How to jump to different tasks across a very long note?

[BeEfficient 44]

I have a very long note - summary of a book - and I created around 10 tasks across the note.

How can I find these notes most efficiently?

Of course, I can look on the left side bar on taks, copy the name, go back to the note, and search for the task name.

But is there a much more efficient way?

[Mike P 2,667]

38 minutes ago, BeEfficient said:

But is there a much more efficient way?

I think I would include a specific, unique piece of text into each task (e.g. ttt). It could even be an emoji (e.g. 🔴). Then use the find function within the note to jump between tasks.

[BeEfficient 44]

funny, i did it already with a "#task" right one line under the task itself 🙂

however, this is still not a professional solution.

[gazumped 11,698]

28 minutes ago, BeEfficient said:

however, this is still not a professional solution.

Hi.  Have you viewed the Home Page "My Tasks" widget?

[Mike P 2,667]

35 minutes ago, BeEfficient said:

however, this is still not a professional solution.

So how would you like it to work?

[Boot17 1,467]

11 minutes ago, Mike P said:

So how would you like it to work?

Not OP, but I wonder about having a drop down list of tasks from the top-right hand-corner identifier -- kind of like how backlinks works:

So you could click on that 0/1 and it would show you a list of tasks in that note like clicking on the Backlinks shows you a list of backlinks to that note. You could click on the task to be taken to that task in the note. And on mobile, you'd get a popup menu (like you do with backlinks).

Or maybe just some left/right arrows to click on, or keyboard shortcuts to set focus to the next task in the note.

....

Now, having said that... I think this goes back to the "smaller notes and more notes" vs "longer notes and less notes" mentality in note taking in Evernote. I try not to put more than a few tasks in a note because they do get lost and I think (in general) Evernote works better with smaller-notes-and-more-notes than longer-notes-and-less-notes.

[BeEfficient 44]

14 hours ago, gazumped said:

Hi.  Have you viewed the Home Page "My Tasks" widget?

Yes, but this vies does not help.

 

13 hours ago, Mike P said:

So how would you like it to work?

I mean, EN could have decided back in the days when taks was introduced, that ALL taks are on the top of a note.

However, they decided that - when having very long notes - one can put a particular task on a partilar line / section of a note.

Hence, I would like to jump to this particular spot of the note where the task is located.

 

13 hours ago, Boot17 said:

Now, having said that... I think this goes back to the "smaller notes and more notes" vs "longer notes and less notes" mentality in note taking in Evernote. I try not to put more than a few tasks in a note because they do get lost and I think (in general) Evernote works better with smaller-notes-and-more-notes than longer-notes-and-less-notes.

My very long notes are mainly due to book summaries. While doing the summary, I get ideas in the various sections where I write a particular task - which is 100% related to this area of the note / section / book chapter. So i would be great to jump to this position.

 

I wouldn'teven started the discussion here when all tasks would have been on the top of each note. However, since there is the great option to write a task at a very specific line... how to find this line more convinient?

Something like "go to" or "jump to" this taks would be great.

[Mike P 2,667]

14 minutes ago, BeEfficient said:

I wouldn'teven started the discussion here when all tasks would have been on the top of each note

Personally I'm glad that tasks are not automatically at the top. The main advantage of EN tasks over a dedicated task manager is that the taks can be assiciated with extra information, appear at the correct place in a meeting etc. Moving them to the top removes that direct link.

There is no reason why you can't add all your tasks to the top of the note (Ctrl+Home to go to the top of the note, Ctrl+End to go to the bottom).

Obviously I have no objection to a keyboard shortcut, for example, that jumped between tasks. I would also find value in a way of jumping between headings (ie text formatted with "Large Header"). So a "jump to" function like you suggest which included a number of things could be valuable.

This discussion is really part of a bigger discussion about how to navigate large notes e.g lack of internal note table of contents etc. As @Boot17 has already pointed out, EN works best with short notes. These can be linked together with a table of contents if required. EN has never (legacy and V10) shown any great inclination to make it easier to work with long notes.

[BeEfficient 44]

2 minutes ago, Mike P said:

Obviously I have no objection to a keyboard shortcut, for example, that jumped between tasks. I would also find value in a way of jumping between headings (ie text formatted with "Large Header"). So a "jump to" function like you suggest which included a number of things could be valuab

Absolutely!!! Jump between h1, h2, or h3 would be also very valuable.

As you said the general "jump to" function is missing.

 

4 minutes ago, Mike P said:

This discussion is really part of a bigger discussion about how to navigate large notes e.g lack of internal note table of contents etc. As @Boot17 has already pointed out, EN works best with short notes. These can be linked together with a table of contents if required. EN has never (legacy and V10) shown any great inclination to make it easier to work with long notes.

