Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Building combination Smart Lists

We’ve highlighted some interesting Smart Lists on the blog previously, but this week’s tip, shared by 4trainpoet, shows us a powerful combination of Smart Lists. Rather than some very long search criteria, these Smart Lists build upon one another to exclude anything in the previous ones.

I’ve been messing around with Smart Lists for the last few months, and the following is what I’ve come up with. It allows me to use due date and priority to split out tasks, without having to worry too much about which I prefer to use. It also helps to keep lists manageable, by splitting tasks into 4 groups: Today, This Week, Soon, and At Some Point…

• Smart List Name: [0] Today
• Search Criteria: (due:today OR priority:1)

This is the basic “things to do” list. Nothing fancy. No overdue tasks, except those marked “!1”.

• Smart List Name: [1] This Week
• Search Criteria: (dueBefore:“1 week of today” OR priority:1)

This shows the above, plus the rest of the week, as well as any overdue tasks.

• Smart List Name: [2] Soon
• Search Criteria: (priority:2 AND NOT list:“[1] This Week” OR dueWithin:“1 month of today” AND NOT list:“[1] This Week”)

This list shows non-urgent and upcoming tasks for the following month, that don’t appear in the first two lists.

• Smart List Name: [3] At Some Point
• Search Criteria: (NOT list:“[1] This Week” AND NOT list:“[2] Soon”)

Finally, there’s everything else.

Thanks for sharing this tip, 4trainpoet! You’re our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week.

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