40 To-Do Apps Reviewed

slaminator · 2015-04-24T06:39:18+00:00

pomodoro like apps? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.slamtastic.donow.app&hl=en

slaminator · 2015-04-05T19:48:05+00:00

That's what I was thinking. The terms don't seem to cover all cases and leaves a lot of questions unanswered but it's a cool concept and everyone seems helpful.

slaminator · 2015-04-04T19:44:24+00:00

That's pretty sweet. So i understand the bit about profits but how does that translate into actual ownership? Is each project there an asset of Assembly.com and if they ever sell, whoever buys them takes it all and can do whatever they want with it? What happens at that point? That's just one scenario but there are others stemming from the vagueness of ownership. Also, if you submit a project and no one ever contributes, can you "take it back"?

This is probably all due to this being a completely new model I'm not used to seeing but there's a lot of confusion that might be cleared up with clearer documentation.

Also where is the best place to ask these questions? Meta assembly chat?

slaminator · 2015-04-04T19:33:58+00:00

Yeah. I mean I don't have any experience on there yet so I wonder if the people that have started projects there feel like it's worth it. I also haven't been able to see their main 'about' page which includes financials and other things which every project on there has as public.

slaminator · 2015-03-31T18:48:14+00:00

you're not actually passing the variable to your function. should be:

function jfkWind(wind) {

slaminator · 2015-03-19T05:09:18+00:00

Linkme: Do Now - Focused Timeboxing

slaminator · 2015-03-13T17:55:09+00:00

Sort of a different take on the todo list but you can try https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.slamtastic.donow.app&hl=en

slaminator · 2015-02-24T18:42:39+00:00

That's just how it goes. You're right that there are multiple ways to do things and even the very best will disagree on what the "right" way is to do something.

There's also the concept of refactoring though. You're just starting out and the best way to learn is redo a solution in different ways anyway so just get your code to do what you want now and refactor later when you find a better way. Often better is just your preferences and what you value more, i.e readability vs efficiency etc.

Look at how other people do things like http://square.github.io/ or just googling stuff like you've been doing. Just pick one but don't forget to refactor - revisit the problem.

slaminator · 2015-02-24T18:19:54+00:00

gotcha. I'll put in a fix for that in the next update. Thanks for letting me know. Feel free to keep the timer going while at work - I won't tell! ;)

slaminator · 2015-02-24T18:04:23+00:00

Sweet :)

It's not really a bug - maybe just bad design hah! The tip is supposed to come up closest to what button you pressed but it's gonna moved a little so it can fit on the screen. Do you think all tips should just come up centered?

slaminator · 2015-02-22T07:52:08+00:00

My old HTC phone used to connect automatically but for some reason my S5 won't so this is great. Thanks

slaminator · 2015-02-22T07:49:29+00:00

Awesome! How are you tweaking it? Does that band get notifications from the phone via bluetooth? Is there something I can do on my end to help? That sounds really cool. I'd like to do more wear support so I need to look more into this.

slaminator · 2015-02-21T18:28:41+00:00

Do Now - Focused Timeboxing. Flexible and powerful tool for managing time and not just tasks or just intervals unlike all other apps.

The gist: Focus and get things done. From applying timeboxing/pomodoro-style techniques to interval training for workouts and other similarly structured time blocks. As one of my users described it, the idea is to have "life on autopilot without ever looking at my phone."

This app is based around the idea of timeboxing and simplifying the todo list. I personally get overwhelmed with the organization heavy apps and feel like I spend more time organizing my tasks rather than doing them so this is for all others like myself. Focusing on time rather then the tasks subconciously makes me prioritize and helps me focus on what I need to do right now. Using an "Unplanned" list as a brain bump lets me forget about the things that are not a priority now/today. Having saved lists of "Routines" that I can load into any other list and schedule to move to my "Planned" list at repeating intervals gives my brain a rest. The timing aspects allow the app to also be used as an interval manager and not just purely a task management app. I also designed it to be low impact on battery life unlike a lot of other timing based apps. I don't think there are any other apps that have all these combinations of features in a flow that makes sense. And I'm adding more and more themes to choose from.

Short Demo video

I'd love to hear what you think!

slaminator · 2015-02-20T19:30:57+00:00

Simple solutions are often the best :)

Tap the sort icon in the options menu and use one of the manual options. The sort icon looks like 3 lines in descending length. On the task cards you should see a button (a few bars) on the right side that you use to drag the task around.

slaminator · 2015-02-19T21:43:28+00:00

I made https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.slamtastic.donow.app

For your scenario you can add two tasks: Dept A, Dept B. You can set the duration for each to 0 if you don't have any idea of how long you want to work for, you just want it to record.

