I thought I'd be more likely to do the things on my todo list if GPT-4 was watching me (fail to) do them, so I built this. Let me know what you think! |
I thought I'd be more likely to do the things on my todo list if GPT-4 was watching me (fail to) do them, so I built this. Let me know what you think! |
Personally my todo lists are all 2-5 words, quick to write and just enough to job my memory for what I want to do.
For example, I need to clean the neck of my skimmer for my saltwater aquarium, I'd put "clean skimmer neck" on my todo list.
TodoBot says this is poor because I didn't include location or what I'd clean it with. It suggested "Clean skimmer neck in the pool with a brush"
Location isn't helpful here, I know where my skimmer is, saying "Clean skimmer neck underneath my 100 gallon saltwater aquarium in my office" would get high marks from the bot, but not actually be useful. "with a brush" is also equally useless. What else am I supposed to clean a skimmer neck with? I know how to clean a skimmer, I don't need to write where and how to clean my skimmer every time I add it to my todo list.
Another aquarium related task on my todo list it was helplessly lost on "Waste Away 50ml 6/1" Which tells me to add 50mls of Waste Away to my aquarium on 6/1. The AI bot rates it really poorly because I don't describe what I'm doing with the 50ml. I don't have too. There's only one thing I do with that 50ml.
A more common example, most people don't have saltwater aquariums. "Take out garbage" for the night before the garbage runs, was rated similarly as poor by the bot. It suggested including which bins need to be taken out and to where. All the bins need to go out and the go out to the only place you take the garbage out to on garbage night. The road.
Feels like one of those productivity tools that let you feel productive, but don't actually help you be productive.
Ironically, it is helping you write a better to-do list. Going to this level of detail as a matter of habit makes it much easier to delegate the task to someone else, especially during emergencies. Future autocomplete features may make this easier, but it'll need precedent to extrapolate from.
Nothing is more irritating than agreeing to watch someone's house/pets and being told "I'll leave you a to-do list." Then you see the list and it's all items like: "clean skimmer neck" and "waste away 50mL." I'm more than happy to maintain your stuff but it looks like you left me instructions on how to take a urine sample in New Zealand.
Maybe you’re familiar with the concept of “SMART” goals - specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound. Refining goals into sub-goals makes them feel much more manageable and ensures you actually get them done. For instance, I don’t benefit from refining “take out the trash”, but if my todo list has “learn Spanish” on it, I’d definitely benefit from breaking it down: what exactly is my course of action to learn Spanish?
Best of luck with the app, thanks for sharing.
Doesn't mean either of us are wrong!
I'm a heavy user of bullet journaling. I start my day with a few lines of todos and they're always short and sweet. Works for me.
Magic ToDo: Enter a task, click the magic wand button. It’ll expand the task into sub tasks.
There’s also a (time) estimator to estimate how long task will take, tone gauge for communication, and braindump->todo list “compiler” tool. Use hamburger menu. All using some type of LLM
It’s being updated too, it now has a Chef tool where you enter ingredients and it suggests food to make.
I entered "clean out the garage" and it suggested to make the title more specific - maybe show the suggestion in a way that I can just click it
I entered "fix my golf swing" and suggested relevant specific sub-areas (stance, follow-through) - although not really relevant here, suggestions for sub-tasks could be good
I clicked on a title to change it, decided not to, and the bot processed it as if it was a change
For the UI, the little orange ? thing is too close to the disclosure triangle and doesn't show tooltips (in fact nothing does). Maybe make the subtasks always visible so the subtasks will show up.
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I didn't realize the bot icon was a menu: these are really magic! I'd make each one it's own icon, or maybe just one action that does both things. When I used on the "clean out the garage" task the fix wording and sub-task suggestions didn't align, so getting both in a single prompt could help. Being able to accept the suggestion for a title change would be nice.
When I add a todo, I am usually getting interrupted by someone else, or my own brain, and the todo is a cache of my short term memory of something I need to do. I want my todo writing experience to be fast
Currently there is a spinner to wait for the AI suggestion. 5000ms is too slow. I want to leave the TODO app before I lose my original trail of thought. Even if the AI suggestion is instant, it is a context switch to even read it and consider it.
I think what would be better is a suggestion, maybe as a subtext or popover when I *READ* the todo list. Reading the todo list means I have some time free and I am prepared to crush some of the list. I might even have time to "groom" the list. This would be a great time for AI to help me.
Another thing you can do with AI is let the user tune what kinds of suggestions.
For example the AI could create "tiny habits" (probably a trademark so watch out!) style todos. So replace "go to the gym" with "put on my gym trainers" and so on.
It might be you want it to split todos, or suggest a todo you already have (I have about 50 todos at the moment. Some of them are reading lists for AI, a skiing trip prep list, some bank stuff, and so on, all different urgencies) it is likely I will add the same thing twice.
I also think the table stakes for a TODO app is feature parity with Microsoft TODO. If it can't do all that stuff (it isn't too much) then I would rather stick with Microsoft and forgo the AI.
This is where perhaps your AI thing could be a chrome extension that works with the established todo apps. That would make me much more happier to use it.
It gave me 1 star.
It said I should put "floss your teeth with dental floss"
I guess the task was too ambiguous and I might have flossed something else?
Maybe the AI was afraid you might to floss with chest hair?
Smart Connections allows you to set Obsidian resources to be embeddings, which GPT can then use as further context.
ChatGPT MD has options for templates, where you can create a note based on a prompt template and then do a "user" and "assistant" back and forth.
In terms of workflow, it's experimental right now. I thought it might be interesting to create an assistant which can read my agenda for the day and act as an accountability partner. Right now, I have to manually run the sequence with a keyboard shortcut. But the plugin could add features such as automatically running every X minutes, and then sending a system notification telling you that it's time to check in.
That it's so experimental, is one reason why I wouldn't bother with a service someone else has already created. I would much rather tinker on my own implementation, which I have much more power over.
I can't say this experiment has been useful yet. Or that I can even see it as having potential. But I'll continue tinkering.