Easy filter personal versus work

[robertvandijk 2]

I am looking for an easy way to switch between personal tasks/notes and work-related tasks/notes: during work-time I am only interested in work-related tasks and would like to filter away personal items. I expect most people to share this issue, or maybe I missed a alternative solution.

I concluded that the necessary first step was to re-arrange my notes in two stacks: "work" and "personal", so I did. Now my next challenge is to filter between 'work' and 'personal' tasks, but I seem to need one of the following solutions:

1) Preferred: Add a checkbox to Notebook general settings to mark it as 'personal' or 'work'. This way it would be easy to add a filter to the task menu to filter away personal notes

2) Add stack-filter option in task menu. I'd like to filter tasks between the stacks:  'work', or 'personal'. Now, I seem to be able to filter per notebook, but not per notebook stack: so I need to review my tasks per notebook, which is quirky

 

It would also help to have an extra level of stacks (sub-stacks), but that seems to be a long-shot.

 

 

[Mike P 2,661]

19 minutes ago, robertvandijk said:

I concluded that the necessary first step was to re-arrange my notes in two stacks: "work" and "personal", so I did. Now my next challenge is to filter between 'work' and 'personal' tasks,

There are a number of options. I also think it is stange that stacks don't appear in the filter menu. Here are some ideas:

1. Start by cllicking on the appropriate stack. You have then effectively prefiltered on that stack and you can add further filters as required. However you can't search and then filter in this way
2. Use the advanced search syntax (quotation marks only required if there are spaces in the stack name)

   stack:"stack name"

3. Have a naming convention for your notebooks eg work_item1 and home_item2 etc. Then search for

   notebook:home_*

    

[PinkElephant 8,170]

No view like this at the moment - and the split into personal and work is your choice, others organize their stacks differently. So a view option needs to be more flexible than just that.

To restrict search results, you can use the following syntax in a search - you can exclude a stack as well:

#include
stack:my_stack_name
#exclude
-stack:my_nofind_stack_name

You can save searches and put them into shortcuts to be able to reuse them.

[robertvandijk 2]

Thanks for your suggestions and time. It seems that the search strings you both suggest only work for searching notes and (at least in The iOS version) do not work in The ‘search task ‘of ‘filter task’ search boxes.

i still think there should be an easy way to filter to a certain context. For instance: if you go to  the supermarket you want to filter down to all tasks that have the context: “grocery shopping”. Why not add the possibility to filter down to certain labels? That would give flexibility and focus. Without some way to drill down the Task Feature it is just not good enough for me (and most of us, I guess) and it has all the potential. Look at Nozbe for a (best practise?) example.

[PinkElephant 8,170]

You can create a "saved search" using the search syntax and put it into your shortcuts.

The filters are not meant to build searches you need with frequency. They offer a fast selection, and allow users who won't code a search with the syntax to build more complex searches by clicking the parameters.

[robertvandijk 2]

I think we are talking different worlds here. I am talking about usability of the early access task feature, you may want to have a look at that first.

[buckethead 219]

4 minutes ago, robertvandijk said:

I think we are talking different worlds here. I am talking about usability of the early access task feature, you may want to have a look at that first.

I used saved searches with filters for work and personal task separation with the new early access feature. I keep notes separated by notebooks and filter tasks based on notebooks for work/personal. 

[PinkElephant 8,170]

To get better access to task filtering, I have already asked for an update for the advanced search syntax - both functionality and documentation. We should remember sometimes we are still in Tasks early access, not on a final release status. So far I can live with the fact that not everything is yet baked and dried.