What a task manager should be

Dissatisfied with my task management experience, I recently surveyed the landscape to check out the options. It’s common to read comments like, “There’s no point in creating a new todo list app. That’s been done thousands of times.” I’m skeptical of that claim. It’s been done incorrectly thousands of times. It’s been done right not once. All I managed to find was a bunch of overpriced and underperforming apps.

The features I need

  • Email notifications
  • File attachments
  • Tagging system
  • Privacy and security so I can use it for work tasks
  • Easily scale to handle hundreds of projects and groups (see remark 1)
  • Strong querying capabilities using SQL or something similar (see remark 2)
  • Synced, so it’s available everywhere, including mobile
  • A good experience capturing items - including customization (see remark 3)
  • Templates that can be inserted with keyboard shortcuts
  • Calendar view of arbitrary queries like “all items coming up on projects X and Y over the next eight days”
  • CSS customization so I’m not stuck with the small, ugly font the recent college grad thinks is big enough
  • Status updates for individual tasks (see remark 4)
  • Control over deletion of old tasks and attachments that have been archived

Remark 1: You don’t want to dump items into a single big list. You need to organize your work by projects. You need to organize your projects into groups. There’s no alternative if the system’s going to scale to the extent that I need.

Remark 2: The “filtering” capability offered by most todo list apps is a joke. Viewing the tasks due today is nice, but far from sufficient.

Remark 3: Todo list apps usually enforce a particular set of inputs. It’s always the case that I don’t need some items, wish I had others, and have a preferred set of defaults. Given that everything is going into a database anyway, this should not be tough to accommodate. It’s nothing more than a database schema.

Remark 4: Comments are sufficient. A way to record any arbitrary updates like “Mary called to clarify what she wanted” followed by a list of changes.

Bonus points

Bonus points for the following:

  • Add tasks by email
  • Ability to add notes related to the project rather than just tasks
  • Project dashboard
  • Reasonable price of $4 per month or less

I find it puzzling that someone would argue this important category of applications is crowded. It’s one of the most ignored markets I’ve ever come across.