Portfolio and Blog of Dan Mowchan

In order to be successful at what I do, I need to constantly keep myself organized and give myself the most simple way to keep my ideas in order. Until very recently, I’ve been using a combination of Things for iPhone and Evernote for Mac and iPhone. I was skeptical to try something different but, after reading about TaskPaper in many blog posts, I decided to take the plunge and get the TaskPaper iPhone app.

One of the reasons I wasn’t so happy with Things (or any other To-Do app I have tried thus far) was the method used to input new tasks. You have to worry about tags, notes, and due-dates if you want to get the most out of the application that you paid for. All of these separate parameters are controlled through contextual menus that are time consuming to use. TaskPaper improves the interface for handling all of this information by basically removing it. In a new note you use the return key to cycle through the types of information you can enter; all plain text. There are three options: Project, Task and Note. TaskPaper processes them based on the spacing and punctuation (dashes in front of tasks, colons after projects, nothing for notes) that you would see in a plain text editor. The options are limited, but the speed at which you can add new items is unparalleled by any other app of this nature.

If you are simply using TaskPaper to organize your to-do lists you may feel shortchanged. After I did a little bit of research, I learned about the many things that can be done with the SimpleText.ws syncing service that is integrated with the app. Now on my Macbook Pro I use the tiny SimpleText menu-item application to download all my Taskpaper notes from my iPhone to a folder on my laptop. The SimpleText application automatically synchronizes the text files up to a server when any changes are saved locally on my Mac now. I have hooked Notational Velocity in on my Mac to write and read files from my SimpleText syncing folder; allowing me to edit files quickly and easily in Notation. I can keep all my tasks organized on my mobile phone, and see them on my Mac.

If you have ever used Notational Velocity before, you already know that the interface is very minimalist and extremely functional. The part of Notation that jumps out the most is the combined search bar and new document creation. You simply press escape to make the search bar active, type the name of the document you want to create or open and hit return to begin editing it. There is no need to take your fingers off the keys, especially if you assign a shortcut to open Notation.

Taking notes in plain text files is extremely convenient. With school right around the corner, I am buckling down my workflow to make it as tight and efficient as possible. Taking notes will be as simple as opening my laptop, hitting the (self-assigned) hotkey CTRL + CMD + Q and I can begin typing my notes. If there is anything I need to find in my database of notes, I can easily search for it using Notation. It is the perfect note taking companion for school. All notes are saved constantly automatically and synced up to the server and to my iPhone if I need to access them on the go.

My new workflow with Taskpaper for iPhone and Notational Velocity syncing over SimpleText.ws is something that I’d highly recommend to anyone who is a fast thinker. It started for me as a task manager much like Things and I was skeptical of the barebones styling. This was only until I realized that the simplicity led me to become even more easily organized. The apps are beginning to grow into more of an environment that I use to process my thoughts into organized pieces of writing. Notational Velocity in particular is going to be a key note taking tool for me in school. The combination is an incredibly cheap (almost free) way to keep your thoughts and tasks in order.