Transcription
Hey everyone, my name is Robert. Today I want to talk about task management and share some tips that help me see it with fresh eyes. I will also show you how I have adapted my system for Craft. If you are into productivity and organization, I believe you will find this useful, no matter which app you use.
A few weeks ago, the team at Craft reached out to me about their new Readwise integration and invited me to give their app a try. I have heard about Craft before, but this was my first chance to see how it could fit into my workflow. It turns out it's an impressive application, different from Bear, which I use for note-taking, but with its own unique strengths. Craft can handle everything from documents to journaling to projects and collaboration all in one place. It's powerful stuff.
Up until now, I have been using Things for task management. This is a great app built around the Get Things Done method. While checking out Craft, I found it had some features that could make it fit for task management as well. So I thought, how about bringing my system from Things into Craft? Just to have more stuff in one single place, you know. I thought I could get a better integration with project files, documents, collections, and everything else Craft can do.
Now, something you have to know is that apps like Things or Todoist that are specialized in task management already give you a very structured approach, while Craft, in this sense, feels more like a blank canvas. You set your rules. As someone who loves to personalize systems, I find that very appealing. What I wanted to know was whether Craft had what I needed to make my setup work. From my experience, it's never about having the tool with the most features. The key is finding an environment that matches your thinking style, your workflow, and how you like to get things done.
I learned a lot from GTD, but then I found one article that completely changed my perspective. It made everything much more practical. I will share a link to that in the description, but let me explain the core elements of this framework. First of all, you need one place where you can dump everything that pops into your head. Tasks can come from anything. Stuff you get from emails, newsletters, chats with friends, meetings, literally anywhere. You need an inbox for it.
In Craft, we already got one tab where we can see all our tasks. And in here, we got our inbox already built in. I made a simple shortcut for myself where I can add multiple tasks at once, one per line. So I can be anywhere on my computer and anytime bring that up. I press enter and there we go. I got my three tasks. I will share this shortcut with you in the description. You can also, of course, simply press space bar when you are in this view and you will be presented with the option to create one task. If the app you are using doesn't have an inbox like this, you can simply create a note or document for this purpose. The key thing is, the sooner you move things out of your brain, the more mental space you will have for being present in whatever else you are doing.
Now, after capturing tasks, you want to organize them. You can do that by areas and projects. In my case, my home is one area. Fading Thought, which is related to content creation, is one area. The tools that sometimes I make and share with you guys, it's another area. Then areas can have individual tasks or projects. For example, connect with John about a potential partnership. That's just a single action. When there's more than one action required to do something, or when there's a task that seems pretty big and could be divided into smaller tasks, for example, produce this video, those are projects.
Sometimes, especially when you are just sorting stuff from your inbox, all it takes is writing down the project as a single big task for now. Take something like renew my driver's license. I know this is bigger than it looks. It involves collecting documents, making copies or snapping a photo of my old driver's license, booking an appointment, blocking out time, and so on. You don't have to split stuff like this into smaller tasks at this point. However, if you do feel the need to empty your mind from all of those mini steps, or if you feel inspired and have lots of thoughts about something in particular, it is a good idea to get them out of your head.
In Craft, you can turn any task into a page, so you can jump in and let your project grow from there. A different approach, and what I actually do most of the time, is I create a separate document and I add my project tasks in there. Then I simply can grab a link to that and add that to my list. This method is much better for organization, and I will cover this a little bit later in this same video.
Now, the real shift happens when you begin organizing tasks, not only by project or area, but also by when you want, you can, or you have to tackle them. With this, the whole system feels more actionable and much less overwhelming. Let me show you what I meant. When all of your tasks are organized in areas and have a home, whether inside projects or hanging out on their own, then you will end up with a long list. And let's call this someday. Then what you want to do is pull out a smaller batch that you plan to tackle soon. And by soon I mean things that you plan to do in the next week or two. So you will create a new document, and here I already created this one that has the same kind of organization by areas, and then you will start moving stuff. Okay, so we will call this document anytime.
In some dedicated task management apps like Things, for example, every time that you add a task, it will automatically go to your anytime list. In that case, you will do the opposite. You would find those tasks that you do not plan to work on in the following week or two and schedule them for some days. Then it's time to build your today list. Out of your anytime tasks, pick just a few that you truly must do and schedule them for your day. Even one or two main tasks are enough. Giving yourself a small list keeps your day focused and reduces stress. And by the way, you don't have to take this out from your anytime list because anytime that you set something for today, in Craft you got a calendar view that will give you kind of like a filter of everything that you already got in your schedule. This structure of someday, anytime, and today gives you clarity at every step of the way and allows you to focus on what matters the most in the moment.
I already mentioned the first steps. Capture everything in an inbox, then organize. Those steps will keep things clear, but to prevent chaos, you need a regular review routine. I suggest you break your reviews into three cycles: daily, weekly, and monthly.
First, your daily review takes just a few minutes each morning or evening, depending on the type of person you are. During this time, build your today list by picking tasks from the anytime list, just like I showed you, making sure to keep the to-dos for the day tight so you don't overload yourself. The daily review is also a great time to empty your inbox, sending new tasks where they belong. If, throughout your day, you finish everything early, then this is great because you can jump back to the anytime list and tackle extra stuff from there without pressure.
Then, your weekly review gives you a chance to build your anytime list. I do this on Monday mornings, and at that time, I will visit my someday list and promote anything that I want to work on soon, setting a clear plan for the week.
Finally, your monthly review is a time to see the bigger picture. Scan recent notes and documents, checking for anything important you may have missed. Re-evaluate your someday list, remove any tasks that no longer matter, and move low-priority items from anytime back into someday if needed. It's a chance to clean house, make fresh decisions, and stay honest about what actually matters.
