Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Structured sets of tasks for today and tomorrow

If you thrive on structure, this week’s tip would likely be interesting. dembo shares a means of structuring tasks via tags and an advanced sort to help plan your today (and tomorrow).

I am trying to move away from a two-step process:

1. capture all tasks (RTM is great for this)
2. complete tasks (I am not great at this)

to a more formal three-step process:

1. capture all tasks
2. structure tasks
3. complete tasks

I tried only using priorities for step #2 but I keep getting side tracked. I need something a little bit more sophisticated - not a full fledged GTD system, just something that’s a little bit more structured.

So here is my solution:

I created the tags 1 to 9. These are the only numerical tags in my system. Every morning I look at today’s tasks (sorted according to priorities and grouped according to lists) and decide which tasks to tackle next. Assigned the numerical tags - I never used all nine available, I typically assign 1, 2, 3.

I then have two Smart Lists with the following search criteria:

due:today AND status:incomplete AND (tag:1 OR tag:2 OR tag:3 OR tag:4 OR tag:5 OR tag:6 OR tag:7 OR tag:8 OR tag:9) called "! today"

and

due:tomorrow AND status:incomplete AND (tag:1 OR tag:2 OR tag:3 OR tag:4 OR tag:5 OR tag:6 OR tag:7 OR tag:8 OR tag:9) called "! tomorrow"

Both lists are then (advanced) sorted according to tags (ascending) and priority (descending) and grouped by priority.

Ideally I end each day opening my normal tomorrow list and assigning, say, 1-3. Realistically I do this with the normal today list the first thing in the morning.

So whenever the ! today list is empty, I look at all tasks due today and reassign 1 to whatever number I am comfortable looking ahead to.

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

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