Episode: 3226
Title: HPR3226: Using taskwarrior to structurize your work
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3226/hpr3226.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 19:08:53

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3226 for Monday, 14 December 2020. Today's show is entitled
Using Taskquaria to Structureize Your Work. It is hosted by Rowan Baton
and is about 16 minutes long
and carries a clean flag. The summary is,
how using Taskquaria can help you to structure your work.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by Ananasthost.com.
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Hi guys, this is Drone Baton again with another podcast and this time
it's a Linux command line tool that I like to discuss.
One or actually two in particular this time and that one is called Taskquaria.
Now I don't know how it's with you but I have let's say to do list
there changes a lot and I'm a pretty Celtic person.
Mentally Celtic, maybe there's some connotation that I don't know but anyway
my mental process is pretty Celtic at best.
So I need to have to do list that helps me focus on what has the highest priority
at any point in time.
And I read about it in a medium article and I'll put the URL in the show notes of this article.
So you can read it if you like.
Anyway, so I was made aware of the existence of Taskquaria.
I installed it. It's just in the repo of Ubuntu.
So apt install Taskquaria done and I start playing with it.
The first I did the newbie stuff.
So Task add first thing I need to do.
It's free text after that.
So and if I then run Task I see that I have a two list with one item called Stuff I Need to Do.
Okay, can I change that description?
Yeah sure, you can do Task.
If you do a list you see a number before it.
So clearly I just made my first run so the task number is probably one.
So I can do Task one, modify and enter another description.
And then the description of the task changes.
I can also say Task Modify one, a new description that works too.
So it's pretty flexible in the order that you enter arguments in.
Next was that I wanted to bundle tasks.
And there is a project argument that you can use.
So task task space project dash and the name of the project.
And then add description or modify or whatever.
So if I have one task I could say task one, modify, space project dash and immediately followed by the project name.
So I then modify my task to be one of the tasks in the project.
The next thing I did was play with priority because there's also a thing that you can set the priority of your task.
So medium high and low is higher than standard.
So if you don't mention a priority you will still.
So the task with priority low is higher than a task with no priority at all.
That's probably the easiest way to describe that.
Now I can add to do items to my to do list and play and look at them and that's fine.
It works.
But it's not yet fancy.
The next thing I can do is task modify any number due dash.
I can enter the due date of a task.
And then it becomes pretty fancy because the task warrior program will calculate among the tasks which one has the will calculate for every task the score and the score of a task.
If a task is due today it gets a higher score than when it's due over a week.
That's easy.
But a task that was entered three months ago and I haven't spent any time on also gets a certain scoring level because I've not done anything to to to to work on the task.
And working on task by the way is easy.
You enter task and you see the list of you you see you to do list task one start starts a task task one stop stops a task and task one done marks it as done.
In your task overview you will only see tasks that need work.
So once a task is done it doesn't show in your task list anymore unless you say task space all in which case you see all the tasks ever entered into the system.
Let's go rewind a bit to the due task you know you can be a date at a time.
The other thing is I can say well I need to my task sorry my tax for my local tax form has a due date that our tax department wants my declaration of how much I earned.
That's a fixed date but I can't start working on it a half year in advance.
You do that let's say in the last two months prior to the due date.
So I can say next to the due date I can say set a wait date.
So task wait dash now not that sorry a column.
Yeah column is but I believe the separation character for so due column wait column priority column project column.
Yeah it's it's not a semicolon it's a column sorry for that but guys I'm like you know I'm not native English.
So task wait column and then do the wait date so it won't appear in your to do list until the wait time date has passed.
Is there more yes there's more you can enter dependencies on task so task depends calling and the number of another task.
We'll say that okay the other one needs to be finished before you can start on the on this task right so you can enter even dependencies on tasks.
And you don't get hassled by task that you can't work on yet because you first have to do another task.
You can set recurring task with the recur calling argument.
So you can for instance I'm self employed so I clearly have the first of every month I have a billing to do to send invoices to my clients.
