Get Everything Done

Well, my first thought when reading through the Final Version was how simple it was, and how much sense it makes. My second thought: How do I automate this (I am a software developer... It is kind of ingrained)

So, any suggestions how to do this electronically? I have looked at a couple of options, but none of them seem to do what I need.

I am thinking of a simple app that just has a list of tasks, that you can tick, and when you are finished, displays them in reverse order so that you can do them... Does something like this exist, or should I write it?

Taskpaper works great with the system because of tags it lets makes a selection little by little.

I would guess you'll have to write it if you want it like that, but you could also just go with something that merely lets you highlight tasks (the dots in the paper version) and figure out the rest yourself (as is the case with the paper version).

Right now I'm experimenting with Wunderlist (with accompanying iPhone app). It uses star marks, like many todo lists, which act as the dots in FV. I go through my list and star the ones I preselect. This coincidentally moves them to the top of the list in reverse order, meaning now the starred/preselected items are at the top of the list, in the order you are going to do them.

It's free for all platforms and syncs well in real time. Let me know if anyone finds something better, especially if it has a real-time mobile syncing component.

Also, I just wanted to add, I love how simple FV is in terms of it's written components. It makes it much simpler to port to an electronic system.

I do it on Checkvist. Instead of a dot, with a few keystrokes I change the task's text color to green and move it to the top of the list. When you finish pre-selection, the green entries are on top of your first page in the order to be done, no need to go backward. Could not be simpler.

Things could be an option too, even though it doesn't reverse the order of the starred tasks in the Today List.

I am with Jupiter here: TaskPaper seems to be one of the best choices. Simple but efficient too. Working on a Mac, you could even use AppleScript to generate a reversed ordered Project targeting this point.

Roger J: "Should not have checked this FV Forum [...]"

I am sorry if we've irritated you. Regardless of your intention, your comment is most certainly going to derail the thread by spawning an argument of paper vs electronic. So if you or someone wants to create that thread, that'd be great.

I've spent about an hour or two just now to do FV on my IRT GTasks for Android. I think I've come up with an FV process that would *flow* nicely on almost any electronic todo list.

Minimum electronic todo list requirements ...
(1) Have a tick box (uncomplete/done) per task in FV list
(2) Have an unsorted combined uncomplete/done tasks list view
(3) Have an unsorted done tasks only list view
(4) Have a way to delete a task or (better) move a task to FV-archive list
(5) *Nice-to-have* A quick/easy way to move/reenter a task to end of the list

Process ...
(a) When "preselecting", click tick box as done; continue tick done until finish preselecting.
(b1) Change to done task only view, and start with the last task.
(b2) When "really finished" with the task, either delete or move it to FV-archive list.
(b3) When "partial finish" a task, somehow "mark it" so.
(b4) Do until finish preselected done tasks.
(c1) Change to uncomplete/done task view.
(c2) Move/reenter the "partial finish" tasks to end of list, and mark them uncomplete.
(d) Repeat the whole process.

Clear? Comments? ;-}

I have only just read the instructions so will be implementing shortly. I'm not sure whether I will eventually go with paper or electronic. My 'electronic' thoughts are:

1. Another vote for Wundelist as it can be used very simply and syncs with everything I own!
2. I recently put all my tasks into a Mindmap to see what were connected, to separate out home and work, to separate out different customer tasks, and to get a feel for the whole picture. I'm thinking this FV method could work equally well with a mindmap - just look through the tasks listed and put the dot there. The only thing would be deciding where to start as things are not represented in a linear fashion. However - I'm not sure whether I am mixing up tasks and projects here (a failure of mine) so I will await Marks instructions on handling projects to see what he has to say.

@Jupiter, I did consider tags, but you need multiple clicks to choose a tag, and tags may not be shown in main todo list view

@Bill Adams, changing text color (or text background color) would look nice in todo list view, but it also need multiple clicks.

I finally settle on the single click "tick box" that almost all electronic todo list have. Just need to work in done task only view for the preselected tasks.

Other solution which is not stupid at all. Use Omnifocus then erase contexts and create @Wait, @General, @Focus, @Out. Then number tasks @Focus beginning by the end. Synchronization is perfect, following of project and capture too, using of MF rule indeed simple. Nothing to add.

A good program to make FV electronic is the PomodoreApp http://www.pomodoroapp.com/ . I have not tried it so much, since FV has only been available for a day :-)

It has a nice list were you can add new tasks. You can mark each task you want to start on, and a Today-list will show you these tasks. Then you can start backwards, and do one by one.

