Tickler files and todo.sh

After fiddling around with the todo.sh script some more I got the idea to create a digital tickler-system.

I have not used a digital or non-digital tickler system before (I tried the mail.app IMAP version, but it just didn’t stick).

First, you need to add the following line to .todo: TICKLER_DIR="/Users/yourname/GTD/Tickler"

or whichever folder you’d like to use.

Then, create a foldertree like:

Tickler days 01 02 …. 30 31 months 01 02 … 10 11 12 today

You can use a short bash-script for that.

Next, download tickler.sh and place it somewhere you can find it (right next to todo.sh, I’d say)

Next, patch todo.sh with the .diff: patch todo.sh < todotickler.diff

Setup all done!

So how do you use this?

Pretty simple: tickler.sh checks the date, and then checks the appropriate days and months folder for the presence of a .txt file with the same name. For todays date, it would check ‘/Users/yourname/GTD/Tickler/days/20/20.txt’ and ‘/Users/yourname/GTD/Tickler/months/07/07.txt’. The script will take the contents of them and appends it to todo.txt .

It doesn’t stop there!

It also checks the entire directory and moves all files to the ‘/Users/yourname/GTD/Tickler/today’ folder and makes a todo stating ‘check /Users/yourname/GTD/Tickler/today/$filename’

So how do you get things into the .txt files?

Easy, the patch adds a ‘tickle’ option to ‘todo.sh’.

Say your todo-list looks like: 04 (A) get rich 05 (A) take over the world p:world domination 03 buy DVD 06 fold laundry 07 wash dog 02 vacuum p:household 01 x 2006-07-14 do dishes p:household

Type the following command: todo tickle 7

The script will then ask you if you want to put it in a day or a month folder (press ‘d’ or ‘m’) and which number and then proceed with moving the task to the .txt file. You can skip the questions by typing: todo tickle 7 d25

This moves task 7 to /Users/yourname/GTD/Tickler/days/25/25.txt

For month-folder use something like: todo tickle 7 m8

Leading zero’s get added when needed.