So I have a recurring task that reminds me well this is pretty high priority in my life so this usually gets done even without task warrior but you get the picture you know.
You can set the free I've also for instance set created a task to clear my email inbox box every two weeks and just to to remind me that I need because if I don't after some time I have a huge inbox and that's not fun for me so I have to clear from time to time.
So it reminds me that it's that time again to clear my inbox and if I don't well you know no harm done.
There's also another setting and I couldn't find it when I did the research but it's there and that's sort of a sort of a forget kind of setting where you have a due date so that date it should be done.
But there are tasks that if you then don't do them let's say for three days it really doesn't matter anymore for instance okay let's let's use this simple example of invoicing I invoice on the first of every month.
Well if I don't invoice then at the first of next month I get a new task that I should invoice that month but at that time I can also do all the other invoices.
So the all task of invoicing the first month has become redundant so you can also say okay make a task wait or make it due for some date but only show me for a couple of days because after that I'll just pick up the next chance the next task that reminds me of this thing.
And now if you do task and then a number and then info you get all the info on the task when it was created what's the unique ID of that task but also a very clear and concise explanation of the calculation of what's the word for it of the urgency calculation.
So if I do task through the info it tells me okay it has a project so that's one point it's got a due date which is pretty close so I get a value of 6.17 for that.
And I've got an age of so many weeks times a certain factor and that gives me a total score and a total score is then the urgency of that task.
It's a blast it's this thing does wonders it's excellent software there is a community people are looking at it working with it.
There is this guy who made task warrior dash T UI to yeah so the text user interface.
The program did in Rust and that one looks good very good you need a question mark to get to the help menu with the commands.
If you know that it's a very nice gooey to work on your task list but also from the command line it's so easy you've got a client on the phone he says I want you to work on XYZ and I need the result by that day and you simply add task add due date and then a subscription and it's done it's in your to do list and you don't have to worry about forgetting stuff because it won't and it will prioritize your workload.
Your workload for you task warrior that is it's great there's also a little broader called time warrior and time warrior is is in fact a separate project so completely separate directory separate data et cetera where you can say time W start description and then it will start sort of a stopwatch and when you say task and it will stop.
It will stop the stopwatch for the task so you can do your time registration that way in the task warriors distribution package is a sort of a hook script that you can use to that when you start a task and task warrior it also end and or end a task in task warrior it also enters data into time warrior.
So you can use if you if you play your cards right with task warrior you can then run time W summary or time W summary column week if you want to summary for the whole week and it will show you.
In a well it's it's an ASCII you know so ASCII so it's it's but you can even get burned down charts still in ASCII nothing fancy there wouldn't surprise me if somebody would make time warrior in a in a also functionality also in a in a web server variety so you can look at it from with a graphic perspective I don't know.
Someone someday will figure out how to build that I guess but yeah task warrior time work and even it's possible to network your tasks so you can have a task server where you can store your tasks list in a network fancy way so every.
Workstation that you have uses the same task list it's there the documentation it's all task warrior dog and time warrior dog I it's.
I'm actually thinking about writing a book a manual for this software because there's a lot of information in the web pages but it's not always on the place where you would think it would be.
But other than that it's it's pretty good documented there's always the code you know if you really want to know how stuff works and yeah it's it's it's it's it's pretty fancy and it just works you know it's I'm happy with it I now have a list of if I run my task list let's do that task pipe that to WC I've got 22 tasks.
But I do task all pipe to WC I get 311 so I had 311 tasks already but when it's done it's done you know so I only see 222 tasks currently out of a list of by now 311 and I've only been working on it for two months so yeah I'm I'm pretty pretty very I'm pretty happy I'm very happy with it.
Give it a give it a try I would say I think I sound pretty enthusiastic I leave some URLs to sources etc and well to to the main websites in the show notes if you have additional questions or
would give me some feedback on this you're more than welcome to do so I always try to learn so even from feedback especially from feedback so put it in the comments of this show and I'll definitely have a look at it okay have a nice day bye bye.
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