The free version will give you only 100 tasks, so you need to delete the finished task if you will only use that version. If you have more than 100 task, it may be time to get rid of some before you enter them into the list. :-)

In Toodledo or any software that has a multiple priorities field (low, medium, high, max...) : you can use the "priority" field to mark the tasks. Then just go up one priority level for each new task you mark.
In a filtered view sorted by priority, you have the shortlist sorted in the right order.

This is limited to the number of priority levels available, but it can be a way to force oruselves to be selective, and keep the shortlist short.

I dont know why others have not mentioned it before but if you have an iphone try FOCUSPAD.
Its a dedicated app which can faciltate lists using all of Marks AF systems. Its really quite good and has a syncing option to the web which works perfectly.

I used it for AF4 which was my preferred system but I am now using FV.

Frank wrote:
<< ... using ToodleDo. Sort the main task list by "Date Added" reverse. >>

Why not sort by "Date Modified reverse" instead? That works better for reentered tasks, modification to tasks names/details will *automatically* sort it to end of list. If that "Date Modified reverse" actually stores the full date/time (not just date) that is. Some testing on my old Toodledo account didn't fully convince me that it is so.

Anyway, some browsing/googling on Toodledo forum reminded me the main reason I looked elsewhere, Toodledo still don't have an official native client for Android (only for iOS). Its http://m.toodledo.com mobile version didn't want to sync when I use it on my Samsung Galaxy S2.

Google Tasks seems to work pretty well...just drag the selected task to the top of the list.

@Frank, Toodledo will only resort when you refresh the view (by resorting, by clicking on the left panel main/folders list items, or browser refresh). But since cloning task is so easy in toodledo, your method of sorting by "Date Created" is just as good.

@Kerry, try dragging to top of list or bottom of list *after* you have a list of more than 200 or 400 tasks. :-P

@sabre23t....ah yes, I see your point...I try not to have 100's that are undone, but I know many people do.

Wunderlist is MADE for this! Wow - completely works when starring the tasks as explained above. I still "wunder" if paper is better - I feel more in "flow" when using paper but like having the list with me everywhere I go, so I flip back between the two from time to time . . .

But if I use electronic Wonderlist will be the way to go for me!

Listpro could work. http://www.iliumsoft.com/

On my iPad, toodledo would seem to work, but I'm using calpad for my home list and 2do for work. One nice thing about calpad is the option to set an item to recur "right after done"' effectively appending it to the end of the list. So far, I'm loving FV!

I was about to recommend TaskPaper since it is so versatile, but Wunderlist really is perfect for FV. It can do everything the rules require in the least number of steps. No need to add a bunch of tags. Just check off the star and it magically filters to the top of the list (regardless of the length of your list). Plus, the sync on Wunderlist is more stable than TaskPaper's arrangement with Dropbox.

If you already have a bunch of tasks in TaskPaper (or any other program that allows you to email the list) just send them to me@wunderlist.com and they will transfer immediately.

Wunderlist is a free app so it's worth checking out.

BTW, I love the simplicity of your Final Version Mark!

I use outlook (office requirement). 535 tasks but the fv system worked really well today. I use due dates to maintain an order and mark tasks high priority to select them. Saved views allow me to have the general fv list and the selected task list.

@Brad, Wunderlist is *almost* there for me.

I've just tried Android, Windows and www.wunderlist.com ...
(1) It has all my basic todo requirements, including a "task long note" feature.
(2) Its all view, sorts latest new task at the bottom.
(3) When you star to "preselect", the task goes to the top.
(4) When you unstar to "reenter", the task stays at the top, you have to drag the task to move it to the bottom. However, per http://support.wunderlist.com/customer/portal/questions/87646-moving-tasks "moving tasks in the Android version is currently not available". :-(

@sabre23t: I noticed that quirk with the Wunderlist desktop application, an unstar moves an item to the top of the list. While the iPhone version doesn't allow task moving either, I did notice unstarring moved the task back to _bottom_ of the list. I've been considering emailing the author to address this discrepancy.

Mark wrote:
<< Wunderlist is MADE for this! >>

How are you solving the "reenter" task issue with Wunderlist? Is it ...
(a) Reenter by cut&paste old task text, into add a new task box? If you have "long note" to that task you have to cut&paste that too. :-(
(b) Dragging the "reenter" task back to the bottom of the list? Does that work on your mobile client? Per post above, it doesn't work on Android.
... or something else?

@saber23t: That's unfortunate. On the iPhone app the task drops to the bottom when you "unstar" it. However, I did notice that when you unstar the task that was at the top of your list to begin with, it does not drop to the bottom.

