Ask HN: What do you use for notes + reminders + tasks

15 points by adrian_pop 7 years ago | 22 comments

Recently, I came to the need of using a Note taking app + reminder + tasks. I've investigated multiple apps, but none of them does what I need entirely.

Apple Notes: notes, no tasks or reminders

Evernote: notes, no tasks or reminders (easy ones)

OneNote: crashed 5 times before even using it

Wunderlist: tasks + reminders, but the notes UI is poorly designed

Notion: cool concept, way too complicated

Todoist: tasks + reminders, no notes

Today I found 1 app that integrates with slack and I can write something like:

- /remind some task today at 5

- /remind some other task in 15 minutes ...but there's no easy way to get a big picture of what are the current tasks

I'm a heavy keyboard user, any action that would require clicking or scrolling is a loss of time.

Here comes my question: what do you use that proved to be useful?

peruvian 7 years ago |

Notes:

Apple Notes - it's on every device I use and online, so it has the lowest friction. I use Apple Notes for grocery lists (using checkboxes), semi-permanent notes, and sometimes as an inbox of things to process later.

Task Management:

Things (https://culturedcode.com) using the basic GTD framework. I add things to the Inbox through the day to get them out of my head. In the morning and when taking a break from work, I process the Inbox into projects/areas as well as defer them (give them a date to start/do them). Every Sunday I do a review/braindump of projects or anything still open.

By the way, you can use this GTD method with any tool. I know people who do it with Apple Reminders.

One extra thing I do at the beginning of each day is pick 3 tasks I absolutely need to do by the end of the day - a successful day is when I do at least those 3. I got this idea from Chris Bailey's book "The Productivity Project".

I don't keep "permanent" notes (book notes, personal wiki, etc.). I've tried before and I never looked at them again nor did they help my memory.

arleny 7 years ago |

Huge fan of notion. Although I understand why you think its too complicated, I think it will without a doubt do what you need entirely.

adrian_pop 7 years ago | |

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll give it a try again.

deepaksurti 7 years ago |

Org Mode in Spacemacs. Though I use agenda which is the passive form of reminders but works for my use case, if you need your org system to remind you; then this SO post [1] has some useful options, one among which is, on Emacs > 24, there is notifications!

[1] https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/3844/good-methods-...

ibash 7 years ago |

Notion does what you want, and it’s not that complicated.

In notion type “/todo” for a todo list, “/page” for a sub page, and “@remind <date/time>” for a reminder.

ColinWright 7 years ago |

I use Zim wiki for notes, with a suitable SOP for making sure things float to the top when needed. I also have a script that crawls over the pages searching for "REMIND" lines, and sets reminders.

So in essence, Zim for notes, and a couple of scripts that reads the underlying pages and takes appropriate actions.

Heavily tailored to be exactly and only what I want, but easily extensible when needed.

sandwhichmole 7 years ago |

On iOS, Streaks for daily habit forming and Due for a to-do list with advanced recurrence rules and nlp for interpreting the timeframe when capturing to-do items. Use org-mode on spacemacs/emacs if you want a feature rich task planner and note taker.

BOOSTERHIDROGEN 7 years ago | |

Mind sharing how you create advanced recurrence rules in Due ?

sandwhichmole 7 years ago | | |

Define advanced.

What I had in mind was "Do X on the third Tuesday of every month".

amanciero 7 years ago |

For reminders and tasks: Google Keep from the Android phone and the Google Chrome extension.

For Notes: Boostnote plus Dropbox to share the notes between PCs. I used to be a user of Zim but at the time the lack of Vim keybindings it leds me to look other Notes tool.

tomjen3 7 years ago |

I don't know what you did to one note, it would have been awesome to use, if I had discovered it before all my classes were so math heavy they essentially required notes to be taken in LaTeX. Haven't had it crash on me yet.

adrian_pop 7 years ago | |

Just installed it and nothing much. works now, but I really need the reminders

timdavila 7 years ago |

Just wanted to add my little app as it does all three, as well as habits.

https://www.nominal.net

Let me know if you try it out and have any feedback, it is still pretty young.

quietthrow 7 years ago |

Orgmode. It’s awesome. Only problem is mobile support sucks. Beorg app is trying to change it but it’s UI is ugly AF. It could use some help by a UX specialist

mickael-kerjean 7 years ago | |

For org-mode I made this: https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash demo: https://demo.filestash.app/view/emacs.org?share=orgviewer

davchana 7 years ago |

Notes: Google Keep, with tags and sharing. Auto comes and syncs at every apple android web device, quick sync, minimalistic.

Witeshadow 7 years ago | |

Apple sync?

LocalMan 7 years ago |

Google Keep for notes, recipes, shopping lists on my Ubuntu desktop and my Android phone.

synapse0 7 years ago |

Google keep Tags, reminders, checklists, etc

adrian_pop 7 years ago | |

How do you do reminders with natural language?

altern8 7 years ago |

Google Keep, here.

KiDD 7 years ago |

THINGS!