Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Combining organization techniques to keep your tasks manageable

Sticking with a thorough system seems like it may be a lot of work, but once you get used to it, it can be a sustainable way to keep your tasks organized at all times. This week’s tip comes from aviskase, who describes how to use the setup they like with Remember The Milk features.

Maxim Dorofeev has a very interesting approach, something between MYN and GTD. There is a book, but it’s in Russian, so I’ll just show how I implemented this approach.

Main goal: no more overload.

Setup #1

Lists:

• Inbox (default) — all unsorted tasks go there (including IFTTT and import by email)
• Tasks — only sorted tasks
• Projects/Goals — very special lists for “head” tasks (I’ll explain it later)

Tags:

• _t — tasks for today
• _w — tasks for this week
• _l — tasks for some time later (later than week)
• tags for linking “head” tasks from “Project/Goals” to tasks from “Tasks”
• _ping — my special tag, which means that I should ask a person, what is his/her progress on this task.

Main Smart Lists:

• Today
(tag:_t OR dueBefore:tom) AND list:Tasks AND NOT (tag:_l OR tag:_w)
• Week
(tag:_w OR startBefore:"7 days of today" OR dueWithin:"7 days of today") AND list:Tasks AND NOT (tag:_t OR tag:_l) AND NOT due:today
• Later
(tag:_l OR startAfter:"6 days of today" OR dueAfter:"6 days of today") AND list:Tasks AND NOT (tag:_t OR tag:_w)

All are sorted by: Start date↑, Due date↑, group by Due date

Auxiliary Smart Lists:

• Long forgotten — tasks that weren’t updated for some time. I’m still experimenting with it, maybe I’ll include something to search for tasks with a start date.
NOT updatedWithin:"2 week of Today" AND (tag:_t OR tag:_w OR tag:_l)
• Lost — just to be sure that my main Smart Lists work correctly and nothing is lost
list:Tasks AND NOT(list:Today OR list:Week OR list:Later) AND isSubtask:false
• Completed yesterday
completed:yesterday
• Completed today
completed:today
• Completed this week
completedWithin:"1 week of today"

Setup #2

Because I don’t need priorities per se, I switched tags to priorities:

• _t = priority 1
• _w = priority 2
• _l = priority 3

And lists are:

• Today
(priority:1 OR dueBefore:tom) AND list:Tasks
• Week
(priority:2 OR startBefore:"7 days of today" OR dueWithin:"7 days of today") AND list:Tasks AND NOT due:today
• Later
(priority:3 OR startAfter:"6 days of today" OR dueAfter:"6 days of today") AND list:Tasks
• Long forgotten
NOT updatedWithin:"2 week of Today" AND NOT priority:none

Process

1. Create daily review task (repeat: every day). I do it in the evening, and it has several subtasks:

• Rename uncompleted tasks in “Today” (to negate “pesticide” paradox).
• Remember this day — write down to Inbox everything that I forgot to write during the day.
• Look through “Completed today” (and “Completed yesterday”, if it’s 3am). Is there anything to do more?
• Process all Inboxes (rtm, email, desk) - 1 tomato
• Look through “Week”, maybe something should be moved to “Today”? (remove _w, add _t)

2. During Inbox processing:

• If an item can be divided in several tasks: divide! All tasks should be very easy (rule of thumb: task can be done for maximum 30 min and with brain almost switched off)
• Task’s name should answer question “what to do” and start with a verb
• Include due date only if it’s real due date! Start date is better. No dates is even better.
• If there is no due/start date, select one of the tag: _t/_w/_l (or priorities for setup #2). Use _t and _w only if you’re sure
• If an item isn’t just one/several tasks, but looks like a whole project, do this:

3. Create weekly review task (repeat: every week). For me it’s Monday morning:

• Look through “Completed this week”, is there anything to do more?
• Look through “Projects/Goals”, complete completed projects, add new tasks to “Tasks” if needed
• Look through calendar (next 2 weeks): if there anything “taskable”?
• Look through “Later”, maybe something should be moved to “Week”? (remove _l, add _w), or maybe something generates tasks for this week?
• Process all Inboxes (rtm, email, desk) - 1 tomato

4. Try to be realistic with “Today” and “Week” lists. I usually have something like 8 and 20 tasks. If your “Today” lists is empty and sun is still high, grab something from “Week”.

Side notes

• List “Tasks” is only for real tasks. Meetings go to calendar, notes and similar stuff — to other apps or special lists which aren’t reviewed on any regular basis.
• “Project/Goals” can be divided into separate lists. Goals can be tracked exactly as projects (head task + tag).
• I use the Pomodoro Technique, so some tasks include info for minimum or maximum number of tomatoes.
• Some inboxes are toxic, for example 1000+ emails or rss-s. Create separate semi-daily task for going to inbox zero with maximum pomodoro assigned (no overload!).
• To be better at remembering a day during daily review I use a trigger list (something similar to Trigger List).

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

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