@Daniel: You can reorder the tasks manually in the iPhone app by clicking on the pencil at the top right of the app.

I don't know why they would have a consistent system across all platforms. Sorry...

@Daniel, you're talking about Mac desktop client for Wunderlist right?

On Android, Windows and web; Wunderlist "star" will move task to very top; "unstar" will leave task wherever it was.

There's some quirks on synching of "starred" tasks though. Windows and web have correct order for the starred tasks, but Android don't have correct order for the starred tasks. Ref http://support.wunderlist.com/customer/portal/questions/140957-task-order-not-maintain . However, after unstar, all tasks order sync correctly. I've tested that.

@Brad, noted your iPhone tips, but my only iOS device is an iPad first generation. :-)

@Brad, ah cool, thanks!

@sabre23t, Windows desktop. Not sure about Mac.

I'm giving it a go with my existing OneNote AF-like list: tasks are OneNote pages in a section.

When a task is preselected, I move it to a separate "dotted tasks" section.

Thus when the preselection round it done, I switch to the "dotted tasks" section and work from the bottom up.

So far, it's pretty straightforward. The only real problem is the large volume of tasks on my list - it takes a long time to go through them all in each preselection round. But that's not OneNote's fault.

So, those of you using Wundelist.

Do you have more than one list (Work, Home, Projects?). Just wondered how far you are going with this. I really want to use this as it is so easy to have it handy all the time - but keep getting drawn back into paper.

Here's a vote for MLO. I think its very well suited but some initial setup is necessary. In your 'to do ' view, sort tasks by starred and then by modified date, the latter in ascending order. This brings starred or preselected tasks to the top and they are worked on in order. After you have worked on them, remove the star if the task its not complete and it drops to the bottom.
One drawback with MLO is that syncing across platforms is not automatic but they are working on an auto sync option, from what I know.

If you have an Android phone, I recommend using FV with Any.Do. It's free and comes with various homescreen widgets.

It has a beautiful interface, to my mind nicer than Wunderlist. It syncs with Google tasks. And it has a few special but unobstrusive features. For instance, you can drag-and-drop from the main screen to rearrange tasks (which I greatly prefer to entering a separate screen). You can use voice recognition to dictate your notes instead of type them. If you start to type the name of a contact, it will suggest "Call contact X" and if you select it you will see an icon to make the call directly from the list when you're ready.

One oddity is that new tasks are inserted at the top of the list, not bottom. This means you must preselect (by marking high priority) from the bottom up. It also means that your preselected list is automatically ordered correctly (first task on top) when you are done.

I've found Clear (iphone) to be great for FV. I just added a separator task at the top of the list, and then can drag and drop items into the closed list. When I've done action on something, I move it to the bottom.

Super simple!

I love any.do and wanted to use it for FV. However, I also want to have a tickler list (due date) in the same app and then when something comes due to drag it over to the FV. However, you can't filter a particular list and/or sort priority.

I guess in any.do one could use "priority" which puts a red mark on the edge without sorting by priority (rather sort "by folder"). However, Wunderlist does both filtering (via various lists) and sorting (by star) as well syncs easily between all of my devices. Any.do is not on ios nor does it have a web client (though they have been promising this for months now). And its sync with google tasks has been problematic for me in the past.

So, for now, Wunderlist it is for me. Though if any.do changed the ability to filter and sort as well as come up with a web client and ios app I would be all over it. The ease of any.do and its beautiful ui is incredible.

vegheadjones, I'm using Outlook as well.

Differences:

- I use the todo list rather than the task list (includes flagged mails from my workflow)
- I'm showing the list in date modified order and marking the selected list with a nice, green "selected" category <ctrl + F2> (since I use the priority flag on mails to indicate importance).
- I use the calendar sidebar to hold my selected view (in reverse modified order)
- If I don't finish a task, I just remove the selected flag <ctrl + F2>, which sends it to the bottom of the list

OK so far, at least until I found this forum.

I did a bit of thinking on this and a bit of tinkering on my coffee break this afternoon.

I think that the Evernote App (on Android, at least - that's what I have) may do the trick electronically.

You can Tag items and then view specific Tags.

You can sort by Date Created or Date Modified.

If you edit something, anywhere in the list, it is saved to the TOP of the list (assuming you are sorting by Date Modified - sort by Date Created leaves it where it was, which may be handy for rooting out old items).

If you delete something, it goes away (naturally).

If you like, you can also use multiple Tags (for subcategorization by project, perhaps?)

It will support text files, photos (sometimes this might be handy - or maybe you've been offline or free thinking with pen and paper?), web pages, voice memos.