I understand the "more notes but shorter", but book summaries... are not short 🙂

Again, I hope that with this radical price increase, we will get some changes.

[PinkElephant 8,174]

Often requested, not implemented (yet ?).

The best way at the moment is to avoid long notes. The better solution is to have shorter notes, and knot them together by a TOC note. Not what may seem ideal, but it works right now.

[Mike P 2,667]

2 minutes ago, BeEfficient said:

I understand the "more notes but shorter", but book summaries... are not short 🙂

True, but each chapter could be it's own note and then you would have a table of contents note that linked to each note (chapter). 

[BeEfficient 44]

9 minutes ago, Mike P said:

True, but each chapter could be it's own note and then you would have a table of contents note that linked to each note (chapter). 

Yes, but this is not me. I don't know anybody in my friends and business circle who is doing that.

Since "jump to" is missing in different forms, like tasks and headers. And since this would be relatively easy to implement, I hope the developer team will do that in the future.

Until then, I use "#task" just after the line of the actual task and search for this.

[DrFrankBuck 554]

Personally, I would not want all tasks automatically grouped at the top of a note. To me, seeing the task in context with the information which triggered it is helpful. So if I have text that says, "Carol said Bob has more information about the XYZ report," I would want to have a task that says, "Call Bob about the XYZ report" appear just under the text about what Carol said. That makes it easier to know exactly why I am calling Bob. I see the point for your particular needs, but while making that change would help some, it would hurt the workflow for others.

[BeEfficient 44]

Just to clarify, I don't want the tasks to be at the top.

How it is today is great. But imagine a very very long note with tons of bullet points on multiple levels and colors... I have very high friction costs for every single task i search for.

However, I put a hashtag just after the task and it becomes "searchable".

[gazumped 11,698]

Just for information - I don't like long notes.  Too much information in one place is an invitation for disaster - lost or corrupted data,  deleted notes etc. etc.  I hope there's a robust backup situation to avoid that.

However the tasks tab (on a desktop at least) is a list of all tasks,  wherever they are in a note.

I created a long note,  buried three tasks in my Lorem Ipsum text - all tagged with a common title like today's date - and then went to my tasks tab (sorted by title).  I can deal with the tasks from there without needing the note detail,  or I could click on "go to note" to get context.

[Mike P 2,667]

14 minutes ago, gazumped said:

However the tasks tab (on a desktop at least) is a list of all tasks,  wherever they are in a note.

And of course if you go to the notes tab  you get the tasks organised by note, which I think is relevant in @BeEfficient's use case.

It's a shame that going to the note goes to the top of the note, not to the task you have clicked, but I'm not going to loose too much sleep over that.

[BeEfficient 44]

2 hours ago, Mike P said:

It's a shame that going to the note goes to the top of the note, not to the task you have clicked, but I'm not going to loose too much sleep over that.

Exactly this is what I want.

If I have a long note with 20 tasks in it. You can see on the left side on the Windows EN App in the tasks area ALL my 20 tasks and underneath each task the note where it is located.

However, which task I click... I come to the top of the particular note.

I mean I have 20 tasks, all context based on the long text in the note. There is a MASSIVE difference (context wise) of task 1 to task 2 to task 20... why should I always be directed to the top of my endless long note?

 

Again, i helped myself by writing "- task" at the end of each task or "#task" right after a task - a quick but not professional (IMO) - solution.

[Grant837 114]

This issue highlights two of the real functional short-comings of Evernote, that I hope the new owners will recognize:

1. The poor integration of Tasks into the total information database and functionality (eg there is no Task modifier in the overall search, You can not link to or from tasks, you can not add tags to tasks, etc.

2. You can not search and identify and show (eg via a sidebar list you can click on to take you to the content) the location of any results from content modifiers and note formatting (eg: todo's, Tasks, dates, contains items, header titles, table content, etc).

[Mike P 2,667]

6 minutes ago, Grant837 said:

there is no Task modifier in the overall search

I'm not sure exactly what that means, could you explain further. You can do the following searches (and there are equivalent options in the filter menu):

contains:task
contains:taskCompleted
contains:taskNotCompleted

 

[s2sailor 2,237]

47 minutes ago, Grant837 said:

You can not link to or from tasks, you can not add tags to tasks, etc.

You can link to and add tags to the notes that are containers for the tasks.

[Grant837 114]

3 hours ago, Mike P said:

I'm not sure exactly what that means, could you explain further. You can do the following searches (and there are equivalent options in the filter menu):

contains:task
contains:taskCompleted
contains:taskNotCompleted

 

Yes, these exist, but they are general ' buckets' , and there is no way to narrow down the selection, in particular, using text in the Task description, or DueDate,  etc.

