papay0 / day2day

Task manager operating on Google Docs.

Day2Day

What is Day2Day?

Day2Day is a task manager operating on Google Docs. It's simple and it just works.

How does Day2Day work?

Every day you write your tasks on a Google Docs the same way you see on the screenshot.

In order to mark the task as done, you only have to strikethrough your task. (Cmd + shift + x on Mac or Alt + Shift + 5 on Windows/Linux)

The script will be run automatically every weekday between midnight and 1am, will copy the uncompleted tasks from the previous day.

Setup

Step 1: Create new Google Docs.

Create a new Google Docs. You can name it the way you want, Day2Day in my case.

Step 2: Open Script Editor.

Click on Tools / Script Editor.

Step 3: Copy the code.

1. Delete all code.
2. Copy the content of this file and paste it in the Script Editor tab.
3. You can name it the way you want, Day2Day in my case.

It should now look like this:

Step 4: Check your timezone.

Click on File / Project properties. Update the timezone under Info / Time zone to your local timezone.

Step 5: Make this script run periodically.

Click on Edit / Current project's triggers.

Step 6: Make this script run periodically.

1. Click on Add Triger. (bottom right)

It should look like:

or here are the written instructions:

2. Select cron for Choose which function to run.
3. Keep the default choice Head for Choose which deployment should run.
4. Select Time-driven for Select event source.
5. Select Day timer for Select type of time based trigger.
6. Select Midnight to 1am for Select type of time based trigger.
7. For Failure notification settings, you can choose, I selected Notify me immediately.
8. Click Save.

Step 7: Give permissions.

Google might ask you to login with your current account, then to Allow this script to View and manage your Google Docs documents. This script needs this permission otherwise it won't be able to update automatically your document.

Step 8: Initialize the document.

Go back to your Google Docs and refresh the page. Click on Add-ons / Day2Day / Init Day2Day.

You should see the following, with today's date:

You can now start writting your tasks following the same pattern as the picture on the top of this document, ie using bulleted list.

Enjoy! 🥳

What if I want to update Day2Day to a new version?

Easy, just open Tools / Script Editor and replace all the code with this code.

Motivation && Previous work

I am using the Google Docs for daily tasks for a few years now. I always found it too much to copy paste the previous day, to remove the completed tasks, every single day. (Yes, I like automation!)

So I wrote a React webapp to do this job for me, the code is available here. But after a while it became too complex for the simple task manager I needed.

Quick demo:

There also support to easily build a Promo package, often used in tech companies. When Promo comes, instead of spending a week looking for your best commits/documents, you could just write it the Promo section using markdown.

So after giving up on my webapp, I went back to my simple Google Docs and wrote the automation using Google Apps Script. ❤️

Improvement

• When all subtasks are done ✅, treat the master task as done ✅.
• See if Day2Day can be a Docs Add-on.
• Create a backlog category.