You can get to it from your mobile, from any computer, and the mobile app has offline viewing capability.

I'll have to look more closely at this to see if it can work - but if I understand the rules of FV correctly - someone check my logic here - you could use Evernote's mobile app like this:

Create your list in Evernote - at this point, sorting by Date Created and Date Modified will be the same. The newest items are at the top - so when selecting the first task, you have to start at the BOTTOM of the list.

Edit that task as you see fit (with a * or the built-in checkbox feature of Evernote) - this moves it to the TOP of the list.

Then, start at the BOTTOM of the list again, and pick/edit the task you want to do before the first item you marked - etc.

When you have nothing else to add, you can then start at the top of the list - if you finish an item, DELETE it. If not, edit it again somehow (you decide, change the text to say what you've done so far?) which will move it to the TOP again.

At this point, though, move to the NEXT item on the list if you didn't finish the first one - repeat as above, until you have processed everything you have edited. The marked / starred items will either be finished (DELETED) or at the TOP (which is really the end) of the list.

Start at the bottom again...

Perhaps Evernote's people could allow inverted sorting by Date Modified. I will email them when I have a chance.

Comments? Does this make sense, or did I miss something?

I tried Wunderlist on the ipad (and iphone) but it's still too buggy for me. I can't trust it and I need a robust system so that I can relax about getting everything down easily.

I'm a big omnifocus fan and I've been using it for my implementation of GTD prior to trying FV.

I've found a way of using Omnifocus but it's not perfect. In context things are not ordered in the order you enter them. I've resorted to having an "FV" project and I'm entering everything into that because it allows me to reorder tasks and puts things in the order i enter them.

I then use flags instead of the dots.

Works and is robust. Bit clunky still but ok.

Andrew - how did you find Wunderlist 'buggy'? I've not found any bugs using it with my iPad, iPhone or on the Web so I am surprised you say that? Perhaps I'm missing something.

I have noticed a few bugs in Wunderlist that are frustrating. The iPhone app seems to be much worse than the iPad app. The main problem I'm seeing is when I "unstar" an action it usually drops to the bottom. Then if I close the app and reopen it later, the tasks have floated back up to the top (underneath any tasks that remain starred). This doesn't always happen, but when it does it really messes up the FV system. The app works great if you rarely "unstar" something, but I'd say about half of the tasks I do each day are either for a recurring task or a project that will be worked on over several days. So I unstar a lot of items. I also mentioned earlier that some tasks would stay at the top of the list even after I unstarred them. Lastly, I've noticed a considerable lag in response time (just the iPhone version). I might press the star 3 or 4 times before it responds. Before switching to FV I had only dabbled with Wunderlist. After using it exclusively for 2 days, I have found enough bugs to switch back to TaskPaper.

TaskPaper has a really good app for the iPhone and iPad. It's name conveys a lot. It attempts to be very similar to a simple sheet of paper. But this is magic paper with an endless number of lines and the ability to move lines of text around with a simple drag & drop method. You can watch a demo of the iPhone app here: http://taskpaper.s3.amazonaws.com/iphone.mov

It syncs through dropbox, so you don't want to go back and forth between the iPhone and the iPad until enough time has elapsed for the sync to take effect (and this is especially true if you are not on a good wifi connection). But most of us aren't trying to work from the iPad and iPhone on the same app at the same time. So this is rarely a problem.

Here's my workflow for TaskPaper:
1) Highlight an item
2) Tag with an "@" symbol
3) Filter so only tagged tasks are shown
4) Manually reverse the order of the tagged tasks
5) Unfilter the tasks (all tagged tasks will now be at the top of your list)
6) If task is completed I strike through. If it is recurring or incomplete I untag and manually move the task to the bottom of the list.

It takes a few additional steps to establish your preselection list because you have to tag the items instead of simply tapping the star. The real bummer is having to manually move recurring or incomplete tasks back to the bottom. But, Wunderlist wasn't always successful in doing this anyways! For me, it is worth the peace of mind knowing that all my tasks will stay in the order I placed them. In reality, I'm losing very little time in my day.

Are there any other TaskPaper users out there who work the FV system differently?

@Frank <So far, it seems to work just fine for me using ToodleDo>

Thanks for this, I copied your post into Evernote and read it again last night.

The tip off about the Android beta: I've been using Ultimate-To-Do-List to sync and will keep it until the Android Toodledo is out of beta.

This weekend I want to transfer from pen and paper.I may post later on how I've tweaked it with Toodledo. I found a useful tip in the Toodledo Forum so that I can have Toodledo appear in its own Tasks window inside Outlook