Agenda as a to do list

I am trying to see if I can use Agenda purely as a to do list with support from the notes aspect of the app. A kind of reverse approach, which might help take the edge off the frenzy of normal to do lists. The Calendar and Reminder functions will help too. Am not too sure this will work, but going to try anyway. Any thoughts, ideas, views? Do tell. Thanks. P.S. This is a gorgeous app.

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I’m a self-employed consultant / trainer and this is my approach:

Category with Projects for suspects, prospects etc
– All notes are dated
– New information on existing topics is appended (with date)
– To-do’s are tagged
– Company names are tagged (TextExpander)
– Contact cards dragged into notes => make calls from within Agenda (iOS)
– If required, notes are on the agenda - sometimes backed-up by Reminders
– If notes relate to an event, they’re linked to the calendar
– Standard TextExpander notes for made calls, meeting reports etc

Preperation / planning:
– Standardised notes via TextExpander (with headers, checkboxes, bullets etc)

Overviews:
– On the agenda today
– To-do’s for today
– Due dates
– Through tagged company names

I have several categories that work the same way. Still using my CRM for contact-management but all else goes into Agenda now. OmniFocus was my main to-do app from when it was introduced. It’s excellent for actions but not so much for real planning or storing information in.

Hope this will help.

Regards,

Rob

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Thanks Rob!

Will try these out down the line, one by one it’s going to be fun.

In the meantime am experiencing a small glitch in the iOS version of Agenda. Am unable to create a note, or more correctly, am unable to name a note and it remains Untitled Note, whatever I do. The same problem is not there on the macOS app.

Would you know anything about this.

Prem

This is indeed an unfortunate issue in the 5.2 release, it should be fixed in the 5.3 update that is due out within the next few days. In the mean time the trick is to add some text in the new note and delete it again, this should “fix” the title.

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That’s good to know thanks :slight_smile:

Hi “Frame”
I have just started working with Agenda.
My to do lists are simply created using some mark-down.

the text -[ ] at the start of each line automatically creates something that looks like this.

  • [ ]

Which can be tapped to look like a ticked circle. Useful for marking off completed tasks.

  • [x]

It doesn’t ”work” in this note but does work when I do it in Agenda.

IMG_1036.pdf (20.3 KB)

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Thanks! will try it out.

So you’re saying you’d rather do markdown than use the Checklist feature that’s available? And just for my curiosity do you do it on Mac, or on iOS as well.

P.S. will need to learn markdown from the beginning :slight_smile:

I ‘automatically’ use mark-down when writing, so prefer to type it rather than investigate options elsewhere.

my workflow for these things is to create a template on Drafts, a recently improved feature there, then use this with pre prepared markdown checklists to produce a daily set of tasks to remember.

I type better on Mac but can and do use both formats.

I have only recently started using Agenda again after a brief foray when it first came out, so am by no means set in my ways yet!

visit Daring Fireball: Markdown for a good intro to markdown.

It’s probably one of those things you learn early into your computer life and then never forget. It probably also goes better on the desktop than the touchscreen am I right? Will give it a go one of these days thanks.

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I’m a fourth year university student and I’m involved with a few clubs on campus so I use Agenda to keep track of all my school, extracurricular, and general life tasks; I very much use Agenda as a todo list app.

I create a daily todo list each night for the next day using a shortcut. It organizes my tasks into priority (tasks I plan on getting done today), and secondary (tasks that if I finish all other tasks I can start on), as well as events throughout the day. (template written in markdown is here)

This allows me to have the structure of a todo list, but being able to add more details in the same doc, link to other agenda notes, or link to something like google docs.

This is what works for me, I only started using agenda in january and it worked wonderfully for me this semester.

Let me know if you want me to go more in detail on how I organize my life using agenda.

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Isn’t that what a checklist is in Agenda already?

Yes, @Alex.N, indeed it is.

My workflow tends to begin with Drafts using markdown whatever programme the final text appears in. Hence the (poor) description. I am still trying to use Agenda more effectively.

Oh ok cool. I’m just learning all of this myself while using agenda for traditional note taking and tasks/to-do lists. Now it’s on to markdown. Thank you.

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Sounds interesting. Probably a very customised to you approach, but would love to know more. Will check out the templates.

What would you like to know more about specifically?

It’s just a general method of organizing and prioritizing tasks that I don’t think just applies to students.

  • I just write 1-3 priority tasks that I absolutely wanted to get done in the day
  • and then a few more secondary goals that I can work on if I finish the priority tasks.
  • at the end of the day I write a short review to reflect on the day
    • this also helps me look back on the week and recall what I did, and why reflect on why things went a certain way.
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I get the idea :slight_smile: thanks.

That sounds great but sadly those shortcuts doesn`t work anymore

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There’ve been some changes to shortcuts in iOS 13. Here are the new versions:

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Thank You! :slight_smile:

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@riconaranjo oh it Lacks one shortcut to transform the formatted date to text. vdate