There are a million different approaches to task management.
Which means there are a million different task managers out there.
Most of these task managers utilize different methods for parsing task metadata (i.e., due dates, contexts, etc.) to give you a list of what to do when.
Which sounds promising. After all, why not let the computer worry about all the complicated details?
The problem is when we just blindly accept what the task manager tells us to do. Which, sadly, happens much more frequently than it should. And as our to-do lists continue to grow, we inevitably arrive at a point where it’s impossible to keep up with everything we “need” to do.
Somewhere along the line, our task managers became taskmasters. And it's time to fight back with intention.
The Brain vs. The List
The way to overcome this is to:
- Consult your task manager for a list of suggestions
- Create a separate daily time-blocked plan
The task manager functions as The Brain and gives you a list of things to consider, while The List is a time-blocked plan of what you’re going to do when.
This results in more accurate daily plans and, ultimately, higher levels of productivity.
The key is to have a list that’s separate from the place where you’re doing the actual work. That’s why I use analog tools when planning my day. I create my time-blocked plan in a fancy notebook, then I write the 3-5 tasks I’m going to do on a notecard and prop it up on my desk.
But since I’m not relying on my task manager to give me my list for the day, I find it more helpful to have a series of essential lists that I check consistently to make sure nothing is falling through the cracks.
The Essential Lists
Here are the lists I use:
- Ready = Things that are due or scheduled in the next seven days and therefore ready to be worked on
- Back Burner = Things that are on deck, kind of like a holding tank, before I choose the tasks I’m actually going to work on next
- Waiting = Things that I’m waiting for someone to do something with before I can take action on them
- Discuss = Things I need to talk to someone about
- Clarify = Things that I need to spend some time thinking through before I can take action on them
- Next Week = Tasks that are due or scheduled for next week, so I can see what’s coming up
- Later/Someday = Tasks that I want to do at some point, but not any time soon
(My inspiration for these essential lists came from Cal Newport’s Deep Life podcast, where he articulated a simple 5-step productivity system to help organize your life. I’ve modified it slightly and built it all out in Obsidian. Of course 😉)
Building This Out in Obsidian
I’ve constructed these lists using a combination of dates and tags. Here are the different types of dates reflected in these queries:
- Due date = the day something MUST be done by
- Start date = the day something is able to be worked on
- Scheduled date - the day I think I’m going to work on something
Most of the time, I’m just using the first two (due dates and start dates). These are kind of like due and defer dates for long-time OmniFocus users.
The tags are simple but allow me to quickly collect related tasks together. The Back Burner, Waiting, Discuss, and Clarify lists all use a single tag.
(The Waiting and Discuss tags usually involve another person. I have another workflow where I roll these up into what I call a People Note so I can see the relevant tasks before walking into a meeting. It's a bit beyond the scope of this post, but I have a YouTube video on it here.)
I’ve laid out these lists in an Obsidian Canvas file, making it easy to view these essential lists (plus a few others) in one place:
The basis for these lists is a plugin called Obsidian Tasks. It’s an incredibly powerful plugin that is perfect for this kind of task management workflow. It even has an API that allows you to add tasks to a specific list from anywhere in your Obsidian vault.
I have a workflow set up for this that lets me add the task using the QuickAdd plugin, and it instantly shows up on the appropriate lists based on the included metadata.
If you want to see what this looks like in action, I actually have a YouTube video that walks through the entire thing:
(If you've watched this video already, you'll notice that the screenshot looks a little different. That's because I've been playing with some new CSS to style the way tasks look on my dashboard. It's not quite done yet, but I will share it when it's ready. 😉)
How It All Works
While the setup is a little tricky, I’ve done my best to make the workflow as simple as it can be:
- Add tasks when I think of them using the QuickAdd command, and have them get added to the essential lists
- Review the essential lists daily when making my time-blocked plans
- Select the things I want to work on and block the time for those tasks
I’ve eliminated as much friction as possible in the daily use of this workflow, and I’ve been using it myself full-time for about the last year.
It’s the first time I’ve really felt that my task management workflow has really clicked. I can confidently say this is my ideal task management workflow 🙂
But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect for everyone! In order for this approach to work, you have to think a little bit differently about your tasks.
For example, if you rely on notifications to alert you what to do when, this approach won’t work for you. I actually think this is dangerous for the reasons outlined above, though, so I’m ok with this tradeoff.
If the idea of essential lists combined with a separate time-blocked plan resonates with you, there’s a good chance you’ll love the task management workflows I’ve built into LifeHQ. It's basically a done-for-you version of the whole workflow I described here.
