Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Skip tasks you’re waiting on to create Action Lists

When scanning your Smart Lists, it can sometimes be difficult to see what you can do if you’re waiting on something or someone to complete a task. This week’s tip, shared by stevenov, suggests tagging those tasks and excluding them, thus making a “no-filler” Action List. You can also then review just those waiting tasks too.

I use a waiting label to indicate things I’m waiting on. This is a wonderfully easy way to get a sense of everything I’m waiting on someone else to deliver. However, if I’m waiting on a bunch of things, it can make my list tough to parse. I’ll have to scan past things that I can’t actually do.

To get around this, I created an action Smart List that excludes anything tagged with waiting. It’s an easy way to see the things I can actually work on. I use it for my work list, so the syntax is

NOT tag:waiting AND list:work

but you can use

NOT tag:waiting

to see everything you’re not waiting on. I think of this as my action list!

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

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