What is Todoque?

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Todoque is a life, task and project management system that can be used by literally anyone and is free. It is not a website or an application but rather a concept and convention that can be supported by all software, all devices and all languages (Both Human and Computing).

The core principle in Todoque involves having items that need to be done/answered/checked/fulfilled and so on.

If you have a shopping list on a bit of paper and you cross out the items as they are in the trolley, that is a Todoque.

You have probably been using todoque since you were a child so there isn’t much to learn.


Where Todoque becomes really powerful is when it is used in modern documents that can be shared and that have inbuilt revision history.

Clarity. Simplicity. Functionality.

The Todoque Basic Convention

These 3 conventions below are all you need to accept to todoque. The only thing you might not know about is what a “bullet point” is. It is just one of these:

  • This is a bullet point
  1. And so is this.

The basic convention is itself a Todoque:

1) All items are indicated by a bullet point.
2) All items that are resolved are crossed out.
4) Comments to an item are kept on the same line as the item.



So, a Todoque in its simplest form is a bullet list of items that get crossed off when they are resolved (Completed, answered, purchased, sold etc..). an example todoque might look like this:

  • Get shampoo
  • Call John about Saturday.
  • Varnish floor by June!
  • Take shoes in
  • Ring Bank about changing account details.

Note that this Todoque can be on a piece of paper, a whiteboard, word file, a website form, a file on your smart phone or PDA.

The Assigning Convention

Although todoque is great for keeping control of all the things that are specific just to you, where it becomes really powerful is when you start involving other people, family members, workmates, clients and so on.

  1. The < assigns an item from person to another.


For example:

  • Jim<Alice: Make sure the CLG brochures are with the printers by end of Wed 7th.
  • Debby<Alice: I need the correspondence for the Atkins account asap.
  • John
  • Brian<Alice ; The photocopier is out of ink in my office.

We have been using this method to handle all tasks in work for the last month and it works really well. We say that the person who is assigned the task has the job of crossing it out when done and the person who assigned it confirms this by moving the item to the “done” list.

The Label Convention

Being able to label items in your todoques is really handy. It also is where much of the power of todoque can come from when used with other systems.

  1. Anything in square brackets is a Label. There are currently 5 “hard labels” these are:
    1. [I] = [Idea]
    2. [Q]=[Question]
    3. [A]=[Answer]
    4. [T]=[Task]
    5. [E]=[Event]
  2. Square brackets will only be used for Labels.

For example:

  • [e] Meeting at 17.00 on 4/4/2006 in Smorgers.
  • Mat
  • [Idea] end 3rd world poverty and crime and terrorism.
  • Ken< style=""> Do you want the Vat price mapped to the tax price?
  • [Accounts] Bob [Q]: Are the phone accounts in with the utility accounts?

Labels, even when just using todoque on paper, add some great clarity and functionality to your todoques and they also provide powerful means to find, filter and organize your todoques and their items.

Also, because of the Label Convention there are huge possibilities for importing todoques into other software. Its this human<>digital portability that I see as the future of todoque in the business environment at least.