I have been using Agenda for more than a year, and I like it very much. I find that its Agenda model works well for me most of the time, and the ability to link calendar events, notes and attachments (among many other things) is very low friction for me.
The point were I struggle is with TODO lists and tasks. Having an item on the Agenda is not exactly like a task to do. I tend to have a TODO note pinned at the top of each project with a list of things to do, but then it is hard to manage the notes in the project with this list, and adding all the items and all lists to the agenda simply overwhelms.
I think some changes could make this much better for managing tasks, but I understand that task management apps like Omnifocus, Things or Apple Reminders are specific tools for this.
Maybe I do not have a nice way to integrate Reminders with Agenda, or I am doing something wrong. Agenda integrates with Calendars wonderfully, so I wonder if something like that can be done with Reminders. My thoughts:
Associate specific lists in Reminders with Projects in Agenda.
Display items from these lists as part of the project, either on top or with the calendar items in the sidebar.
Collect pending items in checklists in a project in the reminder list automatically.
Allow aggregation of pending tasks (or let reminder do that for you), but then let it be two way
Iām also a strong believer that Agenda is the app that best integrates with reminders and calendar, but still lacks into reminders management and I hope it is a priority (like showing lists containing reminders without due date, bulk adding reminders, bulk adding subtasks).
+1
We have big plans for search and filtering of content in the second half of this year. We hope to allow you to show the information you want to see in any project. Eg. Only show me incomplete tasks, that sort of thing. Hopefully this would reduce the need to have your tasks all in one note.
I tend to use a more hierarchical approach to task lists myself. I may indeed have such a note at the top for major undertakings, but then have other notes for each of those undertakings, with smaller subtasks. My notes are pretty much completely full of task lists. Ironically, that is how I develop Agenda.
Just came across this and it might have partially answered a question Iāve been pondering but not sure.
Currently, I have random notes with multiple often unrelated todos I capture as I think of them.
Your reply suggests you have one note per todo (or thereabouts)? How does that work? Do you put the todo as the title? If so, do you then replicate that within the note as an actual todo?
This approach kinda breaks when Iām in a meeting and multiple topics/projects are discussed.
Iāve tried also adding a reminder at the end of each (to try out Reminders.app integration) but itās not possible to create a reminder without a dateāwhich I understand given itās a āreminderā.
In any event, Iām a bit stuck as to how best to use Agenda todos/reminders. I LOVE being able to capture todos as part of a meeting note; but Iād rather managed them outside of Agenda given the understandable design choices.
No, I wouldnāt recommend putting a single todo into a note. I have many todos grouped together per note. The note is typically a block of work I am doing in some project.
We have some tools to help you locate incomplete todos:
There is the To Do overview on the left. It shows any note that has checklist items that are not checked off. (For many people, this will be a lot of notes, and may note be useful.)
You can search for \todo to find any note with an incomplete checklist item (like the To Do overview)
You can search for \todo and add conditions (eg require tag #acme), to get a more specific search. Just add the tag somewhere in the note. You can also search on project names rather than tags. You can also save this search as your own overview (like To Do)
Once you have the notes, you may want to only see the to-do items, rather than all the content. For this, click/tap the project title at the top of the notes, and set the paragraph filter to just show to do items. Then you get a very clean list of notes, just showing the to dos.
I think that works for me most of the time. However, I often just want to collect thoughts on random topics and not need to navigate the hierarchy of projects. Perhaps I should do a follow-up exercise where I split the notes out?
I have a special Inbox project for that, and some standard notes. If you just need to get to something fast, I drop it there, and clean it up later. Maybe that is an option (?)
Sooo I think I have a feature requests the ability to set a default project so I can just add notes and not have to go through the additional step each time. Iāll live without it, of course
Similar as @drewmccormack. One note per todo is definitely not a good way to go. I use one daily note with a checklist of todos including an estimated duration and black, yellow, or red ā!ā for each. Agenda moves the checked, unchecked get copied to the next day, top of the list.
I generally consider items a task(not a todo) if they will take longer than a few hours, have precursor or followup items, or belong to an existing or planned project. Tasks go to another app and have to be 1 to 1.The daily note is linked to an all day calendar item.
We donāt have a default project, but the sharing extension should always pick the last one you used, so that should be fast.
At other times, I usually find my important notes in the Recently Edited list on the right, so thatās a fast way to jump to them. Or in On the Agenda.
the ability to set a default project so I can just add notes and not have to go through the additional step each time. Iāll live without it, of course 