[Grant837 114]

2 hours ago, s2sailor said:

You can link to and add tags to the notes that are containers for the tasks.

Yes, but not to the Task...  for example, if I am using a daily notes note, to collect tasks as they come to mind (or  a similar approach to GTD), then that note  is a random collection of things as they come in (outside of structured meetings, or other focus work time) and the note title is irrelevant, and adding tags to the note for each random new task dilutes the effectiveness of the approach you suggest (and dilutes the effective use of tags in collecting relevant information)

[gazumped 11,698]

2 minutes ago, Grant837 said:

Yes, but not to the Task...  for example, if I am using a daily notes note, to collect tasks as they come to mind (or  a similar approach to GTD), then that note  is a random collection of things as they come in (outside of structured meetings, or other focus work time) and the note title is irrelevant, and adding tags to the note for each random new task dilutes the effectiveness of the approach you suggest (and dilutes the effective use of tags in collecting relevant information)

Not sure what we're arguing about here - tasks that aren't explicitly assigned to a specific note have a default note location,  with an option to change that location.  Either way you can 'go to note' from the task.  Tags don't work within a note, but searching there for a keyword from the task itself will jump you there, and further content can then be added or read using the task as a heading.  To 'tag' that task individually isn't possible,  but getting to it requires a couple of keypresses and/ or a search.

Using Evernote's features has only one rule anyway - do things whicheverway you prefer.  If you want to add tags to tasks,  create individual notes for all the tasks for a particular project and link them together with a ToC note or one common tag.

[Grant837 114]

Since you think we are arguing, I am not sure how to respond... maybe later...

[s2sailor 2,237]

5 hours ago, Grant837 said:

Yes, but not to the Task...  for example, if I am using a daily notes note, to collect tasks as they come to mind (or  a similar approach to GTD), then that note  is a random collection of things as they come in (outside of structured meetings, or other focus work time) and the note title is irrelevant, and adding tags to the note for each random new task dilutes the effectiveness of the approach you suggest (and dilutes the effective use of tags in collecting relevant information)

Not as elegant as you want, but if you put one task each in its own note, you can then structure these notes using tags or notebooks as needed. Or one note could be a collection of related tasks ... as a thought.

[Grant837 114]

On 6/23/2023 at 10:45 PM, s2sailor said:

one task each in its own note

Yes, that is a workaround I might consider..

But, it just registered on me that, I can also enter a 'manual'  tag (eg it will not turn up in a 'tag:'  search in the description. I prefext different types of tags with a symbol (eg :personname, or @actiontype) so the main description is still visually separate.  This two is a work around, but it will do for now..

(I will go back to Notion in a flash if they ever implement local/offline storage - it does everything I want, but no way am I going to trust all my information to one cloud storage!)

[Mike P 2,667]

11 minutes ago, Grant837 said:

But, it just registered on me that, I can also enter a 'manual'  tag (eg it will not turn up in a 'tag:'  search in the description.

As suggested in the second post in this thread!

On 6/23/2023 at 4:31 PM, Grant837 said:

for example, if I am using a daily notes note, to collect tasks as they come to mind (or  a similar approach to GTD), then that note  is a random collection of things as they come in

It also occurred to me that there are at least three methods of moving tasks from one note to another

• Simple copy and paste (Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V)
• Drag and drop from one note into another
• Using the move dialogue within the task itself

So if you collect tasks in one note it's not difficilt to move them into a different note that has the correct tags etc that you want to associate with that task.

EN has a different philosophy for tasks than a traditional task manager. Tasks have to be in notes and are not free standing entities that yo are completely free to organise how you like. (Although the tasks pop out does give you different ways of finding the tasks scattered through your notes). It works well when tasks are clearly associated with the content of a particular note (e.g notes from a meeting, project overview etc). It works less well for other tasks. If people want tasks to have the total flexibility of a traditional task manager then @s2sailor's suggestion of one task per note is worth considering.

 

[hashirshabbir 0]

To efficiently jump to different tasks across a very long note, you can utilize the left sidebar to locate the task, copy its name, return to the note, and then use the search function to quickly find the task name. This method streamlines the process of navigating through your extensive note and accessing specific tasks.

[gazumped 11,698]

On 10/2/2023 at 1:18 PM, hashirshabbir said:

To efficiently jump to different tasks across a very long note, you can utilize the left sidebar to locate the task, copy its name, return to the note, and then use the search function to quickly find the task name. This method streamlines the process of navigating through your extensive note and accessing specific tasks.

Hi.  Nice idea,  but doesn't clicking on the task take you directy to its parent note?