A few weeks ago I talked with the fine folks at 37signals about using their online project management software Basecamp. This week I happily downloaded a new software program called Taskpaper and it got me thinking. Occasionally I am asked how (with a wife, two children, jobs, etc.) I am able to produce and record albums and films, tour the country playing live music, run a record label and so on.
The simple answer is that I am obsessively goal-oriented. I also happen to be obsessively software-oriented. Undoubtedly this is because I own a Mac and its operating system is home to an astonishing software development community.
Back to Taskpaper. It’s a simple notepad like program that effectively bridges the gap between Merlin Mann’s hipster PDA and something like the Ta-Da List widget. It looks and acts like paper but is easily searchable and organized. It’s also handsome and simple, much like WriteRoom, the other flagship program from Hog Bay Software.
Taskpaper works within David Allen‘s Getting Things Done framework but if you’re not familiar with GTD, don’t let it scare you off. I’ve read Allen’s tome to contextualization and productivity and the bottom line is write stuff down and do it. No other program allows you to do that any better than Taskpaper. Within minutes I was off to the races. Pouring out all the big and little things that needed doing. It helped me knock out a few of the mental blocks that saw my flagged emails piling up. In one afternoon after using Taskpaper they went from thirty to five and I’m feeling pretty good.
On the surface Taskpaper uses nothing more that text and symbol based prompts. A name or title followed by a semi colon creates a project. A dash followed by a space creates a new item within that project. The item also gets a clean little circle in the far left column and once you complete that project you mark it as done with a simple “Command + D” keystroke. You can create “contexts” or groups by adding an “@” followed by a simple word or phrase. Currently my most popular are “@audio” and “@write” which means I have a lot of music to work on and a lot of things to write.
Under the surface however, Taskpaper allows you to create and organize tabs based on either groups or projects. It’s a deceptively simple program that is perfect for obsessives and goal oriented folks alike. Thankfully I’ve accomplished enough in the last few days with Taskpaper that I had no problems sitting down and writing this post (in WriteRoom by the way). If things keep up I just might talk about TextExpander, Quicksilver, Coda and MarsEdit too.