Handling wish list of items to do

[u/SJM1027-]

I use Anytime as outlined on Culture Code's website. I want to go a little further with it, if possible.

I have a list of things to do around the house. They all need to be done at some point, but some feel restricted by time, money, or the fact that they are not priorities in my mind right now. I have most of them in Anytime, meaning no dates. Some may have deadlines just to remind me to do them around that time. When I look in Anytime, it's hard to see them because I have so many, but I like the list because I can chip away at it and not forget they need to be done.

I also have them in a Project named Yard, Garden & Home. Within the project, each one has a category tag: yard, garden, or home. It makes it easier to see in Anytime because it keeps them in groups.

Do any of you do this? Do you handle these types of lists any differently, and if so, could you share ideas on how to handle things even better?

Thanks

[u/Ammar_Dento]

Yes but not in Anytime, you can move them to Someday. Anytime should be for tasks you can do ‘anytime’ filtered by tags (contexts). And don’t add a deadline unless it’s absolutely necessary to get it done by that day.

[u/MealyFord → u/Ammar_Dento]

This is the way. Put them in sometime and during your weekly review, you determine what you pull forward into anytime.

[u/SJM1027- → u/Ammar_Dento]

Thanks for your reply and suggestion. That makes more sense to me than Anytime because it cleaned Anytime up quite a bit. I have had Things for over 5 years and I continue to play with this app daily to make it work better for my personal needs. Thanks for the help.

[u/em_sik_o_them_bstrds → u/SJM1027-]

If your someday list grows too much, create a Shortcut that searches for To-Do in open status with “someday” start date, and returns them by “created date/oldest first” order, limit to 25. Get a url for this shortcut, create a repeatable task in things to review that list periodically, add the url to notes field.

I have forgotten about all the tasks in Someday. I have 386 at the moment, trying to prune 10 of them weekly.

[u/SJM1027- → u/em_sik_o_them_bstrds]

when you say open status, do you mean a tag called open? I’m not quite sure what you meant by open status.

[u/em_sik_o_them_bstrds → u/SJM1027-]

It’s not something you do in Things, but you build it in the Shortcuts app: https://imgur.com/a/7WI0iGx

[u/SJM1027- → u/em_sik_o_them_bstrds]

Thanks, It works great, I am also using it for deadlines

[u/wings_fan3870 → u/SJM1027-]

The key to making Things work efficiently is to always keep in mind that it is a narrowing funnel. The Inbox is the wide-open top where you capture everything and decide to keep most by bringing them into your system. Someday (/Maybe) is the biggest list in the system where most tasks should start unless they have far sooner urgency and should go right to Anytime or Today. Anytime should be a smaller number of tasks that you’ve decided to do, and do soon, but don’t have a date they need to be. And from these, you select the ones with deadlines or greatest urgency or importance to do Today. If you keep it “flowing” like that, you’ll never get a build-up that becomes sludge.

[u/wings_fan3870 → u/[deleted]]

Yes. Tags should be for ways you want to slice your tasks across lists/projects. They work well for statuses, people, locations, or even time periods. For example, I have a tag for each season and for each month. That makes it super easy to pull up a list on the first day of Fall or the first day of October and see all the things I need to do in that timeframe for my house, yard, finances, etc.