Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Focusing with a Smart List

Working through a single list can be an efficient way to work through your day. This week’s tip, shared by tomi, pulls together a few different sets of tasks, including tasks added today, to see just what you need to.

I hit a new record of #rtmstats (completed 3,819 tasks) in the last year :D

For years, Remember The Milk is my personal clever butler at all times.

Let me introduce my main list named “focus”. This is a Smart List with search condition:

(NOT priority:N AND list:Inbox) OR (dueBefore:now) OR (dueWithin:"2 day of today" AND NOT (tag:just OR list:sched)) OR (addedAfter:today AND due:never AND list:Inbox) OR (tag:sticky)

This Smart List helps me to focus tasks should focus right now.

1. All priority set tasks.
2. All overdue tasks.
3. Future tasks but not tagged “just” and not in list “sched”. These tasks (tagged “just” or in list “sched”) will be visible on just that time (by rule 2).
4. Tasks added today. I’m using @rmilk.com email to add new GitHub issues as new tasks. I can review and assign due date them.
5. All tasks tagged “sticky”. This overwrites above rules. I set “sticky” tag to put the task in my mind.

Are you worried about other tasks? Then just set a task “Check your RTM backlog tasks.” with “every 1 week” repeat. This is Remember The Milk’s way.

I hope this helps your Remember The Milk life. Thank you.

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

Do you have a suggestion for our weekly Tips & Tricks post? Got an interesting set-up or idea? Head over to the Tips & Tricks forum, add a new topic, and let us know how you use Remember The Milk. Each week we’ll give away a 1 year Pro account to the user whose idea inspires the Tips & Tricks Tuesday blog post for that week.