productivity

Designing a Simple Task Tracking System

Taskdown is an ultra-lightweight rapid entry methodology for tracking, analyzing and focusing on tasks. Inspired by Markdown, Kanban and Bullet Journal's notation format, Taskdown synthesizes technology, simplicity and flexiblty into a holistic productivity system.

Principles

  • Technology driven (but barely)

  • Simple-Fast

  • Flexible

Technology driven

Taskdown uses a Markdown-like syntax that encourages rapid entry, readability and leverages all the advantages of text based editors like cut and paste and the ability to render in different formats.

Simple-Fast

All you need is a text editor. No pens, pencils, paper, notebooks, rulers or any other implements required. Taskdown is low friction and faster to edit than traditional pen-and-paper based systems.

Flexible

Taskdown is, ultimately, an open-ended system of components for constructing a personalized task manager. It can be easily extended and adapted using the parts of the system you need and ignoring the parts you don't need.

Components

Task

- [ ] a thing to do

States

Mapped to Kanban

Tag

`tag`

examples

  • `taskdown`

  • `design`

  • `code`

Annotation

(annotation)

examples

  • (low priority)

  • (!!!)

  • (for `project x`)

Date Header

> ### date-time

examples

  • > ### 07.11.20

  • > ### July

  • > ### Afternoon

Section

## Section Title

examples

  • ## Active Projects

  • ## Backlog

  • ## Weekly Tasks

Document Title

# Document Title

examples

  • # Jim's Tasks

  • # July's Todos

  • # My React Project

Putting it all Together

How I implement taskdown composing the elements into a daily task tracker with a lightweight process.

Sections

  1. Projects

  2. Backlog (Task Pool, The Pool)

  3. Daily Tasks

Project Tags

A simple way to organize ongoing projects or groups of tasks. The big picture things I'm working on from a 10,000' view.

examples

  • - `taskdown`

  • - `hideouspixels`

  • - `jimlears-web`

Backlog

The backlog is a pool of future tasks that serve as reminders of what I eventually want to schedule and bang out.

Daily Tasks

The things I want to get done today.

examples

Process

Having a process that emphasizes intentionality creates habit and discipline, keeping my lists manageable and focused. A daily tempo lends itself to constant continuous, course correction which works well for me.

  1. Every morning I make a quick evaluation of my backlog and the previous day's tasks, moving what I need to punt to the backlog [<] or continue working on today [>] to their respective sections.

  2. I set up my task list for the day, with a date stamp, ordered by how I want to knock them out. I try to limit my list to 3-5 tasks so I focus on what matters most with a higher chance of completion.

  3. Throughout the day, I mark off completed tasks, add new tasks to the backlog or my task list, keeping my lists sorted and order.

Example