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Comment by hughrr | Hacker News Reader

Plain text sucks. It’s so hard to represent context, time, location and state.

I have got to the point I just use the reminders app in apple ecosystem. Notes go in the notes app. Things get deleted when done or disinterest kicks in. Shortcuts fills up regular tasks for me.

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I quickly craft tiny ad hoc DSLs as needed. staying in text lets me control my own data, minimize spending, always work offline, have easy version control and backups, maximum multiplatform support, and maximum futureproofing. not perfect but I usually gain more than I win

My gains are sync across all my devices instantly including the one strapped to my wrist, voice control, location awareness, context awareness, prompting, scripted automation, attachments and full tagging and categorisation system and I can share tasks with people including colleagues and family and check status.

I'll take that set of features over your self-imposed compromises.

I closed over 23,000 tasks so far with it while managing a full time job and a family.

I totally respect that. if that works better for you, keep on doing it

I've probably closed a mega-zillion (1) tasks from 1980ish onward using my hyper-minimalist approach, so, I think both styles can work

(1: guestimated, in approx 50ms. lol)

With plaintext you can do what you need. For example, with todo.txt context are just prefixed by `@`. You can also add special tag with `key:value`. So for example you can add `location:paris` and retrieve it with whatever search tool.

But I can't speak to my arm and add something to the list. Nor will a text file remind me to do something at a specific time.

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