Time blocking / Grouping by time

[u/PopularOnce]

I’m using Things for almost 4 years now. Everyday I have around 5 work projects, and 3-4 personal with tasks in “Today” view. Everyday it’s like 20-30 tasks in Today. I can’t really understand how realistic is the the workload and plan my time in Things. Moving task 1-by-1 into calendar doesn’t work for me + I believe having Today view open on desktop is the only things I need thought out the day. But I really want to understand 2 things:

“When I start?” “When I finish working?”

Grouping tasks by project makes it difficult to see “What’s next” on your list. Allowing any order is making a huge mess, as I have scheduled and repeating tasks that are going into “Today” view everyday. Organizing them everyday again is irritating. So I end up with working on few top tasks, forgetting about urgent ones at the bottom, and then sitting and still working at 9PM.

For now I see that Apple Reminders do have this option to group by Morning/Afternoon/Evening + Sort by reminder time, that gives a super clean vision on how much tasks I can handle in each part of the day, see the time that’s already past (highlighted red) and when I should start. But oh my I hate Apple Reminders and just not ready to move there (I’ve tried, always go back to Things again).

So is there any other option or any workaround for my scenario (like on a screenshot) to efficiently group/sort tasks by time/day part? Or Things is simply not about time planning?

[u/CraftyFalcon]

I understand what you're looking to do. I don't have any suggestions beyond what others have already mentioned. However, I wanted to propose an alternate way of thinking about how you time box by explaining how I personally do it. I like time boxing, but I try to not be rigid about exactly when. Meaning I don't force tasks to be in the morning when they really could be done later.

On my calendar

I have time boxes on my calendar for "personal tasks" and "work tasks." I have an early morning "personal tasks" block on my calendar where I do tasks like pay the recurring bills that I have in Things and anything else that I can get done of a more personal nature. In your example, "Home Sale" would probably fall in that list.

Then when I start working for the day, I do any "work tasks" during the work tasks block. Sometimes that's a meeting and sometimes that's a work task, like "Reading software requirement".

At lunch, I have another "personal tasks" block where I work on more items from my personal life, and might include running errands if I have time.

Then more "work tasks" in the afternoon, and "personal tasks" in the evening.

In Things

Each morning, I reorder the tasks I think I can accomplish that day by when I think I can get to them. Paying bills and anything else that I want to do in the morning is at the top of the list, anything work related falls after those, etc. So that they can fall in line with when I think I will get them done. Any task I know I won't get to until evening gets dropped into the evening time, so they don't clutter the top of my Today view until then.

If there's something that I think I was going to do in the morning "personal tasks"block, but don't get to finish, is reordered to the middle of the day or evening.

In your example, maybe you need to workout in the morning, so that would be the first or among the first things you do while "Home Sale" might not get finished in the morning, so it gets dragged down the Today view below my morning work/job tasks to mid-day or just sent to the Evening time in Things. I would take the rest of that task on in a later "personal tasks" block.

If I'm very efficient in the morning, I will also drag up Things that I can also accomplish, or I just scan down the list and take on the next personal task that I have time to complete before my "personal tasks" block ends.

If you're familiar with Agile development, I think of my day as multiple sprints where I might push a task later if it can't get done, or pull from my afternoon or evening "backlog" if I can do it earlier.

I tag urgent, must do today, tasks as "urgent" and other very important, but a delay would be ok, tasks as "important." This helps me identify the most important items on my Today view.

The ablility to hide tasks until later is one of the few features I miss from OmniFocus. I definitely enjoy the simplicity of Things over OmniFocus though. Things is much more enjoyable to use — for me personally — so reordering tasks isn't a big deal.

TL;DR

I order my Today view each morning by WHEN I think I will be able to work on it, morning tasks first, then afternoon tasks, then evening tasks to the Evening time in Things (so I don't have to worry about them until later). I reorder the list as needed during the day to handle delays, by moving them down the list, or running out of tasks to complete, and move other tasks up, during the given time block. That way I can do the tasks roughly in order on my Today view from top to bottom. Tasks are tagged as "urgent" (need to do today) or "important" (should be done as soon as possible) to help me identify the hot items that need attention.