The Ultimate VIM TODO List

With a TODO list of over 500 items I clearly need advanced software to manage my tasks. And finally I have found just the tool for the job...

VIM

After trying web based project trackers, spreadsheets, desktop project management apps, calendar based, email-based, smartphone apps and everything else I could think of, it looks like I'll be sticking with my plain text todo file with a couple of handy VIM scripts.

Here's how it works.

My todo.txt is just a tab-separated text file that looks something like this:

1	8	roger	tax return
1	12	seo	keyword tools
1	20	web	single domain login access
2	1	blog	ultimate VIM TODO list
2	2	web	settings page broken
2	2	cms	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website_builder
3	3	blog	glassfish-vs-tomcat-update.txt
3	5	blog	enums in jsf

The first column is priority and the second is a time estimate in hours. I sort by priority then time by using the following VIM command.

:%!sort -k1,1n -k2,2n -s

Which I map to a custom command (S) in my .vimrc file:

:command S %!sort -k1,1n -k2,2n -s

Using a plain text file for my TODO list is the simplest and fastest way I found to manage my jobs. With VIM I can add tasks anywhere in the list and then use VIMs powerful commands to sort, search and filter my tasks. If I ever need to I can also open up my list in a spreadsheet program, although so far I haven't had to do that.

Give it a try, or let me know if you think you have a better task management system in the comments below.

About Roger Keays

Roger is an active member of the JSF 2 Expert Group and is happy to be a contributor to the Java Community. He has been writing software since the age of 8 and his other interests include languages, science, travel and surfing. You can follow Roger on Twitter and Google+.