Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Keeping track of untagged tasks
It’s great to be organized—a list of tasks, all lined up and ready to be completed—but it helps to set up methods to help keep yourself organized too. This week’s tip, shared by sylviavas, features a great method for organizing those tasks that you add quickly:
When I first started using Remember The Milk, I didn’t see the point of tags. Well, I’ve done a 180 - now I couldn’t imagine living without them!
In “Getting Things Done” terminology, there’s an “in” box, or universal capture. This is where you write up all your tasks, without necessarily sorting or prioritizing them.
I use untagged tasks for this. I specifically don’t tag or prioritize them - I just log them as I think of them. It just takes a moment, because I always have a Remember The Milk tab open, or I can get to it very quickly on my smart phone.
Later, when I have a bit more time, I open up a specific Smart List that I’ve created in Remember The Milk. It’s called Untagged, and the only criteria it has is “isTagged:false”.
It might have items I just jotted down quickly, such as:
• library
• bulb in kitchen
• oil change
• investments
I then go through these (I try to do it on a daily basis) and assign tags like “home”, “errand”, “calls”, etc. And I also prioritize at this point, and delete tasks I no longer want to do. I might end up with a list like this:
• (errand) Pick up books at library
• (home) Change burnt-out light bulb in kitchen
• (call) Call Acura dealership to schedule oil change
• (computer) Review investments on financial website
When my “Untagged” Smart List is empty (because the tasks disappear as I assign tags to them), then I know I’ve got everything sorted.
I even put non-task items on this list (things to buy, books to get, movies to watch, etc), even if they won’t eventually go into Remember The Milk, because it’s such a convenient universal tool.
Thanks for sharing this tip, sylviavas! 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.
