Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Prioritizing schoolwork with a Smart List
Entering an entire syllabus worth of assignments into a “School” Remember The Milk list can be daunting to look over afterward. This week’s tip, shared by vergenzt, shows a Smart List that can show you just what’s coming up – just the due date and priority, and you’ll see only what you need to!
In college, many of my classes include information on the syllabus about all of the homework assignments and tests for the rest of the semester. Being the organization-freak that I am, I like to put as much of it into RTM as I can at the beginning. However, it can be overwhelming to see all of the homework I have for the rest of the semester on one list, even if it is sorted by date.
So my solution to this is to put everything into a “Schoolwork” list, and then make a “Todo-School” Smart List that shows much just what is coming up, where more warning is given for higher priorities like tests. I use tags to mark which class the assignments are for.
Todo-School search [broken down by criteria]:
list:schoolwork AND (
due:never OR
dueBefore:today OR
(dueWithin:“2 days”) OR
(dueWithin:“3 days” AND priority:3) OR
(dueWithin:“4 days” AND priority:2) OR
(dueWithin:“6 days” AND priority:1)
)
Todo-School search [all together]:
list:schoolwork AND (due:never OR dueBefore:today OR (dueWithin:“2 days”) OR (dueWithin:“3 days” AND priority:3) OR (dueWithin:“4 days” AND priority:2) OR (dueWithin:“6 days” AND priority:1))
I can use the priority of a topic to tell RTM how far in advance it needs to show it on my todo list, and anything without a due date will always be displayed until I set one. It’s serving me well. :)
Thanks for sharing this tip, vergenzt! You’re our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week.
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