Obsidian is wonderful for note taking and recall.
But is it good enough for cross platform scheduling and task management?
I was looking for an ’ all in one’ solution, with local storage. Obsidian looked promising.
Scheduling and task management are not core capabilities of Obsidian. But with the Full-Calendar, Reminders, Tasks, and Dataview, and Sync, the functionality seemed to be covered.
Alas, my personal experience is suggesting Obsidian, and depending on plugins, is not robust enough solution for efficient cross platform use.
Full-calendar has many core requirements, but misses reminders. And while the link to Daily Notes is a key feature, it does not work for repeating events. And I have a situation now where full-calendar is not functioning on one device
Tasks works for simple cases, but also misses key features like reminders. Also, it offers no end-date for repeating tasks. Furthermore, the inclusion of extra data, like tags and reminders, is a bit fickle on exactly what has to go where, and even then it seems to get jumbled up over time. In addition, any project like structure capacity is not built in to tasks, and has to be pieced together using other plugins, folders, MoCs, etc.
The Reminders plugin, necessary to make tasks similar to most task applications, is nice, but it does not sync well, and the values get reset to odd time or event days, without explanation.
Dataview is, as everyone knows, key to getting the most out of data, like tasks and calendars, but, alas, it generally requires a programmers background to use without significant time in learning and relearning to set up any useful query view.
I would love to hear about others people’s experience, solutions, or opinions, to maybe help me find a way to still yet be content and productive using Obsidian for task management, and scheduling.
The way I see it - as someone who has tool-jumped for many many years - your app or tool is not going to save you. If you have problems with other apps, you’ll likely bring those problems along with you.
I don’t believe there is any single magical tool that will alleviate all your problems with organization, scheduling, or managing your tasks and projects. That is going to be partially a psychology/habit/discipline/adaptability issue.
But that’s just me. Some people do seem to click with a solution and stick with it for years.
I find that it is better to find 3-4 solid tools, stick with them for the long haul, and work around their limitations. Hopping from tool to tool isn’t very productive.
I personally love task management in Obsidian. I used OmniFocus for many years for a GTD-style task system, but I fell in love after I started importing parts of my system into Obsidian. I discovered that, for me, a single unified tool for everything was far more powerful than fragmenting my work across several custom designed tools.
There is some jankyness and legwork you have to do to turn Obsidian into a great task management app. But in return you get custom statistics, dashboards, graphs; the flexibility to plan and visualize inside your task management system; and permament (if you so desire) historical records for your work.
It does take time to set up all these systems. But they can evolve with the rest of your vault, and truly your imagination is the only obstacle. No other task tool I’ve tried comes even close to this level of customizability.
I wrote my system specifics here, if you want the details on how specifically I make it work. As said above, YMMV, but it works better for me than any other task app I’ve tried.
I’m using it as a Task/Project Manager and it’s the best app I’ve ever used.
I have a master note which links to the other notes (each one is a project) to have a list of all my projects together, just in case. I also have a folder to archive old notes (projects) and then I use 2 plugins: checklist and dataview.
My obsidian app is divided in 3 panels (saved as a Workspace):
LEFT: using yaml info from each note, dataview shows a table of all the projects I’m currently working on, the producer in charge and project code.
CENTER: when I click on a project on the left, it opens on the center panel where I can type anything I need.
RIGHT: Checklist plugin shows me all my ToDos from all my project in a single panel all the time. I can check them done even if the Project note is not open in the middle.
Everyday I launch Obsidian, hit the shortcut to load my 3 panel workspace and I’m ready to work. When done with a project I click on its name, it opens, then CMD+P, ‘Move Current to Another Folder’ and select the ‘ArchivedProject’ folder. Pufff! it disappears from the list of Current Projects on the left pane.
