Ask HN: What Process/Applications Do You Use for Todo/Knowledge Management?
Like many of you, I have spent more time trying out different applications in the todo list/knowledge management space without finding a solution that has stuck. I've tried aggressive calendar scheduling, todo.txt, Vikunja, a paper planner, Logseq, Notion, and likely others along the way! I now have the suspicion that the issue I'm having isn't the tooling, but the process. The solution I've stuck with the longest has been Vikunja, but I felt limited by it as it is strictly a todo application, and doesn't support any form of knowledge management (by design, which makes sense!)
So I'm wondering, what processes do people follow for their todo list management and knowledge management? What resources have you learned how to use your applications of choice?
My requirements (in rough priority order):
- Mobile + Desktop support (PWA, web UI, native application, all fine!)
- Searchable
- Allows me to keep track of todos with priority ordering and sublists
- Allows me to easily capture one-off ideas, as well as expand them into richer, more detailed concepts
- FOSS + Self-Hostable
The issues I've faced with previous solutions are:
- No integration between my todos and knowledge!
- Not being able to search
- Not being able to quickly capture ideas/notes/todos
- Not having a clean(-ish) UX to navigate between points of info/see what my next priorities are What kind of integration between your todos and knowledge? If you haven't found one, how about building your own todo app that fits your needs. I have a demo here https://community.sitegui.com/blog/creating-the-first-applic... Struggling with info all over the place as well
I'm using AI to search for info in my notes at https://saner.ai/
Eating my own dog food here lol but it works
Preparing to add todo list into the app as well Any desktop or mobile app in your roadmap? I use emacs org mode (and emacs org node and emacs org agenda), and Orgzly Revived on Android (the latter can do DAV sync). It's quite nice and can do integration, search and quick capture, TODOs. It's also endlessly customizable--but I almost don't customize it. Zim - Wysiwyg for markdown files My only complaints are that it uses .txt instead of .md and that I haven't been able to get it to work on Mac. Most recently Obsidian with PARA method. Obsidian isn't open source unfortunately, but I'd guess you could achieve a very similar setup with logseq. I'm planning on migrating to org-roam though Trello: I could care less about open source or self hostable. It’s a tool There is a Mac, Windows, Web, iOS, and Android app. Simple Kanban board like interface and I can add comments and descriptions in markdown for each entry. Obsidian sounds exactly like what you're looking for. It's not a todo app out of the box, but community extensions can easily adapt it to fit your needs. Not FOSS, but check out Craft https://www.craft.do/ I'm using NotePlan (https://noteplan.co) and loving it. It's a macOS/iOS app (there's a somewhat limited Web version). IMO, the best balance between PKM and task manager/calendar management. I've also tried Amplenote (https://amplenote.com) that has some of the features you want but the tagging concept lost me. I think there are some Workflowy clones that are OSS but I like the original. Standard Notes. Excel / Google Spreadsheets?