Do you use a task manager? If yes, which one?

I've tried them all over the years. Trello, Todoist, Wunderlist, Evernote, Google Inbox, DaPulse/Monday and the list continues. They all failed to provide enough value for me to stick with them (for task management at least).

Then, I read this (http://blog.samaltman.com/productivity) a couple of months ago. Turns out the best task manager (for me at least) had been in front of me the whole time. Pen and paper. It is the best thing that has happened to my productivity since I don't know when... I tried to follow Sam Altman's tips as much as possible - break down tasks, make lists, complete tasks, repeat - and it works extremely well.

What I like the most is:

• I can literally feel the satisfaction when I cross off an item, no task manager's UI has ever produced that amount of dopamine for me...
• No limits. I can lay out tasks in any way I want, and thus, I'm not limited by some UI that doesn't allow endless nesting, charts or drawings, mindmaps or what not.
• It's tangible and straightforward. Write, cross off. I don't have to think about labels, dates, tags, archiving etc.

Asana works well for me. I don't think your choice of system matters as much as how you use it. If you use something in the "wrong" way, it will grow to become unmanageable over time, and you won't stick with it. Either that, or it will be so unimportant that you neglect to maintain it.

Personally, I put my most essential absolutely have-to-do tasks inside of Asana. Many of these are recurring tasks that automatically renew every day. Many are ad hoc tasks I've created to get done for today (e.g. finish coding feature X). And a few of them are predictable tasks that I've scheduled for the future (e.g. deploy podcast Y on date Z).

Then I check my Asana task list the first thing every morning and I work through it each day. It's literally not an option for me to forget to check, otherwise I won't know what I'm working on, and important things will not get done.

(I don't think this will work well if you fill up your task list with a bunch of optional things that are easy to ignore, or if you have a workload that's easy to keep all in your head, or if you don't have any real external pressure to get tasks done.)

I have a separate system for more long-term goals and planning. It's basically a collection of Google Docs. This is where most of my optional maybe-I'll-do-this-someday tasks end up going.

Todoist is my choice for the last 3 years (paying 45$/year). Nonbulshit minimalistic UI, cross platform, markdown support, great features.

Gotta go with Lanes (https://lanes.io). Tasks, a journal, a calendar, plus save articles (like Instapaper) and annotate videos (like I don't think any app does this).

I did create this so I'm perhaps biased, but take a look.

WorkFlowy. 🙂 Began using it to organize just about everything in my brain, and it’s worked wonders. It’s been used by the founders of Slack, and other icons. Very minimalistic if you’re into that.

Hey! I actually made a tool to help me with this where you can create tasks under specific projects if you want to check it out https://mochiboard.com/

As for remembering to update the tasks, it's pretty easy for me since I actually got (slightly) addicted to moving the cards over! lol

Love to hear what you think! Jut launched it the other day.

I use Trello to organize my projects, and them generate the tasks no TODOIST.

For teams, Airtable or Trello.

For myself, nothing has worked better than an old school bullet journal.

I use the org-mode and its agenda view. I had to write elisp and the mobile experience is nearly nonexistent, but it works really well for me for managing one-off and recurring tasks. I don't have to share what I'm doing with a third party, and the agenda view makes it very easy to mark or reschedule tasks.

I use Omnifocus to capture things I need to do. I don't work well with long laundry lists of tasks so I also write the big picture in a notebook or whiteboard if available.

I used to use Evernote to record everything I did in a work week (reports) and for weekly planning.

I use Omnifocus for tasks but I try to plan every day in Evernote by 5:30pm the day before.

I've found though that it's just become a huge backlog of sometimes irrelevant tasks. I haven't found a good way to do daily prioritization in it natively.

Do other people's task managers just become a graveyard of "oh I did that" or "I know I put that in there but I'm never going to do it but I feel bad deleting it" or "I'm never going to do that" tasks?

If possible, use physical post-it notes and a wall. No electronic tool can match the visualization and ease of updating/changing layout. Learn Kanban.

I've tried a lot of stuff out there and used many products for a long time. My favorite is Wunderlist.

If you want something more than just a task manager / timer, Active Collab is cool for this — It's a project manager for teams, too! 👌 (I use it.)

It does cost, though. $25pm for the starter package. 🚀

Wunderlist for everything.

Taskr (personal)

Asana/Trello (projects / biz)

Todoist is the way to go. I'll gladly pay the ridiculously low annual fee for this product (and the great team behind it), but even the free features are enough to start. Running it on every platform I own and plan every single day using it.

Asana, Remember the Milk

Google calendar - For scheduling EVERYTHING.
Tick Tick and Wunderlist - for todo lists in personal life as well as sharing lists with girlfriend
Trello - for startup related tasks (kanban style)