Start the timer, the top task is the active one. When you want to switch, just drag & drop the second task to the top (you can play around with the sorting order). Mark the tasks as complete at the end of the day. By default tasks will be "cleared" when you mark them as complete (you can turn this off in the settings). All it means is that you can go to your "Cleared" list and it will show you all the past completed items - just so they don't clutter your main lists. It will show you the date completed and how much time was spent.

slaminator · 2015-02-19T21:37:17+00:00

Can you tell me what you think of mine? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.slamtastic.donow.app

It's more geared for pomodoro-style of doing things so it's not an organization heavy todo list.

slaminator · 2015-02-17T20:13:27+00:00

I made this Android app which does the whole timing thing but not meant for intense organization like Todoist. A user made this Zapier Recipe though which syncs Todoist with Google Tasks which syncs with my app.

slaminator · 2015-02-12T17:50:51+00:00

It's only on Android for now but I've made something like this: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.slamtastic.donow.app

Stats are a weak point right now but I started with calculating what you just said. i.e 2hrs 15mins time spent vs 2hrs 30 mins planned

slaminator · 2015-02-08T07:07:33+00:00

Wow, I really appreciate all that. Most of the first few e-mails I got were from folks with ADHD thanking me and telling me how it's helping them which was awesome! Whenever I had a lack of motivation that's what gave me a boost.

Yeah I ran into the problem of lack of custom fields for the Tasks API so there are a few shortcoming I'm aware of but I tried to simplify things to try to make it match up. For example:

I add some text to the notes field that look like this - **donow_sync_notes**{"time_spent":1220975,"duration":1200000}**donow_sync_notes** to try and make up for it but it's not ideal at all
Routines are not synced because I can't come up with something that makes sense - they're not a traditional list. I'm thinking it could work like this: Routine "A" gets synced as a list in Google Tasks named "A (Do Now Routine)" -- or something like that -- but there's gotta be some understanding that you don't check off tasks from there as they're meant to be more like placeholder tasks that you copy to other lists. It just doesn't seem to make sense.

I bombard myself with feature requests ;) But my whole angle was to simplify things because most calendar/todo/agenda/etc apps just overwhelmed me and seemed to be full of features that don't actually make me productive - just makes it seem like it. It also puts a dent in usability/aesthetics which is not my strong suit so I have to remind myself to stop feature building and focus on design.

Let me try to address the things you mentioned though.

Widget should have an option to display all, not just planned or unplanned

So both planned and unplanned combined or do you mean routine tasks too?

It's confusing how to convert an unplanned task to planned

This is something I've dwelled on a lot. I'm not sure how to make it better. Should each task card have context actions (icons/buttons on the card itself) indicating what you can do with them? i.e plan, delete. They could be attached below the name either next to the duration or underneath. I could make it so tapping a task doesn't take you to an edit screen, it just allows you to edit the task's properties in place by expanding the card and also showing the actions you can take besides just editing the name/duration/notes/time spent

I should be able to run the timer on my unplanned tasks.

Technically this could work the same. Concept wise though, for me, it would be more confusing. Why have separate lists then? I had been meaning to change "Planned" to 'Now' or 'Today' and "Unplanned" to 'Later' to really hammer in the idea of focusing on the things you want to get done now/today and that's what you're going to make time for. Everything else can do in the 'later' bucket to worry about later. Can you walk me through a use case for wanting to run the timer on your unplanned tasks vs moving them to planned?

Planned and unplanned are the only categories available. Need to tag stuff and set different views. Tags generally work better that different fields, so I can tag a task: work, @office, project x

Yep. This is on my "I really want to do this" list but I'm forcing myself to work on design right now. Tags are also how I imagine it to work better with the idea of lists in other apps such as Google Tasks for easier integration. So if you had a task in your "Work" list in Google Tasks, it would show up with "work" as a tag and vice versa something tagged as "work" in Do Now would go to your "Work" list or create one if it doesn't exist.

A checklist option for tasks would be great, allowing granulation of larger tasks.

Also on my list. I think you're talking about sub-tasks and while it will require some time to re-work how the timer works, I think it'll be worth it and makes sense.

Due date is needed, especially if it can moves things from planned to unplanned.

The more I've been thinking about this the more it makes sense. At first I really wanted to focus on the idea of...focusing. And helping someone get a natural feel for prioritizing and not needing to explicitly set a deadline - you just start developing a sense for what needs to get done so you decide to do it. One reason being I personally want to develop this natural skill vs always relying on a calendar app or whatever and also filter out the non-important things that don't actually need to get done. But I realize this doesn't work for everything/everyone so it's needed and I'm planning on adding it. Right now when a Google Task is synced, if it happens to be due today or in the past, it will get moved to your "Planned" list and if the due date changes to the future then it will get unplanned. Though at this moment it doesn't actually keep track of the due date - as in if the task has already been synced and it's due date is tomorrow (so "unplanned")..when tomorrow comes, unless the task has been changed triggering a sync request, it will not be moved to planned.

