I am in a low productivity period. Too much procrastinating on important but not time critical things.
One of the things I do is add @resist to tasks I know I am dragging on.
What are other people’s tips or hacks to drive your personal productivity in Task Paper.
Perhaps the trick is just to work out:
Software comes third or fourth here. Collecting too many ‘tasks’ along the way may be adding more to noise and distraction by other people than to signal or direction for yourself.
(See, for example, Joan Didion on ‘unanswered letters’ in her 1961 piece, On Self-Respect: Joan Didion’s 1961 Essay from the Pages of Vogue | Vogue)
It might be worth using TaskPaper more as an outliner, to clarify thoughts, than as a “task manager”.
Thanks for the thoughts, the big picture is part of it!
Also looking to share tips on the more tactical side
I have used Taskpaper strategically for so many years that I can’t recall when I started. I tend to use Taskpaper when I have multiple specific projects to track. I’m an academic so during an academic year, I can have 8-10 projects to manage. In the summer I often have just three writing or research projects to brainstorm and accomplish as tasks. I keep my workflow simple:
Project One:
Project Two:
Project Three:
The colon following the project name is important.
I set up due dates, defer dates, soon tags and someday/maybe tags (if it’s just a stray idea).
The flexibility Taskpaper affords is why I use the app so often. Taskpaper doesn’t constrain me in the way some of the larger task managers do. This little workflow is simple and neat. I like the way that I can focus in on the project I’m working on in the moment so that I’m not distracted by other projects.
That’s the extent of how I use Taskpaper,
At the top of my file I have goals, some in the form of tags.
I also have a special project at the top called Navigate with collection of tags for one click access. Of course I could type them in search bar but this makes like a pseudo tool bar.
Navigate:
- tag @top
- tag @today
- Status @followup @resist @15min @5min
- People @lac @ash
Others @christine @sam @sarah
Intentions @expressive @create
@silab @delivery
I use this Matthew Vickars’ template to create a dated to do list
http://matthewmcvickar.github.io/taskpaper-month-generator/?year=2022&month=8
As i finish tasks and days, i delete them, but inevitably, some tasks don’t get done, and i just move them to the next day.
Speaking of which, maybe this template could be added to TP as a feature.
I find it best to pick one task and focus on it.
I tag the task with @next.
Keyboard Maestro finds it, and displays it in my Macs menu bar, which keeps me focused on completing it.
pick one task and focus on it
And Richard Rumelt’s The Crux, for example, is eloquent and persuasive on the centrality of building ‘goals’ and ‘next steps’ around deciding:
and in this case what differences to Bike?
I don’t personally think that the choice of the particular tool is the key issue.
Bike is clearly a more general-purpose (and Moby Dick capable) instrument – TaskPaper has some specialisations for tag processing, dates and project naming once a project takes more shape – but the gathering and ordering of thoughts can be done in either. Whatever comes to hand.
seems cool. could you share links to this resource?
I’ll write it up this coming weekend, and post it here in this forum.
This looks really cool!!! Looking forward to it.
Here is my system, which combines many things I have developed over the years. Note, I use it almost exclusively to keep up with things at home. I am a teacher and don’t use it for that.
In my task document, I have a project called monthly tasks. In this project I have about 25 to 30 things I do every month, sometimes once, sometimes twice. They are relegated to “weeks” with tags of 1st, 8th, 15th, and the 22nd which is the date I want them to “start”. These are things like, “Change all filters”, “Clean the blue cabinets”, “Nutmeg Pill”, Cat medicine". Basically just maintenance stuff I do every month. My second project is called “Tasks”. This is a running list of tasks that I do regularly throughout the week. I include nearly everything that I do that are not tied to specific times or date–everything. Dust, Dust Mop, Mop the Kitchen, Work on School Stuff, Straighten, Clean the Kitchen, Laundry, Put Away Laundry, Read a Chapter, Take Blood Pressure, etc. These are tagged @task. I work these following guidelines from Mark Forster (http://markforster.squarespace.com). Basically anything I want to do gets added to the list. If I mark something done, and it needs to be done again sometime, I retype it to the end of the list.
So I have five saved searches. The format is this
@task or @15th except (@start >[d] today or @done <[d] -5 days)
I use this particular search from the 15th to the 21st of the month. It shows me the monthly tasks tagged @15th, all tasks tagged @task, but excludes anything that has a start date after today and any done tasks more than five days ago.
I use a style sheet that shows the today tag in red.
Here is my (or Mark Forster’s) weird but effective system. I scan the list from top to bottom, reading quickly, marking with the tag @today 3-5 items that I am feeling no resistance to doing. I then do those, from bottom to top. Repeat.
The idea is that every time I repeat, I am re-reading each task, which lowers the resistance of some of the tasks I am not doing. I find that the things I procrastinate over still get done in a reasonable time.
When I have finished that week’s monthly tasks, I take off the done tag (so I don’t retype these) and click on my 5th saved search, which just shows me my @task tags.
