This is the English version of the tutorial.
🇩🇪🇨🇭🇦🇹 The German version can be found here.
Imagine you have more than three different tasks to complete today. And imagine—even if it’s hard to do—that your memory is about as bad as mine. With more than three tasks, you might grab a pen and a piece of paper and write them down. Everything I want to get done today or soon. And then you realize: There’s no point in cleaning windows when it’s raining. We’ll put that off until tomorrow. And taking out the glass today, on a holiday, when it’s strictly forbidden and might disturb people—we’ll put that off until tomorrow, too. As for replying to that email, I was able to take care of that over breakfast. Wonderful—now I can cross it off the list.
What do we do now with the nice little note we made this morning at breakfast? We have crossed-out tasks, and we have tasks we have to postpone until tomorrow or later, and we have tasks that are still relevant today. So we cross out tasks on the note and try to postpone things until tomorrow, but wait—postpone: How does that work?
It’s simple: For each task, we tear off a small piece of the sticky note app, and we rearrange the torn-off pieces. Completed tasks that have been crossed out go to the left, and the others are moved around in whatever order works best at the moment. We repeat this same process of tearing and rearranging at 10 a.m., 11 a.m., noon, and 1 p.m. And the tasks we wanted to postpone until tomorrow—we can’t even find the sticky notes for those anymore. They’re somehow gone. Someone must have thrown them away.
Well, then we’ll just write down the tasks we wanted to do tomorrow all over again. And two hours later, we’ll write them down again. And tear up the sticky notes again.
Seriously? Really? That can’t be it!
Luckily, we have computers, and if you take a look in the App Store—or the Google Play Store if you’re on Android—you’ll find that there are dozens, many dozens of apps dedicated to nothing but tasks and to-do lists. They’re pretty powerful. For each task, I can:
- set a due date
- assign a person to help with it
- add two or three related documents
- set the priority (important, not quite as important, or completely unimportant)
I can record all these details, and the app then helps me figure out what’s next. It’s awesome!
Here’s an example of what that looks like:
I’ve tried apps like these: not one, not two, not five, not ten, but more like two dozen. They’re all great, they’re all fantastic, and then I realized that I spend at least two-thirds of my time managing and planning my tasks properly, leaving me with at most a quarter of the time to actually get things done. Honestly, the tasks were always perfectly planned and perfectly organized. I was in great shape, but chaos was thriving all around me.
There has to be a better way. There must be something in between. That’s when I remembered how, back in the 1970s and 1980s, air traffic controllers in the tower used to track airplanes and assign them landing times and runways. The air traffic controllers—there weren’t that many female controllers back then—had these little strips. The strips listed the flight numbers and the call signs for radio contact. These small strips could be inserted into tracks, and the order within these tracks could then be adjusted as needed and according to the progress of the approach. The air traffic controllers always had the current schedule in front of them, and changes were made in five seconds. It looked something like the following picture.
And please, let’s do all of this without paper or ledges—ideally, right on your smartphone. After all, you always have it in your hand.
It has to be simple, it has to be fast, and it has to be so accessible that you actually enjoy using it. Under no circumstances should it be off-putting; it absolutely must not be complicated or intimidating in any way. It should support me, not hold me back. It should save me time, not take it away.
Exactly, that’s the idea behind Sock. Sock was supposed to have a different name at first, but now it’s just Sock. Get used to it.
The principle is that there’s a single list, and within that list there are four sections:
- Done: We’ll get to that in a moment.
- Perhaps the most important one: Today. “Today” doesn’t necessarily have to be taken literally, but it means: These are the tasks we’re tackling right now.
- Later. These are the tasks we can tackle tomorrow, for example, or once we’re done with “Today.”
- Someday. We’ll come back to that later, too. This one is perhaps the most complicated.
Tasks you create end up automatically in “Today” in the input field at the top of the list. You can also assign three flags to these tasks, which are visible on the right side of the input line:
- One stands for important.
- One stands for urgent.
- One means: I can’t do this on my own; I need someone to help me.
You can assign the icons however you like. For me, the exclamation mark stands for urgent, the star stands for important, and the last icon shown there stands for: I need help from someone. The app does nothing with this information. It neither rearranges the list nor notifies anyone who can help you. You have to do all that yourself. It’s just a visual aid to show you: Take a closer look here!
When I’ve finished a task, I swipe it to the left with my finger. It then automatically moves to the top section and appears crossed out. I can just leave it there so I can look back in the evening and feel good about everything I’ve accomplished. I can also swipe it to the left one more time, and then it’s gone. Forever. There’s no undo.
But there’s another reason to leave tasks there longer than just until the evening. This applies especially to tasks like watering the flowers or sweeping the patio, which you want to do every now and then on a somewhat regular basis. Then I don’t have to create them again; instead, I can (you guessed it) swipe right to move them back to today. This saves me the trouble of typing, and when I glance at the list, I see: Oh right, these are tasks I haven’t done in a long time. I should take care of those today, too. You’ll also notice that behind the crossed-out and completed tasks, the date you last completed the task appears in light gray, visually set apart. This might help you avoid rescheduling watering the flowers for today too late or too early.
