Today I want to give a shout out to the awesome folks over at Agenda. While browsing the Agenda community, I found a link to Alexander Griekspoor’s presentation at Do iOS 2018 in which he discusses how Agenda came to be.

In short, Agenda started as a running text file Griekspoor was using to capture notes, reminders, and events throughout the day. He added new items to the top pushing older items down further down. As text files grew complex, he started creating separate files for each project, eventually moving the whole system to Simplenote before making Agenda. Overall, this running text file isn’t too different than how my colleagues and I manage our shared agendas in Google Docs, which is probably why Agenda clicks for me today.

I’ve written about Agenda in the past. It’s been working great for keeping my personal notes from meetings sorted, but understanding the mindset behind Agenda has helped me understand how to use it even more.

In the past, I created reminders in my task manager whenever there was a need to discuss something with someone. The problem was that I don’t usually have my task manager open during meetings so things tended to get missed.

This is where Griekspoor’s initial inspiration for Agenda was useful. The idea behind Agenda wasn’t just an app for keeping track of today’s notes and past notes. Griekspoor used it for future notes as well. When needing to discuss something with someone, he put it at the top of the note in a sort of holding area that he later converted into the section for the date it was discussed.

That’s what I was missing.

All those reminders to discuss things that I was keeping in Things could actually go directly into Agenda and even be attached to our next meeting, so that the next time I meet with that person, they’re front and center.

Griekspoor’s presentation was incredibly insightful. If you have a bit of time to check it out, I highly recommend it.