Task managers are great, but I sometimes find myself with short-term, transient tasks that I need somewhere to jot down and keep up with, but that I don’t feel need all the additional metadata around formal tasks, and I don’t feel fit into the curated hierarchy of projects in my task management system. These are often little things to remember to pick up, or to tell one of my kids when I see them, etc.
For tasks like this, I keep a task scratchpad draft in Drafts and use it in combination with the Task Widget
Tasks in Drafts
Most of the default syntax highlighting modes in Drafts understand the concept of tasks. If you type [ ] (square brackets with a space between) in a draft using any of the built-in Markdown syntaxes, it will automatically become a task mark that can be tapped to toggle the task’s state between incomplete ([ ]) and completed ([x]) states.
The “Simple List” syntax also recognizes curly braces to create three-state tasks that toggle between incomplete({ }), in-progress ({-}) and completed ({x}) states.
You can read more on task functionality in the User Guide.
Create a Scratchpad Draft
Nothing special about this, just create a draft to be your task scratchpad, give it a title. A few other suggestions, none of which are required:
- Assign the “Simple List” syntax to the draft (in
Aaediting settings). Tasks work fine in the default Markdown syntaxes, too, but using Simple List lets you have a different set of font preferences, and support three-state tasks as discussed above. Sometimes assigning a larger font size for the list syntax makes it easier to tap tasks. - Move the draft to the archive. It’s likely you do not want this draft cluttering your inbox.
- Add at least one sample task, typically in the form of a line that starts
- [ ]or* [ ]with some task name following.
Task Widget
Add a Task Widget to your Home Screen. After adding the widget, use the “Edit Widget” screen to configure it’s options…especially searching for and selecting the draft you created above as it’s source draft. You can also choose theming options, and whether to display completed tasks.
Now you have a quick reference to your task scratchpad. It will display only tasks found in your draft, and you can tap to toggle tasks complete right in the widget. Need to add or modify tasks? Tap anywhere else in the widget, and Drafts will open directly to that draft.
Moving Tasks to Reminders
Sometimes you capture a task to your scratchpad and decide you want to promote that task to your more permanent task management system. In this case, it’s great to have around an action to “Move” a task to another system. I do not have examples for every system, but here are two common ones – these actions take the line (or lines) of the cursor/text selection, remove them from the draft and add them to either Reminders or Things as tasks: