I used to drown in a sea of post-it notes and repetitive todo lists, my thoughts spread across unorganized Dropbox files, repetitive Evernote entries and various iPhone apps (Checklist, Notes, GoogleTasks).

Now that I am more comfortable with vim and bash scripting than I am with bulky GUI apps, I decided to code myself a thought management system. While researching I came across this beauty, Todo.txt, and have converted my ad-hoc method of todo lists and thought recording into an organized system.

So far, I’ve broken it up into three plain text files:

• todo.txt - mandatory actions, one liners (with abundant project names for sorting)
• Ideas.txt - ideas and notes on said ideas
• myday.txt - journal entries & freewriting, partitioned by day This system is amazing. Very efficient, and perfect for cross-platform work on Dropbox.

add - add simple task to todo.txt
        t add “task”
+ - associate a task with a project by including the project name with a + sign
        t add “task +Project”
@ - note context
        t add “task @Work”
list - see all tasks in todo.txt
        t ls
show only the tasks related to Project
        t ls +Project
show tasks with keyword
        t ls keyword
pri - prioritize a task (depri)
        t pri number priority
do - mark task complete
        t do <line of task completed>