PTPL 194 · How I Do My To-Dos (not quite like Steph Ango)

Just how minimalist should a to-do list be?

Image by the Author. To-list text reads: Cut up veggies for salad Lego; Update PTA transactions

I’ve been fascinated by time and task management for decades. This post is another in the series of how my approach is evolving.

In 2023, Steph Ango (CEO of Obsidian) wrote about his extraordinarily simple approach to writing to-do lists. This isn’t an excerpt from his blog post, it’s the whole thing:

Every week I create a weekly note, and write my to-dos for the week. I may add more items to it during the week.

If any items didn’t get done I roll them over to the next weekly note or drop them.

That’s it.

I usually write my to-dos from scratch without looking at the previous week’s list. This helps me decide which items I should drop. If I can’t remember a to-do it probably wasn’t that important.

Well, it seems that Steph and I have very different brains. If I can’t remember a to-do, it has a moderately high chance of being very important indeed!!

I do love the minimalist flavour of Steph’s approach, though. It’s something to aspire to. But until that higher level of enlightenment is reached, I am benefiting from some plain text style training wheels.

My approach to to-dos

Every time I think of something that needs doing, it goes into a file named todo.txt. One task per line. I add a 1-letter time sector code, todo.txt style, to the beginning of each task indicating when I want to deal with it.

• 1. = today
  

• 2. = this week
  

• 4. = this month
  

• 12. = later
  

• 23. = waiting
  

• 26. = someday
  

I then add a tag to each task to categorise them into the broad time blocks I use in my calendar.

• admin (admin/home, admin/work)
• chores
• clients
• communications (email, social media replies, phone calls)
• projects
• writing

For example:

(A) Write this week’s blog post #writing
(A) Follow up overdue accounts #admin/work
(B) Read chapter 4 for book club, take notes #read
(B) Organise planning meeting with C #comms
(L) Buy magnetic holder for sewing pins #admin/home

Tasks don’t get done remain in their assigned time sector until manually placed into another. My schedule for reviewing tasks means they will come up over and over until I finally do, defer, or delete them.

1. Every day I clear my inboxes, check which tasks have been given the (A) time sector, and look at the (B) tasks to see if my schedule allows for any of them to be added to today’s list.

2. Every week I check the (D) tasks to see which can realistically be added to the (B) list, and assign (B) tasks to specific days of the coming week. Then I check the (W) items and schedule any needed followup actions.

3. Every month I check the (L) tasks to see which can realistically be added to the (D) list. Tasks that should be looked at in a specific month are put into my planner. Then I read through the (Z) tasks to see if any should be promoted up the line, or deleted.

Wouldn’t plugins make this a lot easier?

There are apps for working with todo.txt files, and several plugins for it in Obsidian. I’m not opposed to them, but at the moment I don’t feel the need to go down that path.

Plain text tasks, huh… but what about reminders??

Good question. Raw text just sits there, doesn’t it! Vital events have an alarm or reminder set on my phone. Apps like Beorg can integrate with alerts on Apple devices, but sometimes the best reminders are our own habits. I’ve found that checking today’s list every single day (and often multiple times a day) works brilliantly..

I also like the practice that productivity expert Carl Pullein recommends, of writing your two most important tasks (not including daily routines) on paper and keeping them in sight throughout the day.

So, just how minimalist should a to-do list be?

As minimalist and as complex as your needs dictate! My approach might not be a good fit for Steph Ango and I think I’d quickly get lost if I adopted his, yet both of us are happy with our methods. That’s your answer.

Coming soon: how to query a todo.txt file in Obsidian.

Related posts:

• 2025-07-21 PTPL 166 - Beorg May Well Be the Best Free iOS Plain Text Task Manager
• 2025-01-20 PTPL 140 - Using todo.txt in Obsidian (Or Wherever You Like), Part 1
• 2025-01-27 PTPL 141 - Using todo.txt in Obsidian (Or Wherever You Like), Part 2

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