The “Later” section simply collects tasks that I don’t necessarily need to complete today, but that I do want to tackle relatively soon. I can move tasks from “Today” to “Later” by swiping them to the right. Conversely, I can move tasks from ‘Later’ to “Today” by swiping them to the left.
Let’s move on to the last section. If you move something there, it’s a task you don’t want to complete today or tomorrow, but sometime in the future—just not anytime soon. You’ll then be asked if you want to simply delete the task; if so, it’s gone. Or do you want to leave it there, or create a reminder in the iOS “Reminders” app? You’ll then be asked to select a section in the iOS app and a due date. Sock helps you set up this reminder, but it won’t do anything else with it. It won’t change it, and it won’t manage it. That’s up to you. If you delete the reminder in the iOS app, Sock won’t notice. If you change the due date, Sock won’t notice. If you change the title, Sock won’t notice—or will only notice very indirectly. What does “very indirectly” mean? When the app starts up in the morning (i.e., Sock), it goes through the iOS events and adds tasks due today to the Today section of our own list. They appear there and are marked with a slightly grayed-out icon so we know where that entry comes from. The two apps don’t really communicate with each other; it’s just an additional reminder. It may already have been completed; Sock wouldn’t even notice that.
When you click on a task, you’ll see a dialog where you can, for example, edit the task description. You can also add or remove icons for “urgent,” “important,” or “I need help from others.” If the task was imported from the iOS “Reminders” app, you can access and edit it there via a link. You can also delete the link to this task, and you can delete the entire task by clicking the trash can icon—but you probably already figured that out.
How do tasks get added to the list, other than by typing them in directly?
Sock offers three widgets I can use to create tasks in my to-do list:
There’s a lock screen widget that takes me to a dictation screen. I can then dictate a task, and Sock tries to transcribe it and add it to the to-do list as text. There’s also a smaller widget for the home screen that does exactly the same thing. It simply opens the option to dictate a new task.
A large widget simply shows me the tasks in my Today list, so I don’t have to open the app every time to see what’s next.
In the app itself, there’s an icon in the top right corner. It looks like an inbox. When we click there, we can enter multi-line text, with each line being a new task. You can also copy and paste multiple lines of unformatted text from other apps into it, which then become tasks.
At the very top right of the app, there’s an icon that looks like an inbox. When you tap it, you can enter multi-line text, with each line becoming a new task. You can also copy and paste multiple lines of unformatted text from other apps, which will then be converted into tasks.
I can also take a photo here using the camera icon, and Sock will try to recognize the text in the photo and insert it as tasks, or I can upload an existing photo. Sock will then also try to extract the tasks and save them to the task list.
In addition, Sock is listed as a destination app in many other apps when I want to share unformatted text or images with Sock. We’ll get to the topic of images later. So, for example, if you share unformatted text from another note file via the Share menu, you can select Sock there, and the text you entered will appear as a new task in the Today section.
Conversely, Sock can share tasks with other files and other apps. To do this, click the Share button in the top-left corner of the app. You’ll then be asked which sections you want to share. By default, all four sections are active (marked green). However, you can also enable or disable individual sections, allowing you to share only the tasks with other apps that you actually want to appear there.
Let’s talk about photos. You might be wondering, what do photos have to do with a to-do list? We’re not trying to create a competitor to Lightroom or anything like that. It’s not about the photos at all. It’s about situations like this:
For example, I’m out with friends and I see something in a store window or somewhere else that I want to remember later. Instead of stopping right then, opening the app, and typing text, I quickly snap a photo. Later, I can transfer that to the to-do list in Sock via sharing or through the clipboard—just copy and paste. There, Sock tries to recognize the text from the first few letters or lines. You can edit that later, giving you a visual reminder of what you didn’t want to forget.
With a simple tap on a task, you’ll see a dialog where you can not only change the task title but also view a larger version of the image. You might be able to make out more details that way. You can also delete this entry if you feel that all the images are just cluttering up the screen, and the text—which I may have edited—is actually enough of a reminder for me. Do whatever you want with it.
When I added the photo feature, I thought it was a bit over the top—that nobody really needed it. But then I caught myself using it all the time.
Sometimes I see something I want to remember later, for example in a YouTube video or when I’m riding public transit and see something on an advertising poster. I quickly take a photo and can either share it later or import it into Sock via the clipboard, and I’ll never forget it again.
Now there’s just one icon left to explain. It looks a bit like an artist’s palette and is the second icon in the top right corner. If you click there, you can set the colors for text, background, and section separators. You can also save these color schemes—up to ten of them. The list of ten color schemes is already partially filled. You can simply delete schemes you don’t like by swiping left. You can save your own favorite color schemes there.
You’ll also see that you can set the app’s language in one place. In addition to German, English, French, and Italian are available. There’s also the option to use the app in Berndütsch or in a more casual (you could even say “rough”) German, if you prefer that.
By the way, Sock is completely free, with one exception: Using graphics in the to-do list costs about half as much as a cup of coffee. Treat yourself! You won’t regret it.
Otherwise, you’ll occasionally see a friendly request to rate the app in the App Store and/or leave a tip there. You can ignore that. It has absolutely no impact on the app’s usefulness or functionality. But it would help me out.
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