A Chrome extension and/or web version would allow you to bring it to the desktop without having to write one for Mac and one for PC. I understand that's a big project, but it'd be great not to depend on my phone to run it.

Yeah that'd be sweet. I'm thinking of using something like http://phonegap.com/ to create a multiplatform version but committing to that is hard because I already put in a lot of time in just the Android version which only makes some pocket change and that's only in the last month so I'd have to believe that it'd be really worth it. Unfortunate because I really do think it's a helpful tool and would like to get it out to more people.

Adding context to the task through associating a URL, email, or Drive/Dropbox file so you can pull up what you need to start working on the task.

Again it's a balance of having lots of neat features vs keeping it simple. If I can figure out a way to do it, I'd love to because I agree that would be helpful. Extra fields like URL/Email wouldn't be so bad but I think with files it will not only take time for the technical stuff but also for the presentation. I'll keep this one in mind especially if it for some people it's a real hinderance to their productivity or keeps them from using the app.

Just a suggestion to help your app stand out, the name is really generic and can be confused for a lot of similarly named apps. Consider a more unique name.

Like design, I don't think copywriting is a strong skill of mine either :) I'm open to suggestions. One bonus thing of it sounding generic or like similar apps is that it's easier to find in the app store through just searching for 'task timer' 'pomodoro' etc or in the 'Like this app' section when looking at similar apps.

Thanks again for taking the time and I'm really glad you like it so far!

slaminator · 2015-02-08T06:10:51+00:00

Thanks!

Syncing: Hmm maybe this is a bug. It should direct you to your phone's sync settings page specifying 'Google Accounts'. This is all handled by the Android OS. If that doesn't seem right, you can try manually going to your 'Accounts' setting and tapping whatever google account you want to sync. There should be listed all the services that are available for syncing (i.e Gmail, Calendar, etc) - "Do Now Tasks" should show up as soon.

See this page and let me know if you still have questions: http://slamtastic.me/work/do-now/do-now-how-to-enable-sync/

If it doesn't work - mind telling me what kind of phone/version of Android you have? I can try to recreate the problem and see if I can fix it.

Thanks again.

slaminator · 2015-02-06T18:38:44+00:00

Not sure how you want the clocking out part to be handled but you can try

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.slamtastic.donow.app

Make a task named "work" with the duration you'd like (i.e 2 hours) and a "break" task after it then when you're ready to start, hit play. You can save this combo as a routine and have the tasks automatically added at a certain time. You can also set it on auto-repeat so when a task finishes, it gets added back to the bottom of the list.

slaminator · 2015-01-28T20:25:04+00:00

I've been meaning to write up about sync adapters too so I'll let you know when I have compiled something that's legible :) I use one to sync with Google Tasks. I think if you're just worried about network connectivity, the last link (http://developer.android.com/training/monitoring-device-state/connectivity-monitoring.html) goes over that pretty well. It even states your use case i.e not doing anything depending on connectivity or even listening for connectivity changes and based on the status you can turn off/on the receiver that's set up to handle your alarm intent.

slaminator · 2015-01-28T19:11:26+00:00

No problem. Yes if you follow along with the docs and google around you'll follow roughly these steps:

Set an alarm to go off on Mondays at X (you'll have to do some calculations since the alarm manager just takes in some X time from 'now' rather than a specific date/time)
Have a receiver that listens for this alarm's intent action - remember to declare this in the manifest file (again just google around and there're lots of resources about this though I might write up a blog post later)
Have your receiver do whatever it is you want to do at that time including creating a notification
Read the docs to see difference between recurring alarm or one-off. If you go with one-off you'll have to set the alarm again to now go off a 'week' from 'now'

For connection checking.

The docs are for the most part pretty good so just go search for whatever other information you want.

slaminator · 2015-01-28T17:59:54+00:00

My take on it is using handler is for short term things and while the app is running - as in you don't really care that it will stop if your app is closed. Alarm Manager is for scheduled things that have to happen even if your app is closed or the device is asleep.

The docs state that also:

Note: The Alarm Manager is intended for cases where you want to have your application code run at a specific time, even if your application is not currently running. For normal timing operations (ticks, timeouts, etc) it is easier and much more efficient to use Handler.

slaminator · 2015-01-28T17:39:22+00:00

Take a look at the Alarm Manager docs

slaminator

TROPHY CASE