Do (Joe’s To Do List pt 2)

Despite my better judgement, I started building the todo list described in part 1. I’m calling the product Do, mostly because it’s short and easy to type. Since the mental model behind this product is so confusing I thought it would be best to build it up slowly with testing. So v1 just had the ability to add a new todo and see the list of previously added todos. And data persistence. After using the app for a couple days I think I’m ready to start adding more complexity. Let’s start by analyzing the data:

In three days I added 16 todos, three of which I completed. None were above 70 characters long. I also instinctively started using hashtags on occasion to draw attention to certain types of todos. The hashtags I used were #blog and #idea. I’ll try to create a loose classification of the todos that I’ve added thus far:

Complete-ability #

1. Todos that can be “completed”
   • “laundry”
   • “message kai about updates to chips [a project]”
   • “fix the link effect on my website”
   • “take notes on lean analytics”
   • “update/design chips [a project]”
   • “figure out plans for long weekend”
   • “#blog bump ratings”
   • “applicable advice #protip #idea”
2. Todos that cannot be “completed”
   • “[link to website with cool angular directive]”
   • “sam owes me $40”
   • “kai owes me $200”
   • “I need to get a sales and marketing guy”
   • these are perhaps more exploratory
   • the exploration either results in an actual todo, or results in a dismissal
   • but you don’t want to dismiss it completely, b/c it might be important later

Difficulty / time consuming #

1. Difficult
   • “finish euclidean hw”
   • “figure out plans for long weekend”
   • “take notes on lean analytics”
   • “#blog bump ratings”
   • “applicable advice #protip #idea”
   • some of these are difficult just because they aren’t scoped yet
2. Easy
   • “laundry”
   • “message kai about updates to chips [a project]”
   • “stretch”

Importance / deadline #

1. Needs to be done today
   • “laundry”
   • “figure out plans for long weekend”
   • “finish euclidean hw”
2. Can be done whenever
   • “fix the link effect on my website”
   • “take notes on lean analytics”
   • “update/design chips [a project]”
   • “#blog bump ratings”
   • “applicable advice #protip #idea”
   • “stretch”
   • “sam owes me $40”
   • “kai owes me $200”
   • some of these don’t even really have a due date at all
   • they are more just things to remember

Frequency #

1. Todos that are recurring
   • “laundry”
   • “finish euclidean hw”
   • we should recurring tasks as being related
   • and then predict them
2. Todos that are not recurring
   • “message kai about updates to chips [a project]”
   • “#blog bump ratings”
   • “applicable advice #protip #idea”

For v2 #

The list very quickly gets cluttered, and it’s confusing to see completed todos. So I’d like to be able to complete a todo, and then have it removed from the list.

I’d also like it if the list didn’t always show me the same todo at the top. The todo in particular is just a link, and isn’t a very important piece of information for me to see. Perhaps a snooze button, to send todos from the front of the queue to the back of the queue?

Also, I throw test values in the list frequently, and I’d like to be able to find them and delete them easily. Also, I’ve already been using hashtags for classification. I would like to be able to always tag my test data with #test, and then delete them all in one go later.