I’m enjoying the discussion.
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I have tried using flags and due dates as a sub for priorities. Doesn’t work for me. The
The recommendations for TickTick in this thread have me very curious. My situation is similar to Mitch’s. I’ve been going back and forth between OF and Things for years. OF is difficult to use, and the beta of OF4 doesn’t reassure me — it’s made it more difficult. But Things makes me think about how to lay out my tasks, rather than conform to the way my brain works: projects, sub-projects, folders, etc.
If Things had a way for me to flag tasks or projects, that would probably be enough for me. So I’m looking at TickTick now. Their Chinese ownership does make me nervous. I don’t have anything to hide, but I also don’t want to willingly give data to a dictatorial authority — even if it’s without my knowledge.
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I’ve tried everything over the years, and have landed on Things 3. It does enough for me in a delightful way, without making task entry and management hard. It can flex to be advanced where required.
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I’m in the same boat. I’ve been a Todoist user for three years. I wanted to move to Things as its Mac native, non-subscription and you can drag and drop items. I wanted to move to a non-subscription because I was unemployed for nearly two years. I’ve lost most of the ability to use a fully-featured Todoist when my subscription lapse and decided to cut it off my budget. Now, I’m just signing up monthly to see if it’s still a great fit for me.
I’m still on Todoist for language recognition, attachments, kanban board, multiple reminders, and Fantastical integration. What I’m missing though is having to define a Start Date.
TGD apps I’ve used in the past: Things 1& 2, 2Do, Omnifocus 4.
Ticktick does look interesting and its cheaper.
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Been using GoodTask on iOS after hearing good things from Federico Viticci and pretty happy with it. Like that it’s built on top of Apple’s Reminders and not a third-party sync service. Quick Actions are awesome, though I’m hardly using them to their full potential.
On the Mac I am still using Reminders. Sync between GT on iOS and Reminders on Mac is quite slow. Should definitely buy GT on Mac, just been putting off dropping the $58.98 it costs 
I started using TickTick about 3 years ago. I’ve been an Omnifocus user for over 10 years but I began to be frustrated by a couple of small but important things - mainly about how the data was presented. I switched to 2Do and really liked it, but development has stalled and there are some sync issues (if they get resolved, 2Do would probably be my first choice). Then I tried Notion, which is great for project-based tasks but too heavyweight for daily small actions (and doesn’t handle repeating tasks!!!). I’ve looked at Things several times, but I just can’t get on with it.
So I tried TickTick - it’s fast, small and reliable and has all the features I need. It’s cheap and looks nice. My only issues with it are that some actions take too many keystrokes and that integrations from other apps (Mail, Devonthink) are non-existent. Development is quick - frequent new features and updates. I can’t get excited about the China thing. If I worked in a highly sensitive area, I might think differently.
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For completeness, someone should mention:
NotePlan which works very well, with a few minor things like the way repeating tasks are handled, date handling is a little thin (I need a start and due date with something to indicate I’m within that time period), and no timeline. Very nice templating system, along with other extension/plugins that may be invoked with / commands. Also, a system-wide pop-up that can be invoked with a shortcut. Responsive and involved developer with a Discord server.
Agenda which is somewhat similar to NotePlan, but more calendar-centric. Has the ability to attach notes to calendar events, whereas in NotePlan (and others), the note would be related to events. No timeline. Very nice design, and I believe they pioneered or at least popularized the anti-subscription, where one buys updates for a year.
(non-)binary tasks
For what have been called ‘binary tasks’, i.e. ‘mow the yard’, I just use Reminders. Activities that have more than one step are usually a project, though Pagico has lists of tasks that can be added to Projects, so I’m working out how to handle that in a way that makes sense to me.
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I’ve gone back and forth on reminder-like tasks and am inconsistent. I have a grocery list in reminders so it’s easy to ask Siri to add things to it. I’ve tried Anylist, which I mostly liked, but I found the sharing/adding from Siri a little clunky and so I stopped using it.
I have a “Birthday” list in Reminders as well that reminds me when to send cards/gifts/texts to my favorite people.
And then I have most everything else like this in a “Routines” folder in Omnifocus:
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I wish I had a Putzing project 
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I recommend it! It’s my favorite one.
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That’s precisely how I handle this. I would add one additional thing. I also have my top priority projects at the very top of my project list. Overall, this works extremely well provided I am consistent with my weekly review, which most weeks I am.
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This doesn’t check all of your boxes, but I’m exploring Sorted 3. It does display the tags. It has an auto scheduler which is cool, based on the duration you have assigned to tasks, scheduling tasks around non negotiable times like scheduled appointments. You can create lists (such as errands, phone, etc) and tags, times, dates, alerts and repeat tasks functions. Currently that’s all I need. I’m assembling my projects in Agenda
This duration period would be enough to keep me from enjoying TickTick, sadly. Just not how my brain works.
As far as sensitive information in China, I’m a freelancer with clients who have sensitive info they absolutely do not want in China (Christian nonprofits with missions work in the regions, who would be arrested and tortured if found — or worse). So that’s my big pause too.
I’ll probably just stick with Things and make more rigorous use of priority tags or something. This thread is great, though. I love everything y’all are teaching me.
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Very good list of points. Thank you!
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I have a project/area called “downtime.” I am going to rename it to “putzing.”
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I use Todoist (have done for 3+ years) and I love the natural-ish language task entry. It makes it less of a chore to put things into the list. Getting them off the list on the other hand…
None of the features are higher tier citizens either. If you want to totally ignore projects you can do so. If you want to totally ignore dates you can do so, etc etc. I’ve switched in the past year to using fairly elaborate filters: one for work tasks and one for home tasks, which each then display the appropriate tasks in a single view, divided by project (where I use projects for clients mostly), and then sorted within project by priority.
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I woke up this morning decided to go all in on Todoist and see how I like it–but then I read @thealbs excellent write-up about Ticktick and figured I’d give that a try.
The point that intrigued me was “pinned tasks.” Often it gets to be 4 pm and I think, “I don’t want to review my entire tasks list or make any big changes to it–I just want to note what three things must be done before I knock off work.” Pinned tasks seems ideal for that application.
So far I like Ticktick.
The Chinese ownership is a cause for serious concern–but the West is also, sadly, unrespectful of privacy. It’s not a case of China=evil and the US=good in this regard.
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Have used OmniFocus for many years now. Have tried many other, but I’m always going back to OF.
Regarding Priorities you could easily use Tags for that.
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Just looked at TickTick - seems to have all of the features I’m looking for (coming from 2Do) except I don’t see anything about a global keyboard shortcut for quick entry. Anyone know if that’s available? It’s one of my most-used 2Do features.
(Currently trying GoodTask since it’s included with SetApp)
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