Ultralist Concepts

How Ultralist works conceptually.

Since Ultralist implements a version of Getting Things Done, it has similar concepts:

Not familiar with Getting Things Done? Check out this great youtube video to gain a better understanding. It’s a game changer!

Contexts

Ultralist knows about contexts, which answers the question of “what do I need in order to accomplish this?”. Contexts are denoted with an @ symbol.

Examples of contexts

  • chat with @bob
  • @call garage about car repair
  • @email my question about the project update

Projects

Projects are defined as outcomes that will require more than one action step to complete. So, a project may have multiple todo items.

Examples of projects

  • +smallTasks ping @bob about the security bulletin
  • +mobileDev ask @george what is next on the roadmap

Due dates

Due dates are a first-class concept in Ultralist. This is what separates Ultralist from other projects like Todo.txt.

Due dates are dates, without times. They allow you to see what is on your agenda for the day.

Ultralist does not try to dictate your exact schedule, and therefore a todo’s due date does not include a specific time. If you need to schedule something at a specific time, it might be better to use a calendar app. However, you can prioritize todos so that they take precedence over other todos.

Prioritization

You can prioritize a todo. This will make it show as bold in the CLI, and denotes that this todo is more important than others.

Archiving

Once todos are completed, you can archive them. They won’t show up anymore when listing todos.