I’m curious to learn more about how people are using Drafts for task management workflows. I know many use Drafts for quick capture and then transfer to other task apps.
However, does anyone manage tasks completely within Drafts? If so, I’d love to hear about your experience!
Some questions I have:
What actions do you use for task management?
How do you organize tasks and projects?
Do you use tags, workspaces, or other methods?
What are the pros and cons you’ve found?
I’m very interested in building a robust task system in Drafts rather than relying on another app. Would love any insights from this community about what works well!
I’m not sure this is typical, but a few comments on the way I’m currently using Tasks in Drafts. i do not try to use it as a full-blown task manager. I use Things for that…but…
I have a scratchpad task draft which I sort of use as my inbox. It has one Markdown list with tasks, and I have a Drafts Task widget on my Home Screen that links to this draft. As the day goes along I jot short-term tasks, errands, and reminders in it. Many of these are ephemeral and don’t really need to make it into a project or have due dates – just sort of what I’m trying to remember and do today. Things like “Pickup veggies for dinner”, or “Email Joe after lunch”
Sometimes things I capture there turn out to need to become a task, and I use a Move to Things action that creates a task in Things for the current line (or selected lines) and deletes them from the scratchpad draft.
I also do checklists in Drafts. Which I consider different than tasks. Things like grocery lists, packing lists, etc. But these are one-off lists and don’t really need any advanced management.
I do this, but I’m not sure it’s a robust task management system, . I’m using the Bullet Journal system, which means for me that most of my life is run out of a weekly Draft. Traditionally it would be daily, but I like the ability to see what I’ve been doing this week, without a bunch of flipping through files. What this means though is migrating incomplete tasks to either the next week or a collection or just putting a slash through the task mark if I decide I didn’t really need to do it anyway. Using weekly/monthly/quarterly reviews to make sure I’m looking at my collection pages, trying to use as few actions as possible, since the Bullet journal is meant to be a hand written system, that kind of thing. It’s a whole thing, .
If I absolutely have to be reminded of something, I use Reminders or Calendar, depending what it is.
I have to admit I don’t - I’ve got a half-completed blog post that I have to finish that goes into detail. My suggestion would be to go look up the Bullet Journal method - mostly the original stuff by Ryder Carroll. He’s got a youTube channel, a blog and book with the nuts and bolts of the method.
As I said, it’s meant to be pen and paper, so I use fairly simple markdown formatting. My week file for example has the year and the week number as a header e.g. 2023-Week 45. Under that are links to the previous and next week, and a link to the month which lets me jump around.
Under that each day Monday to Sunday has a header, and under that I’m doing what the Bullet Journal system calls Daily rapid logging. Nothing really complicated, standard
for tasks, - for notes, + for events, that kind of thing. an = at the end of the line means I’ve written a longform journal entry with more detail.
Collections are just their own file with the title of the collection, although I often put a year prefix in front of it, again, so I can link to it. For example, I’ve got a bunch of random Drafts ideas for actions and stuff title 2023-Drafts ideas. The idea their is that I look at those during reviews and migrate stuff I’d like to work on into the weekly or Monthly file. For me that means putting a > sign between the task marks, and usually a link to where I’ve migrated it to, e.g.
- [>] Write Drafts action to wash dishes [[2023-Week 45]]
I then go to that week and rewrite the task - (the bullet journal system is big on rewriting)
- Write Drafts Action to Wash dishes
If I don’t do it that week, I have to decide what to do with it again - migrate it to the next week, migrate it back to the collection or decide I’m never going to do it, which looks like
- [/] Write Drafts action to wash dishes
Again, this won’t make a lot of sense without a background in the Bullet Journal method - it’s a whole different way of looking at tasks and such.
I have developed some sort of a system that served me well for sometime but then I found it to be too complex.
Currently i only use it like what @agiletortoise explained. instead of scratchpad I have a daily note with day and date created,
@yvonnezed, I appreciate the extra information you provided in your subsequent post - it’s incredibly helpful. I’m looking forward to your blog posts! Your workflow has piqued my interest and I’m excited to delve deeper into it. In the meantime, I’ll be brushing up on Bullet Journaling.
@RDHSLM, I’m with you on admiring the simplicity of @agiletortoise’s system. Awaiting your detailed insights.
. I’m using the Bullet Journal system, which means for me that most of my life is run out of a weekly Draft. Traditionally it would be daily, but I like the ability to see what I’ve been doing this week, without a bunch of flipping through files. What this means though is migrating incomplete tasks to either the next week or a collection or just putting a slash through the task mark if I decide I didn’t really need to do it anyway. Using weekly/monthly/quarterly reviews to make sure I’m looking at my collection pages, trying to use as few actions as possible, since the Bullet journal is meant to be a hand written system, that kind of thing. It’s a whole thing, 
