Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Using advanced sorting to review tasks on the fly

We’ve discussed GTD on the blog before. One of the main ways you stay organized is by reviewing tasks regularly.

evan.fredericks didn’t find that part helpful, so they came up with a new way of reviewing tasks more easily and regularly on your task list. Their tip uses advanced sorting and grouping to arrange a few different views for organized reviewing.

One of the most important parts of any productivity system is a periodic (weekly/monthly/etc.) review. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the most often skipped steps and is a main point of failure for many systems. I’ve fallen victim to this in the past, missing my appointment with myself to review my commitments and make sure I wasn’t missing anything. So I sought to use some of the Pro features to fix this hole in my system.

In GTD, the part of the weekly review that mainly concerns your to-do lists is to have a parking lot for tasks that aren’t current (referred to as the someday/maybe list), and review the list to see what should be made into a current task (next action). I had such a list that I would review along with my actionable list every week, and noticed the following issues:

1. If the someday/maybe list gets long, reviewing it every week can become daunting and inefficient, since you end up reviewing the same tasks week in and week out, even if they won’t become current until a predictably later date.
2. The simple step of having to open another list than my actionable items to start the process was enough of an extra step that it created friction to kicking off the process.

So I wanted a way to streamline the process by chunking the someday/maybe list, reviewing the appropriate chunks when they become relevant, and putting them more “in my face” to be reviewed. Here is my current solution:

1. Rather than having a separate list for my deferred tasks, I assign them their own priority (I use priority 2).
2. I assign a due date for the tasks based on the earliest review date in which they might become relevant.
3. In a Smart List that acts as my main working list, I include “OR (priority: 2 AND NOT dueAfter:Now)” so that all deferred items will pop onto my main list at the appropriate date.
4. Use an advanced sort that sorts or groups (I prefer grouping) by priority before sorting by other criteria (due date in my case).

This way, the deferred items are thrown onto my main list in their own section, demanding some kind of action. If I’m really overwhelmed, I can simply adjust the due date of all the deferred items to a later time/date, but this is a conscious decision rather than neglecting to check a separate list that becomes a hiding spot.

Bonus

I do keep a separate Smart List that only shows my future deferred items (Priority is 2 and due date is after today). This list is grouped by due date so I can quickly see the amount of tasks that will be coming in for any given review. During my weekly reviews, I’ll have my main list open next to this list, and use the Deferred list as reference for effective task punting.

My weekly/monthly reviews take place on Sundays, so I’ll generally punt any tasks that don’t become next actions either to a future week within the current calendar month, or to the first Sunday of a future month. By keeping all of the deferred tasks in view, I can make sure I’m not punting too many tasks to a single review date, and keep everything better distributed throughout the month/year.

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

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