Two things that I’ve struggled with since leaving art school and joining the workforce: keeping track of tasks, and keeping track of time spent on various projects. I’ve tried many methods and tools, I’ve observed the methods of others, and I think I may have found the system for me — Taskpaper. Taskpaper is for lists, and both tasks and time spent are well tracked using them.
This recommendation should be taken with a grain of salt, both because I’ve just started using it, and because the software itself (at the time this post was written) is an early release still under development. I’ve just noticed that some of the most “effective” people – meaning folks who really Get Things Done, use the simplest methods. Digitally this translates to simple text files.
Taskpaper is not a whole lot more than text files – but that’s the beauty of it. It’s a way of slightly enhancing the features of listing one gets with plain text. I have no affiliation with the product, so this recommendation is just off the cuff.
Posted in Process, Productivity |
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4 Responses to “Taskpaper, OS X app”
August 8th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
How about org-mode in emacs? Same thing in terms of being text-file based. I’m not using it to track time spent but it does a good job of tracking/scheduling todos with task completion and showing overview of projects… Of course you have to drink the emacs kool-aid to use it…
August 9th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
Read ‘Getting Things Done’ by David Allen – it was a godsend for me as I began to move away from just designer to design manager to creative director to all that + business owner; the ‘list’ model outgrows quickly!
August 14th, 2007 at 1:50 am
Just curious if you’ve tried the 37signals stuff and why you did/didn’t like about them? Or was it just that to get time tracking you have to pay?
I actually use a custom app I wrote that’s very, very similiar to Taskpaper that integrates with some of the more popular online invoicing systems like Blinksale. I did that mostly because I need something that sits in my Windows tray and allows me to *quickly* toggle a timer on/off between tasks.
I’m always on the lookout for better ideas for time tracking.
August 30th, 2007 at 8:16 am
I’m on my laptop right now, but on my work desktop I have those yellow note things. It’s a nice software, simply stick a small yellow sticky note on your desktop (it’s not big just flashes when it’s time to moce onto a new task or when something is due). It really helps with sticking to a deadline, and i even use it within projects, mark where i should be at what point of the projects time line. =)
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