Getting things email
The modern world always offers lots of solutions for any given problem. Including something a simple as maintaining a list of tasks. Often though, all these services and solutions look very much alike, with the same features and the same drawbacks. If that one-size-fits-all approach doesn't suit you, you have to take more drastic measures and build it yourself.
So here it is, Getting Things Email, my very own task management system that:
- Is not tied to any particular service provider.
- Can be used by any device, with or without a dedicated app.
- Synchronizes between devices, but can handle longer periods of not being connected to the internet.
A more detailed motivation to start this project is here. Code can be found here.
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App: command line interface
The Taskwarrior inspired cli app allows for quick and flexible access to the tasks. It uses an Sqlite database that can be synchonized in the background by a cron job.
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Mail format
The mails that are sent back and forth are in plain text and contain key-value pairs, one per line:
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App: daemon for inbox processing and generating recurring tasks
There are two scripts that need to be executed on a regular basis:
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Basic flow
In the previous post I described my whish list for a task management system based on email and IMAP. After some experimenting, I came to s simple system that made it work.
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Email based task management
It’s a rough estimate, but I think there about at least a billion apps and systems out there that can help you organize your daily tasks. All of them suck. Task management apparently is a very personal thing.