Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Smart List for tasks without time estimates

It can be really handy to plan your day with time estimates – “how much work did I plan for myself today?” or “how many things can I get done on my errands?” – but this only helps if you have time estimates on your tasks, of course!

This week’s tip, shared by milkiglo, suggests using a Smart List to watch out for any tasks that are missing an estimate.

I figured out a search to determine which tasks require a time estimate:

NOT timeEstimate:“>0”

I add this with search operator ‘tagContains:’ to work just with my action tagged tasks. I prefix all my action tags with '0’ such as 0errands, 0home, 0macbook, etc. Then my Actions to Add Time Estimates search is:

tagContains:“0” NOT timeEstimate:“>0”

Smart List bonus! As I add time estimates, the tasks are instantly removed from the Smart List and I can work down getting all those tasks up-to-date. Sweet!

Pro Tip: Use the keyboard shortcut key 'g’ for editing time estimates fast!

Thanks for sharing this tip, milkiglo! 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.