Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Creating template lists by duplicating tasks

Some things that come up from time to time don’t quite warrant a task repeat, but you want to complete the same tasks each time. This week’s tip, shared by echarles, suggests keeping a master copy of those in a list, where you can duplicate all of the tasks as needed.

If your projects have the same basic lists of tasks every time, it can be very useful to have a template list of tasks that you can just add into the list for a new project when you start it.

I’m a fiction writer, so each new project does have the same basic things to do - research, outline, draft, edit, submit etc. Similarly with the tasks I have to do with the publisher after it sells, and the things I have to do around the release of the book. There are tweaks depending on the books or the publisher, but it’s the same basic tasks each time.

It’s a pain to set up those lists over and over. So why not start with a list of all those usual tasks, already nicely tagged, and just waiting to have due dates, repeats, locations or whatever assigned to them later?

It doesn’t seem to be possible to copy a list, so what I’ve done is create a list called Templates, with 3 tasks (Writing tasks, Post Sale Tasks and Release tasks.) In those I’ve added as subtasks all the individual tasks for that stage of the project. When I create a list for a new writing project I go to Templates, make duplicates of each of these three master tasks and move the duplicates into the List for the new project.

I’ll unbundle the subtasks from each of those tasks depending on the stage I’m at - so I’ll straightaway drag all the Writing subtasks into the main list, but keep the Post Sale and Release subtasks under their master task and out of my way until I reach that stage of the project.

So if you have the kinds of projects, where you’ll do the same tasks over and over, templates like that can save you plenty of repetitive work setting up your new project list.

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

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