Separation of concerns, or "Why I don't keep tasks in Obsidian"
Separation of concerns, or "Why I don't keep tasks in Obsidian"
Just wanted to talk about the only separation I have in my workflow. Obsidian was a game changer for me when I discovered it a couple of years ago. Suddenly remembering and following up on thoughts was a game, and even more excitingly, a collection.
I fell off the productivity bandwagon a few months after. When I returned to the software about a month ago, the first thing I did was identify what went wrong the last time. Aside from going too crazy with community plugins towards the end, I believe my primary pain point was keeping all of my tasks readily at hand. Frequently I would write something to do in my daily note only for it to be lost and never followed up on. I would return to a note and see either a task I had completely forgotten about or a task that was later duplicated somewhere else in my vault.
This time around I have had a lot of success using a different utility specifically for tasks. This is not a Todoist sub so I won't go into detail but it's absolutely the missing piece of the puzzle. I try to minimize time from thought to writing, but this tiny bit of extra friction to categorize between "want to do" and "want to know" was a big help.
Curious on other peoples' thoughts on this! I know some people do absolutely everything in Obsidian. What has worked for you and what hasn't in terms of keeping your action items readily at hand?
I use this plugin to solve this problem: https://github.com/shichongrui/obsidian-rollover-daily-todos
Very handy. Thanks!
I am surprised that nobody mentions dataview plugin... The thing about ToDos is that you need a central place to display them. This can be done with a dataview snippet in a ToDo-Note and Dataview is perfect for task keeping since you can add any type of key to your notes and display those in a sorted table as well, e.g. Deadline, Urgency, Workload, Parent-Note.
It's not sending you automatic reminders though, so if you are not habitually checking your ToDo-Note you might benefit from setting a reminder for that and eventually building the habit.
Appreciate the reply! Now that I have my mind wrapped around a couple of the more commonly-used plugins I think I could probably manage it in Obsidian. I do use Dataview for a few different utility notes, like making sure my YAML is properly formatted.
I have definitely seen some nice-looking task setups in Obsidian. Perhaps one day I will try integrating the two again. For right now though I'm loving having a separate spot for my "thought inbox" and action items, using Obsidian as a means to brainstorm and explore further.
Thanks again for the reply :)
Can someone give me, and anybody reading this who wants to know but wouldn't bother to ask, a basic-as-possible idea of what the hell dataview does and why I would care? Or point me to something that does?
I read what you wrote and yes I'm tired but my eyes sort of glazed over. What's the "why it's cool" for people who aren't devs and only know Obsidian basics?
Yes, of course.
Dataview let's you list notes, which contain certain keys. So you can index your notes automatically.
One can for example add
category:anddate:to the YAML and then use a dataview snippet like the following to list all work related notes and sort them by latest:LIST
WHERE category = work
SORT date desc
With more keys you can make more conditions or show more information in a table. For example
deadline:orurgency:in the YAML.You can also check for notes, which are missing information in their YAML through:
TABLE
WHERE !category
There are lot of tutorials and the documentation online, if you want to know more.
I've gone through a similar conclusion myself. I used to use daily notes, dataview, and all sorts of Obsidian plugins to manage my tasks.
I find that I generally like to keep my vault to primarily be a "long term storage" tool. I want to use search to find curated info, not littered with to-do notes that don't add value past it's due date.
I've since migrated my To-Do activities to TickTick, and moved my daily notes to a secondary vault.
It’s interesting to read this as I move my tasks from Things into Obsidian (experimenting)
Maybe l’ll report back and LYK. 😆
I do think it’s important to carve out the cruft. Maybe Tasks/Todos is cruft for you, and some other facet of the app is for another. It’s interesting to me!
I tried to put my tasks all in Obsidian, but I eventually moved to Apple Reminders. Reminders sends me notifications about the task. Maybe Obsidian can, too, with a plug-in, but I don’t want to fuss with that. I also had problems entering a task in Obsidian on my computer and then having it show up on my phone quickly or vice versa, whereas (because I have both an iPhone and Mac) this is not a problem with Apple Reminders. Again, may be solvable with a plug-in but I don’t particularly feel like looking for a plug-in for something like this, no matter how irrational that feeling is.
Last time I checked, Reminders doesn’t have markdown support, and I’m not even sure if it lets me make line breaks. Not great for tasks that I need to write lots of detail about. But those tasks are usually far and few between, because I tend to write down the immediate next step to big tasks instead of writing down the big task and all the details I have to know about it.
@Emotional_Series7814 @nietscape
I like Reminders, too, but can't bring myself to use it as my only task manager. I keep an overview of what I've got going on in TaskPaper format in #Obsidian, and use Reminders of Calendar only for the few time sensitive things I need to keep track of.
FYI you can make line breaks in Reminders by pressing Shift + Return.
Good to know for PC. I also just checked on my phone and it looks like I can also do line breaks in the notes. Not sure if I misremembered things or if they added this as a feature recently.
I manage tasks in Obsidian using the Tasks plugin. Takes a little extra time to input the tasks so I use it primarily for important activities.
I have sections in my weekly notes to list due and overdue tasks. And I have a "task overview" note that groups tasks according to different filters.
I've started tracking tasks for other people (that I need to follow up) by using their initials as a hashtag, I can then filter these in/out depending on what I need to see.
Works brilliantly for my purposes and I have an easy way of seeing any outstanding tasks
I love this! I’m working on it too and have used tools for GTD such as everdo and omnifocus. Learning new strategies for organizing my notes and tasks together but obsidian is robust enough to do it. Just takes setup willpower. Not sure about notifications yet but time sensitive stuff goes in my calendar. Obsidian not only has amazing use for tools but can track habits and journal so well, then give a birds eye view of each area from habits, tasks, completed tasks, and daily logs from a one week to one month etc. Life changing for me as i’ve fallen off the journal bandwagon many times but including it in one app makes it best for me.
todoist
Great minds think alike! Todoist keeps what I need to do on a daily basis, and obsidian holds the knowledge framework that sustains everything.
I've drifted back and forth between keeping tasks in Obsidian via Tasks, and keeping tasks separate in Todoist but connected via the Todoist plugin.
I've finally settled for Todoist for now. I think until the Obsidian developers make good on their promise to make Obsidian task management a more comprehensive, native thing; there's going to be too much friction for me keeping my tasks in Obsidian.
Most of my task capturing is either via email or iOS, neither of which are as easy as Todoist. Additionally, Todoist is much easier to process on mobile.