell my phone to remind me to do something and
>it puts it in an Inbox in my todo app where I can later triage and
>categorize it (personal, home, work etc), I can add a due date, I can
>can set one or more notification alerts including sophisticated repeat
>todo (eg every 3rd Wednesday), I can optionally set a priority level
>(which affects where it appears in a list on when viewed in Daily view),
>and I can see a rich web-preview for attached URLs. And when in apps and
>web browsers I can easily share info and links into the todo app (and
>even choose what categories or folders to put them in). And dated/timed
>events can show up in my calendar, which offers benefits when planning
>or sharing open availability.
> >And that doesn’t even touch on collaboration features, which I don’t use
>but many people find useful.
> >
>