Why?
Because you can't track something which hasn't happened, which means you're always wrong. You can make projections and track guesses, and there's information to be had there, but it's only correct on the meta level of tracking your past thoughts about the future.
You can't track the future.
You might think you don't track the future, and you might be right. But I'll bet someone reading this tracks recurring tasks.
For the vast majority of recurring tasks, it doesn't matter exactly when you do them, only that it's before a specific date or not too long apart. Taking out the trash on pickup day is the former, emptying your trash bin is the latter. Keeping track of a future date for the former is fine and utterly useless for the latter. You can approximate the latest it should be done by setting a due date, but that's only an approximation for when you want to do it. If you try to set a due date for exactly when you should do it, you'll miss it, because those aren't the same date. Task managers mangle themselves up over overdue tasks, especially when an overdue task isn't actually overdue because it doesn't have a singular due date.
It won't be overdue, you say?
Stop predicting the future, you're already wrong. You can live on a life of pure strict deadlines and always take out the trash on a fixed interval, but you're depriving yourself of flexibility. There's nothing like the horror of realizing you've delayed something four more times than you thought. Make life less stressful and track the past. At least that way the horror doesn't get a chance to hide.
How many days has it been since the trash was taken out, how long does it take to get smelly and full? Those are the only two things you need to know to prioritize. The due date you set in the past is immaterial. If you only keep track of the due date you've replaced immutable past information with hazy future prediction.
The past doesn't lie. Track the past, not the future.
- Rew
Nightly Notes
The past lies all the time, but that's a topic for another day. Different scope of problem.
I haven't been on a normal task manager in years. I've never seen a good implementation to solve this or half a dozen other of my problems. I haven't been able to make one I'm satisfied with either.
It offends me on some level that task managers and clock apps are a joke. Every programming tutorial ever makes one of them, and they're all bad. Of course they're bad, they're trying to teach programming, not solve design problems. But the perception that these are trivial problems remains.
I have seen exactly one well designed timer app, and it still has flaws.
What are the rest of you even doing?
Anyway.
I'm going to go cool off. Channel the rage into code instead of writing.
We all deserve better apps.
- Rew