How do you handle tasks in Obsidian?

Fun idea. Please share if you ever set it up!

I once built something similar to extract tasks from notes and import them into OmniFocus. It worked wonderfully until I got tired of managing so many apps.

Perhaps the nicest thing about the workflow you’re imagining is that a note can be a task - just sub in a link after a - [ ].

Some day we’ll have transcludable searches built into Obsidian, so you don’t need the extraneous interval scrubbing.

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I’m glad it’s planned somewhere in the future. This will allow to make great workflows.

For example, a weekly review:
The weekly review template could have such a transcludable search query that would embed everything under the header # Work Log in all my daily notes of the week.

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Man…it would be great if Obsidian could handle taskpaper functionality. Probably not realistic.

I’ve been thinking more and more about tasks at two levels. The surface level, where scheduling appointments and filling out forms and such live. Then the deep project work, where you don’t want to see what’s in the surface level stuff…and it is more functional if it lives within the app/body of work itself…

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:grey_exclamation::grey_exclamation::grey_exclamation: exactly!

It doesn’t make sense to stuff a bunch of “think about why the sky is blue” tasks in a task manager, then turn to a couple of documents to do that work. The only reason that’s the paradigm right now is because an alternative hasn’t been tried, I think.

I actually think we’ll get TaskPaper-like functionality as a plug-in pretty soon after the API are public. I might build it myself…

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this is my answer to the question: i just embed the web app of my todo app (ticktick) inside an obisidian page using iframe tag.
<iframe width= "1000" height= "500" src="https://ticktick.com/webapp/#q/all/tasks"/>
The only help this does is not having to leave obsidian window to the browser. But to at least some people looking at this post this may just be enough :wink:

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I have developed a system. I use it to manage my goals, tasks, and more. You can check it out here: How I use Obsidian to manage my goals, tasks, notes, and software development knowledge base

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Great post! A completely different workflow to mine - good for inspiration & ideas

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I’ve been using imdone for tasks recently. The scope and functionality is a bit different to a typical task workflow as it is a Kanban implementation but it is the best pure markdown task system I’ve seen fit alongside Obsidian!

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I have extreme aversion to anything that involves clicking around the UI to get a regular task done. So the only thing I’ve found to work so far is to enable zettel notes (I don’t use zettel style notes for anything else) so that I can have a hot key for it. Then making the directory they get saved to automatically a ‘todo’ directory. This way I can use a custom hotkey to create the note, ctrl-a to highlight the title, name the task, then tab to start writing out the next actions and context for the task etc.
This is direct enough to be able to be used as muscle memory.

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mew, this link is brokennnnn, i’d like to read your article :slight_smile:

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I use grep as well. Your prototype sounds amazing, does it already work?

Just letting you know that the link is no longer broken.

Just want to say that this fit perfectly for my needs! Thanks!

The only think that I changed here is to put a width 700 or below. So the left panel of todoist is hide by default. I`m embeding each project ToDo from Todoist, as a clean list on the note related to that project in Obsidian

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In the past months I moved from using Things for task management for 12 years to doing it in Obsidian. I keep a simple set up that does not involve checkboxes etc.

The basic set-up is: for each project (which have their own folder) I have a task list note that contains a bullet list of next actions and tasks. I have a root task list that transcludes those project tasks lists ordered by activity area (company, family, finance etc. Areas are folders in my set-up that contain project folders)

If I have done something from a task list, and its small I merely delete it from the list. If it’s a bit more significant I cut it from the task list note and paste it into the daily log note I keep. It allows me to find them back if needed, and it allows me to at the end of a week get a full overview of things done by transcluding the day logs of the week into a week note.

I’ve recently wrote it up: https://www.zylstra.org/blog/2020/10/100-days-in-obsidian-pt3-tracking-tasks/

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You may want to check out my Review plugin. Instead of cut-paste, you could be transcluding these tasks to your daily note—it provides an easy way of doing so via the “Review block” command.

Transcluding them into my day log after they’re done would keep them in my task list, wouldn’t it? The point for me is that by concluding a task, the location (the task list) shifts to the day log (a ‘done’ list, and other things that came up that day). Maybe you mean something different, I’ll check your plugin!

Oh, yes, it would. I do something similar, but I’d prefer to keep track of what’s been done in a given project. So I transcluse task items to my daily notes, and when I complete them it shows they’ve been finished in both the daily note and the project note.

Got it, thanks! I’ll have a go with your plugin to see how that feels in practice for me.

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Things (the app) always felt like overkill for my simple needs. Honestly, I bought it because it’s pretty and well designed. However, I do need reminders and frictionless input, and so I’m having trouble going Obsidian-only for task management.

This is the setup I’m working on (Mac only):

  • A Tasks.md note with ## Current, ## Someday and ## Archive headings
  • A daily note template with ![[Tasks.md#Inbox]] near the top.
  • An Alfred action that:
    • Appends the input to Tasks.md under the Current heading
    • Appends #task [[Tasks.md#^ref|Task description]] to the daily note, for logging purposes.

During work days, when I’m at the computer with Obsidian always open, this is enough for me; even without reminders, I always see the tasks I need to complete because they’re there in the daily note.

The problem arises when I spend a whole day without using my computer. I lack the discipline to check my tasks manually and I’ve grown used to being reminded.

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Perhaps a Calendar event on your phone to remind you to check?
You could also put time critical todos into your phones calendar as well.
This assumes of course that you keep your phone on you at all times.
It may be interesting to see if a plugin is made to add these for you, though I suspect since you are using alfred, you may have a method at your disposal to automatically add the events to your apple accounts calendar. Us non apple/alfred users will still need to ponder more.

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