Oh boy how hard is it to organize your life, offline, online, projects, all the way from cleaning apartment, to handling start up company ideas. So much to do, so little time. Why waste spending time writing it down if you don’t organize it?
So what I do is not organize it. I just create a category if I think of it, link it to the project. Make a new project if it has a few tasks. This way I can just choose whatever I want to do when I open the program.
I can select to sort on highest priority, overdue priority, stuff for today or tomorrow, regardless of tags, categories, projects, or if it is for offline or online, for hobby, or otherwise.
Or
I just select a project, or a tag, or a category, or a workspace or profile. And see what comes up.
This change in behavior has saved me so much time. All I need to do is two things. a) add an item, b) tag it as done. And trust me, you don’t want to organize it. I rather spend 5 minutes doing the task, processing the item, than organizing by editing and moving items (tasks) from categories, adding tags, etc.
When I add an item and it’s say about offline stuff, such as ‘clean kitchen’ and it’s supposed to be done daily. I do not add an item, then follow that path, no. What I do is click on ‘add daily recurring task’ and click on tag ‘offline’ and type title: clean kitchen. And I am out of the program.
The priority is not important, because it showing up as a daily task is the priority (that it is daily). And I can skip it if I don’t have time or other things to do, and just clean the day after.
It won’t clutter the ‘inbox’, nor do I have to go back and setup categories or edit it or provide details, etc.
At any time I want to do something offline, it will show up when I click on the tag for ‘offline’.
At any time I want to do something regarding cleaning, the word ‘clean’ will show up in those results, so I don’t have to make a category for cleaning.
At any time in a day I want to do something that needs to be done that day, clicking on daily tasks will make it pop up too.
See? Nothing much to do than just add “daily task” and set an optional tag and at least set a quick title. And check it off as complete if needed.
My filter is set to prune daily tasks that aren’t done, after a month. So no clutter, nowhere.
I simply refuse to organize, because you just know you won’t organize anyway! Don’t waste your time, just do what you have to do.
Another example.
Let’s create a project for say, customize a computer.
I quickly make a category for ‘buy’ and one for ‘blog’.
When I think about my custom build computer I might think ‘oh, I need to buy a keyboard’.
In the lists of projects I click on add item to buy, and type keyboard and press enter.
So instead of clicking on add > and enter title, select project, and then category, etc. I just click on add directly and am done with it.
When it’s time to buy stuff, I just click on the buy tag under the project and I have a shopping list to go to the store with. And I can check off what I purchased, and milestone for the project is updated. I don’t have to edit that either.
All of this allows me to have those little moments of ‘oh yeah..’ and just note it down and not think about it, allowing me to continue whatever I was doing. And focus on it when it’s important. No organizational skills required.
Since the computer building is an offline project, I could also at one point just add tag > offline, so when I click on offline (previous example) the ‘build computer’ might show up (no need for the details until i click on it).
As you can see. Why organize! Let the software deal with that, and just click smart, keep it short, and check it off when done.
Bonus tip: Check off what you wont’ do anyway .. clean up the list if you’re not going to do the kitchen, so you don’t feel so negative about a big todo list. If it’s a daily task, it will show up the day after again anyway.
Good luck organizing your todo list, by .. not organizing it.