Introduction

I'm a beginner in programming, but a veteran in film and literature. I know that ideas come easy. Any normal person can come up with a good idea in a matter of minutes. The main problem is doing it.

Besides, I couldn't care less if someone does that before me. I'd probably benefit from their program, and even offer to collaborate. I have a bunch of other ideas in the oven anyway.

And I'm humble enough to know that such a niche project would never attract the interest of a mega-corporation anyway.

2. What is CHORES?

CHORES is a short-term task manager. It's meant to organize nothing more than a few hours or less of your tasks. Month, weak or even your entire day are entirely out of its scope.

3. Who is CHORES for?

First and foremost, this app is for my use. But I'm certain there are other people with conditions similar to mine, especially ones with ADHD. I'm also autistic with a compulsive personality, and won't stop until I tinker with every aspect of an object. Not surprisingly, I'm a Linux, i3wm, Emacs and Neovim user. And they're excruciatingly customized.

What I need is not a full-featured a TODO app like Remember The Milk, Todoist or Org Mode. They're too distracting, I end up just playing with the tools. I need something that allows me to track very short term chores. Thinks like brushing my teeth, taking a shower, eating, walking my dog, washing the dishes and making my bed.

That's what I intend to do.

4. What is ADHD

From the United States National Institute of Mental Health:

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a disorder marked by an ongoing pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity that interferes with functioning or development.

4.1 Warning

Please refrain from suggesting that the ones who use such tools just need to make an effort instead. That's a cliche most people with ADHD and other mental health issues probably heard many times, and by saying that you may cause distress. If you need more information, please refer to the link posted above.

5. Why another "TODO" app?

People with severe ADHD like myself frequently forget what they're doing, and what they should do in the very short term. I'm talking 2, 3 or 5 tasks from now. To give you an idea of how bad it is, right now I have an Emacs Org Mode file with the following tasks:

* Now
** TODO Take Ritalin
** TODO Start chronometer on Ritalin
  - Tells me when the effect wears off
** TODO Take a shower
** TODO Take the laptop to the living room
** TODO Wash the dishes
** TODO Study Python
** TODO Post on Tildes

But Emacs and Org Mode do a lot more than that, and this can be very distracting (right now I'm writing this post because creating another file from my now.org file was way too easy, for example).

Considering that I am the main target audience of this program, any space for tinkering is a dangerous avenue for procrastination.

6. Who is CHORES for

The primary target of this project are people with:

1. ADHD (Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder)
2. similar conditions or personality traits

In sum: if you have extreme difficulty focusing, remembering and fulfilling your tasks in the very short term, you may find this program useful.

7. Who is CHORES not for

The majority of people can concentrate and perform their short-term tasks with a reasonable degree of efficiency. If that is your case, you have little to gain by using CHORES.

8. Features

CHORES is a short-term task manager. It's meant to organize nothing more than a few hours: not your month, weak or even your day.

1. CLI Linux app (Mac, Windows, GUI, and mobile could happen in the future)
2. Hard limit of ten tasks (with the option to reduce)
3. Only the very essential configurations available

• tinkering is a huge time drain for ADHD people
• because of that, the defaults will have to be extremely sensible.

4. Started Stopped status clearly marked by character or highlighting

8.1 What you would be able to do with CHORES:

1. Add up to ten tasks
2. Reorder/Start/Stop/Done these tasks
3. Undo only one operation
4. See only the last ten completed tasks

9. Answer to Possible Questions

9.1 Why Not Keep Using Org Mode? Or maybe Taskwarrior?

Org Mode and Emacs are wonderful tools, but they're also a perfect playground for procrastinators. It simply does too much. Emacs is like a box of legos, and that's the last thing an ADHD person needs when it comes to tracking short-term tasks.

Taskwarrior suffers from the same issue.

9.2 Why Not todo.txt and similar apps?

This may seem crazy, but for a severe ADHD person, even todo.txt gives way too many options and features. It is, after, an actual TODO app. I can add 1000 tasks todo.txt. It has an extensive wiki, projects, tags, context tags, special value tags. You might just say: just don't use these options. But that

9.3 Why not use the extremely minimalist t task manager, by Steve Losh?

I like t very much, and, depending on its license, I'll probably use at least some of its code. But t lacks some features CHORES requires, such as:

1. Limit task amount
2. Add tasks to the bottom (t last tasks randomly, or at least something that seem random to me)
3. Reorder tasks
4. Undo
5. Easily view completed tasks
6. Add Start/Stop status to a task

9.4 Why not pen and paper?

This is a very personal anwer, but here we go:

1. I will lose the paper every 30 minutes
2. I will lose the pen every 30 minutes
3. I will forget to look at the paper, it will probably end up crumpled in my pock
4. Many of my tasks, such as programming and studying, already happen in the computer anyway
5. One of my medications interferes with my motor skills and my handwriting is hard to understand - even for me
6. I like computers. The fact that I like computers makes more likely for me to actually look at the tasks.
7. In the future, I can add alerts. Can't do that with paper

I used Bullet Journal for a year, then went back to Org mode with Orgzly on mobile. I find I'm more productive with pen and paper b/c when I see a rabbit hole I can't do nothing but jump into it and go right down, and trying to conform to ways app devs' workflows and hack them to behave the way I want cause friction which is for me greater than that of dealing with a meatspace physical notebook. Bullet Journal was nice, but I wonder if Strikethru could be even nicer. I never fully conform to these methods, but they are generally nice starting points to build a custom one, so I generally like starting out with them.

My use case is, I have four types of tasks: projects, like "study statistics" or "transcribe scans" which can take weeks or months to complete, and sometimes have deadlines; todos which have no specific completion time (e.g. long time shopping lists, books to buy, stuff to check back on later, things to research); tasks that are scheduled for a certain date/time or a range thereof; and lastly tasks that recur on varying intervals, like posting the thread to ~books every other week or completing a particular task that pertains to a project, say reading pages from a book that is relevant to the "study statistics" project. Bullet Journal provided a means for all of this, but the amount of rescheduling and rewriting was inconvenient, and inconvenient is the evil enemy of making habits and getting things done for a fucked up procrastinator like me. When I look at Strikethru, I am not sure if it can handle this, if it's too simple for more complex stuff. So I wonder what you guys do with it. I'd be glad if you could share your workflows and/or advice me on how I could make use of this particular system, or anything else out there!

Edit: prior art:

• https://tildes.net/~talk/9jl/do_you_use_a_todo_manager_or_something_like_a_bullet_journal_my_story_of_trying_different_planners
• https://tildes.net/~life/7yk/note_taking_bookmarks_reminders_and_todos_what_do_you_use_to_organize_your_life

I've commented on both of these talking about how I use a modified Bullet Journal method.

I'm currently in a "how can I improve and refocus" and wanted to see what this group thinks since either seems we have some pretty thoughtful and techy people here.

I have toyed around for years with different techniques. I got really into GTD and used several apps focused on that even writing my own JavaScript app to use with Google sheets.

I've used spreadsheets, OneNote, Wunderlist, plain text files.

What do you use to keep your tasks moving forward and how do you use these tools to manage your tasks and get work done? I found spreadsheets are nice because you can do a lot of scratch work but it's hard to "check them off' but many "check them off" tools don't give you a lot of scratch workspace. OneNote is cool but I can't stand the Microsoft environment and it doesn't seem to give a lot of indication how best to use the tool. Maybe I should do a training....