Comment by atoav

As somone who uses text and paper for todos, happily for years now after spending equally much time procrastinating in search of the perfect task management system I will now do a half-ironic take on answering your points:

> having your computer alert you to things that come up

That's what the calendar or the alarm is for

> being able to tag notes

Write #tag and then grep for it. Not that hard

> being able to add events to a calendar

A event isn't a todo, you add it to the calendar instead

> being able to set priority of tasks

Cut it and paste it up to the top or write "IMPORTANT". If you have so many tasks that you need something better, you probably spend too much time organizing your todos and should start working

> expecting prioritized/currently relevant tasks to be at the top of the agenda

If your todo lists are so long thst you cant read them in 30 seconds they are too long. Split them up and mive them to the relevant project.

> being able to add recurring tasks

Just leave it in the list and add a questionmark at the end. If it is time critical add it to the calendar

> full-text search (grepping)

Yeah, good observation you can grep text pretty fine. If you're annoyed by having to type the filename that is a shell oneliner

- formatting features (markdown)

You can use markdown in text, it is just more or less useless wothout rendering. But I don't see how formatting leads to more productivity

> feeding TODOs to an LLM to filter out the currently relevant ones and send Telegram notifications

Yeah ok, that one is bad.

> hand-copying currently relevant tasks to the top of the TODO list

Get a decent texteditor where you can press modifiers + arrow keys to move lines. Works pretty well. In fact better/faster than dragging with your mouse.

> running a script on a VPS to sync notifications

No need to do that, you have a calendar

> set up cron job with git commit

If you need your todos in a git you either work at a nuclear facility, a space station or you take yourself too seriously

> writing post-it notes by hand

What else would you use, a typewriter? Just kidding. Paper has undeniable strengths for the todo space. It is there and you don't have to remember to open it. Rewriting your todos is doubling as both checking their state, refreshing your memory and cleaning them up. Paper can be read without electricity and by other people without any form of setup. People know how to use it without onboarding. Hackers cannot use a flaw in the the paper has been made to gwin remote code execution (they can however potentially use photographs of paper to do so).

I am not kidding, one of the best work-handoffs I ever had was entirely organized via emails and post its. It worked flawlessly.

And I say that as someone who has spent days on todo systems, task warrior and the likes. Everybody has their own needs, but very often boring and pragmatic wins.