Not exiting Things 3 but still (very much) using Agenda

Talk
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This post is a follow-up to one I made almost 10 months ago, in which I boldly stated that I was ‘exiting Things 3 and going all in with Agenda’.

I was bold, and naive - at least for my own workflow and use case. and so I thought I would offer an update.

My (daily) apps of choice for task / project management and my version of GTD are:

  • Things 3
  • Agenda
  • Bear

Things 3 drives my tasks and I throw most tasks in the Things Inbox and work from there.
I also use callback URLs to link between all 3 apps (as required).

Agenda is where my task / project (and time) related notes reside. I sometimes start the task management process in Agenda, especially out of a meeting. In this instance I just use the \remind shortcut after any item that is a task I need to follow-up and it’s automatically imported into the Things Inbox.

With one of the best web clippers I’ve used and a nice note writing experience Bear is my repository for Articles, references and research.

I’ve been working this way for a number of months and it all links together quite seamlessly.

I love where Agenda is headed and how it fits into my workflow - looking forward to v10!

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Thanks for sharing the follow up, always great to see how things involve over time as the real strengths and weaknesses of workflows and app are revealed.

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Just an unashamed plug for Agenda 10, which is coming next week: it has a bunch of new checklist editing commands on macOS which make working with tasks a whole lot nicer. Check it out!

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I’m not on masOS, only iPadOS and iOS - but I’m looking forward to the next major release!

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@aleemali Could you elaborate a bit about your Bear workflow? Why/how is it better than Agenda? In which cases? Thanks!

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Did this make it to v10? I have not seen anything in the release notes and cannot see anything new with task editing.

Thanks!

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I’m actually in the process of shifting from Bear to Notion - but the answer is the same because it’s less about the specific apps and more about the system / my way of working.

I use a mix of GTD / PARA method and central to both is references / resources. PARA method defines resources as “a topic or theme of ongoing interest.”

In short, I use Bear (now Notion) as a central location for ‘resources’ / wiki / knowledge base.

Agenda (combined with Things 3, rather than Reminders) is very much part of my day-to-day - it’s the dashboard and driver for my project and time/task management.

Whereas, anything that I need to store as a reference / resource - everything from recipes to articles about productivity goes into Bear/Notion.

I tried using Agenda for that purpose too - I know many people probably do - but it didn’t quite work for me. The web clipper in Bear and Notion is great and it made more sense to store reference materials there.

Hope that makes some sense.

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Yes, you’ll find them here:

Screenshot 2020-05-24 at 23.57.40

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@aleemali Can you elaborate on how you use the Things URL scheme? It looks like a very interesting solution, but looking at it I am unsure where to start if I were to build something like this.

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@Jaecorn I’m forever tinkering - so, whatever I note here may not be current in a few weeks or months… :slight_smile:

However, in its simplest form - I use the \remind function in Agenda quite a bit.
e.g. I will take meeting notes on a specific calendar event. And develop a list of tasks / follow-up items in Agenda. After each item I use the \remind syntax to create a Reminder which goes to my default reminders list which is also the list that is set-up to import into Things.
This instantly creates all those tasks in the Things Inbox (for Import) which I can then assign projects, tags, additional notes, checklists etc.
The nice thing (no pun intended) about this is that the Agenda URL comes with it and unlike in Apple Reminders it is actually active (ie. I can click on the URL in Things and it takes me straight the note in Agenda).

Sometimes I work the other way. From Things to Agenda and will often paste the associated Things URL in an Agenda Note. Things doesn’t have attachments or great note-taking but it’s a super-reliable task manager and so, for me, Agenda and Things complement each other really well. Things for task management. Agenda for time-based / calendar-based Notes, Attachments and more detailed project management.

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Doesn’t importing reminders to Things delete those reminders as part of Things process thus resulting in broken alarms in agenda?

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@Do.It
It does.
But I don’t use / need the alarm in Agenda - because it’s in Things and I get the alarm from there with a link back to the Agenda note.

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Thanks for the reply and thought that’s your process. I tried similar process with agenda-reminders-things a while back but don’t like leaving behind broken-link-alarms in agenda. It looks too messy. Be good to have a shortcut to run through and delete all those invalid alarm icons :thinking:

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This is seriously cool and powerful, and needs highlighting somewhere - I’d no idea these commands existed.

This will be really useful when I capture Actions in a meeting - and then easily copy them to the relevant Note in a Project.

Major improvement to my workflow - thanks!

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They’re new in v10, added by @drewmccormack who really wanted to use that Cut Unchecked option himself :smiley:

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