If you've been part of terminal ecosystem for you're most likely familiar with numerous terminal todo sort of programs. I'd like to introduce you to king of all of them Taskwarrior.
The name might sound intimidating but don't go - it's quite the opposite: it's butter smooth!

Intro

Your key command here is task. Typing this alone will list your open tasks:

$ task

ID Age  Description                    Urg 
1 32s   write a blog about taskwarrior    1
2 11s   make carrot cake                  1
3 2s    pay electric bills                1

Then the rest of cli goes as intuitive as it follows, these are your 3 vital beginner commands:

  • add "some task" - to add a task.
  • done <id> - to close task.
  • modify <id> - change something about task.

Finally Taskwarrior has one vital important feature for managing your tasks - tags. You simply specify tags with + signs in front of your commands:

$ task +work add "fix linkedin.com crawler"
$ task +work 
ID Age  Description                    Urg 
1  2s   fix linkedin.com crawler        1

You can see already with these 4 little things: add, list, modify, tags - you have great powers. Time for example workflow!

Example Workflow

This is a simple version of my taskwarrior workflow; First add tasks the moment you get them and try to split them up into small tasks - you're not an idiot you won't get confused don't worry:

$ task add +work "fix project1"
Created task 1.

$ task add +work "msg admin about project1 dump"
Created task 2.

$ task add +shop "potatoes - for potato cannon"
Created task 3.

$ task add +me "1 chapter of new book"
Created task 4.

$ task add +me "wash dishes"
Created task 5.

$ task add +gf "research christmas present on etsy"
Created task 6.

$ task add +me "practice bass a bit"
Created task 7.

$ task
ID Age  Tag  Description                        Urg 
1 7min work fix project1                        0.8
2 6min work msg admin about project1 dump       0.8
3 6min shop potatoes - for potato cannon        0.8
4 5min me   1 chapter of new book               0.8
5 5min me   wash dishes                         0.8
6 4min gf   research christmas present on etsy  0.8
7 4min me   practice bass a bit                 0.8 

Right, got bunch of tasks and now just pop them as you feel like. Having a weekday work day?

$ task +work
ID Age   Tag  Description                   Urg 
1 11min work fix project1                   0.8
2 10min work msg admin about project1 dump  0.8

Task 1 really needs to get done:

$ task start 1
Starting task 1 'fix project1'.
Started 1 task.

All this does is mark the task in your list that it's "ongoing" :

$ task +work
ID Active Age   Tag  Description                   Urg 
 1 1min   14min work fix project1                   4.8
 2        13min work msg admin about project1 dump  0.8

Been working hard for an hour or so, time for a short break. Lets keep the task active so we could jump right back in after our break and take a look at me tasks we have for our break:

$ task +me 
ID Age   Tag Description           Urg 
 4 14min me  1 chapter of new book  0.8    
 5 14min me  wash dishes            0.8
 7 12min me  practice bass a bit    0.8

Great time to boot up the bass for a song or two and while Rocksmith on ps4 is booting up - wash the dishes:

$ task 5 done
Completed task 5 'wash dishes'.
Completed 1 task.

Break over, simply jump back to work, the task you've been working on is still glowing red there waiting for you ;)

Get Micro Motivated!

Taskwarrior allows this sort of dead-simple micro-motivation. It's so simple an intuitive that in never feels like additional work.

Often it's easy to go through your day without having tangible experience of your accomplishments. No matter how small your tasks are - the day feels so much better when you can visualize and feel the tiny hills you've conquered!

Further Reading

Taskwarrior also packs a bunch of awesome, rich features but those are beyond the scope of this blog post.
Taskwarrior documentation is well written and quite short:

  • intro: https://taskwarrior.org/docs/introduction.html
  • 30 second tutorial: https://taskwarrior.org/docs/30second.html
  • example workflows of users: https://taskwarrior.org/docs/workflow.html
  • man task
  • Bugwarrior plugin for pulling issues from other sources - https://bugwarrior.readthedocs.io/