I recently realized I could track my reading in Taskwarrior, since I use it to track so many other things.
$ task +readlist
ID Age P Tag Description Urg
67 22h H community readlist Forge Your Future with Open Source 6.9
70 29min M fiction readlist Binti 4.8
71 21min M health readlist Emmerich Keto Guide 4.8
74 16min health readlist reread The Healthy Programmer 1
63 6d dev readlist Practical Data Science with R 0.93
72 19min dev readlist Think Stats 0.9
73 17min dev readlist Understanding Computation 0.9
75 16min home readlist Sink Reflections 0.9
I use Taskwarrior Priorities to show what I’m reading right now. The highest priority goes to the book which I intend to finish next.
Forge Your Future with Open Source is my current main read. The book guides you through making your first open source community contributions. It includes exercises to help you make your best contribution.
I want to complete these exercises, but I know I won’t unless I create
some kind of reminder.
I’ll add tasks for the exercises described so far.
$ task project:fosscontrib
ID Age Deps P Project Tag Description Urg
78 25min fosscontrib community Collect FOSS candidate projects 9.8
67 23h H fosscontrib community readlist Forge Your Future with Open Source 7.9
76 25min fosscontrib community Set FOSS contribution goals 1.8
77 25min fosscontrib community Set FOSS project requirements 1.8
79 22min 78 fosscontrib community Select FOSS project -3.2
5 tasks
The report shows a new Deps column, indicating dependencies. The Urg column shows that “Select FOSS project” gets a lower priority — it’s blocked by “Collect FOSS candidate projects”, which now has a higher priority because it blocks a task.
The report visually highlights the blocking task while downplaying the blocked task. This is easier to show with a screenshot.
How do I describe the book’s dependencies? I want to say it depends on all of these tasks, but that’s not possible in Taskwarrior — unless there’s an extension, but I’m not ready for those yet.
There’s a missing task, isn’t there? Completing all the exercises in the book is its own task. That is what finishing the book depends on.
$ task add Complete all tasks in book priority:H project:fosscontrib depends:79
Created task 80.
The project 'fosscontrib' has changed. Project 'fosscontrib' is 0% complete (6 of 6 tasks remaining).
Today it depends on selecting a FOSS project. That will change as the book presents new exercises. This is a small inconvenience that makes the tasks’ overall relationships clearer to me. I am the important audience for my personal task list.
Now I can correctly describe what I must do to complete the book.
$ task 67 modify depends:80
Modifying task 67 'Forge Your Future with Open Source'.
Modified 1 task.
What does this project look like now?
$ task project:fosscontrib
ID Age Deps P Project Tag Description Urg
80 53s 79 H fosscontrib Complete all tasks in book 10
76 1h fosscontrib community Set FOSS contribution goals 9.8
77 1h 76 fosscontrib community Set FOSS project requirements 4.8
78 1h 77 fosscontrib community Collect FOSS candidate projects 4.8
79 1h 78 fosscontrib community Select FOSS project 4.8
67 23h 80 H fosscontrib community readlist Forge Your Future with Open Source 2.9
6 tasks
Right but what does it look like?
The report deemphasizes everything but the task that blocks everything else. You can see some urgency math going on in that last column where tasks are both blocking and blocked.
Dependencies give us new virtual tags to filter reports based on task dependencies.
+BLOCKED
The +BLOCKED virtual tag filter includes only those tasks which depend on another task.
$ task +BLOCKED
ID Age Deps P Project Tag Description Urg
80 3min 79 H fosscontrib Complete all tasks in book 10
77 1h 76 fosscontrib community Set FOSS project requirements 4.8
78 1h 77 fosscontrib community Collect FOSS candidate projects 4.8
79 1h 78 fosscontrib community Select FOSS project 4.8
67 23h 80 H fosscontrib community readlist Forge Your Future with Open Source 2.9
5 tasks
+BLOCKING
The +BLOCKING virtual tag filter includes only those tasks which I
assigned as dependencies for another task.
$ task +BLOCKING
ID Age Deps P Project Tag Description Urg
80 4min 79 H fosscontrib Complete all tasks in book 10
76 1h fosscontrib community Set FOSS contribution goals 9.8
77 1h 76 fosscontrib community Set FOSS project requirements 4.8
78 1h 77 fosscontrib community Collect FOSS candidate projects 4.8
79 1h 78 fosscontrib community Select FOSS project 4.8
5 tasks
What now?
By looking at what is blocking and is not blocked, you can focus on the tasks that block everything else.
$ task +BLOCKING -BLOCKED
ID Age Project Tag Description Urg
76 4h fosscontrib community Set FOSS contribution goals 9.8
1 task
I should start working on those goals so I can finish that book.
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2 hours ago
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