To sum it up, as you go about your day, you are always capturing tasks in your inbox. Then you use your daily reviews for two things. First, to organize or clean up stuff so that this doesn't overflow. And second, to build your today list. Then you use your weekly review to build your anytime list and your monthly review to build your someday list. This is a loop that makes your task management system feel alive, always shifting as real life does and preventing stuff from falling through the cracks.
Now, the beauty of all of this that I have been sharing with you until now is that it can work with nearly any app. You can even adapt it to a physical system like a notebook. But now I want to jump to a couple of specifics that have to do with using a digital system like I have set up in Craft.
Scheduling tasks in the future and setting due dates can be tricky. If you schedule too many things ahead of time, your daily review can lose its purpose because you open the app at the beginning of your day and it can already be overflowing with a bunch of stuff to do in there. So one very important thing that I have learned is that scheduling for future dates should be reserved only for tasks you actually cannot work on until that moment. And here's an important insight: If a task is not actionable right now, by definition, it's not something you can do anytime.
In Craft, we have something called daily notes. They are in the same calendar view that shows your tasks for the day. Daily notes can actually be somewhat confusing because they are separate from the rest of your documents. But in the context of task management, I found daily notes to be perfect for anything that I need to get out of someday or anytime because I am waiting for a specific day to take action. Deals or scheduled reviews are good examples. By putting these tasks in a future daily note, I can make sure that they will pop up in my today view when the right day comes.
Something I find much more flexible than scheduling ahead of times is using due dates. When you add a due date to a task, it will show up on the right day in your today view, but you can still keep it inside your anytime list and complete it anytime before that. Again, this is a bit confusing in Craft, but if you reserve daily notes for tasks that you can only take action until a certain day, then this will keep everything clearly separated and you can avoid confusion. And by the way, I'm talking about tasks here. Events, which are also tied to a date or time, are perhaps more fit to your calendar, not your task list.
There is something related to organization that I want to mention here. One thing that stands out in Craft is how you can put projects in lots of places: documents, daily notes, or you can nest pages within pages and link everything, which is great. But it can get messy really fast if you don't have a system for this as well. I have made a folder called tasks within my panel setup. Inside of it, I keep the lists I have already shown you: someday and anytime. I am currently experimenting with tags, trying to add context to my to-dos by using backlinks, but I'm not quite sure about that yet. What I want to tell you is that any document within this folder structure that has tasks in it will pop up in your tasks view. Here I have my Anytime and Someday lists pinned for quick access. Nothing else gets pinned because I want this clean view. Other documents that have tasks will appear down here, and I consider all of them as if they were part of my Anytime list.
Let me explain to you. If there's a project I'm not planning to work on soon, I just grab a link to it and place it in my Someday list. That way, I can sketch out tasks or notes inside the project document itself, but I will use bullets so that they don't appear in my tasks view. When my weekly review comes up and if I decide I'm ready to tackle this project, I do two things. First, I drag the project from Someday to my Anytime list as a parent task. This marks the project as active. I will only check it off when everything is finished. Remember, not every entry in my Anytime list is a project. Some are single tasks that I can just cross off, well, anytime. But when I have something I have linked, it usually is a bigger project. So I open up that document, pick out the next steps, and turn those bullets into actual tasks for the week. Now this will show up in my tasks view as well, making it easy to see what needs attention. If I finish all the planned tasks, then the project might be gone from my task view, but it will still be in my anytime list. I can add new tasks to the document, move it back to someday if I want it in my next weekly review, or mark it done and archive the document.
By the way, if you're wondering why I have color-coded tasks either in my someday or anytime lists, this is not necessary, but they are tasks that I want to consider prioritizing in my next daily or weekly review. This setup keeps my projects easy to manage. It helps me stay focused on what's active without things piling up all over the place.
And that's it, guys. I wanted to show you the basics of the task management system I have used for years and explain how Craft fits right in. Now, to be totally honest, I have run into a few things in Craft that feel clunky. Sometimes my repeating tasks have automatic reminders that I don't need and I didn't set. Some actions take too many clicks. Some parts of the interface can be confusing or make no sense. For example, if you right-click a task inside a document, you can move it to a daily note or new document, but not to an existing one. In the calendar view, though, you can move scheduled tasks to existing documents. So my workaround for this is to open two windows side by side and just drag tasks between them. Another thing that is somewhat annoying is that there's no way to hide completed tasks within a document. So I usually delete completed stuff and the way I keep track of what I have finished is by using a habit tracker. I have also said this inside Craft. I have a page in there for daily highlights where I write anything I have made progress on or important things that were done. An alternative approach would be that instead of scheduling tasks for your day during your daily review, you could move them to your daily note and simply cross them off in there. This may be a good way to keep track of what you've completed. However, I personally prefer keeping this within the existing structure of areas and projects I've established.
So clearly, Craft is not perfect. Nothing truly is. But I still think it's super solid for this task management workflow I showed you. Something that does make me trust this app even more is that the team really listens to feedback and they are still improving things. Even with its quirks and confusing bits, I am really liking Craft, especially considering all the other features that I didn't even cover here. I am very happy I can make it part of my day-to-day, and I hope to share more about how I use this app in the future.
Actually, I am still using Bear to take notes, and I have thought about making a comparison video, but let me know your thoughts in the comments. If you have any thoughts, questions, or ideas you would like me to cover. If you have any insights about Craft or about your task management system, I would also love to hear that. Maybe I can grab some inspiration for myself. Don't forget that you can sign up to my newsletter for news on what I'm up to. Thank you so much for watching, guys. I'll talk to you soon.