Add priority to ToDo items

[markus-bay 1]

Hello all

 

One of the most powerful details with Evernote for me is the fact that I can add the todo tasks inside the notes I take. This turns out to be so helpful later as I can just run a "todo:false" search across all my notes and get a nice list of things I need to follow up on.

 

Now, to take this one step further, it would be nice to be able to add simple priorities to each tasks so that I could run a query on Prio 1 tasks. A simple categorization of Prio 1, Prio 2, Prio 3 would already do it for me. No need to make it too complicated.

 

Let me know what you guys think about that.

 

Thanks,

Markus

 

[s2sailor 2,193]

As a suggestion, couldn't you just implement this priority by using tags and then just add the tag to your search expression?

[markus-bay 1]

Thank you for the suggestion. This works to prioritize on a note level, but I would appreciate a way to prioritize each task in a note. Meeting minutes sometimes contain different topics and I would like to assign a priority to each action item.

 

Markus

[jefito 5,589]

Don't bet on that any time soon. Reminders are note-specific metadata; they'd need to add some specific markup for reminders inside a note that are attached to individual pieces of text (or maybe individual checkboxes, or text that follows a checkbox?), so that'd be a system-wide change, since all clients would be affected. The answer today is to do what s2sailor suggested, and perhaps augment it with a table of contents note that links to the individual tasks. That way, if you have separate meetings to discuss the task load, you can refer to thee individual tasks rather than replicating them (and associated notes) around your various meeting notes.

[s2sailor 2,193]

Another option is to use a dedicated todo application in conjunction with Evernote.  I tried for the longest time to make Evernote reminders work for me but I found them too cumbersome and limiting for my workflow.  I ended up going with Todoist and have not looked back.  I can copy EN links into it when needed and it is multi-platform.  If there were just a few additional changes to reminders, I would have preferred to keep everything in one app, but those changes never came so I moved on.

[Analyst444 182]

markus-bay - Here's another approach. Put only one task in a Note. Or, more explicitly, a Note is one task and the title of the Note is the task description. (Make sure each task description starts with a verb.) Then, use a tagging system (like the one described at www.secretweapon.org). I pasted another variation below. Each row is a Tag.

 

An advantage of this approach is that you can sort your Tasks by Tag and get them in a priority sequence.

 

 

1-DoNow

2-DoNext

3-DoSoon

4-Waiting    (for a response from someone else)

5-DoSomeDay

6-OnHold

9-Done

 

 

Also, there have been quite a few other Posts in this Forum on the subject of Tasks that offer good ideas. Check them out.

[jefito 5,589]

An advantage of this approach is that you can sort your Tasks by Tag and get them in a priority sequence.

One disadvantage to this is that sort-by-tag isn't available on all clients; Android for one.

[Frank.dg 1,385]

Reminders may be cumbersome if not framed within a larger context... by that I mean you can separate tasks (reminders) into distinct priority notebooks. So, at the very least, for example - if one wanted to imitate an Eisenhower Matrix, you could have a stack housing these 4 notebooks, making up a "linear quadrant".When viewing the stack containing those notebooks, all 4 notebooks will appear in the Reminders list. One can then drag and drop tasks between notebooks within the Reminders list or to a notebook in the left panel (on desktop). Here's a post on just that.

 

Another approach could be to create an Eisenhower Matrix (or whatever priority system) within a single note using tables or using the Skitch annotation tools (drag and drop tasks within an image).

 

Although I do not use Evernote for task management, the above posts were an interesting experiment. 

[jefito 5,589]

Yes, reminders (being notes, after all) respond to the current note filter. So if you isolate notes by tag, or by notebook, or by keyword, the relevant reminders will be there as well. I use this all the time.

[D4ggis 1]

I have read a lot of the different old topics regarding prioritizing. I think all of the suggestions just keep you moving task from different priorities all day, With around 200 tasks active with do dates from today to a year from now its a big(if not 100%) risk of missing the older tasks when they eventually are due.

I do the prioritizing by reminder-dates only. If a task doesn't get done in time and doesn't need to be I move the due date forward to the new deadline, if it still has the highest priority I just leave the old date witch lives it on top priority. The BIG fault in evernote is that you can't sort the notes by reminder-dates in the normal view, you have to work in the reminder-field at all times. Very annoying! This is the same in all the aps I have used.

Please fix this dear evernotepeople! Look forward to an answer from someone how can motivate not having this feature! 

Otherwise great program! 

[CalS 5,280]

13 hours ago, D4ggis said:

The BIG fault in evernote is that you can't sort the notes by reminder-dates in the normal view, you have to work in the reminder-field at all times

Not sure but it looks like a Windows screen shot.  I'm not sure what you mean by normal view in Windows, but you can sort notes by Reminder Time in any view.  In Side and Top list views you can add Reminder Time as a column.  With the current release for Windows you can save the view for a saved search.  Below is a sample of my view for a saved search for dated reminders in the next 30 days.

[D4ggis 1]

Yes! With this saved search option I can make the search not show my folder "finished". Thanks a lot! something that would have resolved this a bit easier would be if you could make more "folders", a bigger tree of folders. I don't now why that's not possible? 

[DTLow 5,736]

On 2016-11-11 at 0:13 AM, D4ggis said:

I have read a lot of the different old topics regarding prioritizing. I think all of the suggestions just keep you moving task from different priorities all day, With around 200 tasks active with do dates from today to a year from now its a big(if not 100%) risk of missing the older tasks when they eventually are due.

I do the prioritizing by reminder-dates only.

I also prioritize by reminder date only
I don't use a "Finished" notebook, just mark the reminder as done.

I use a saved search to identify my current tasks (reminderTime:* -reminderTime:day+1 -reminderDoneTime:*)
Tasks are added automatically when due, and drop when completed

[CalS 5,280]

6 hours ago, D4ggis said:

Yes! With this saved search option I can make the search not show my folder "finished". Thanks a lot! something that would have resolved this a bit easier would be if you could make more "folders", a bigger tree of folders. I don't now why that's not possible? 

You are welcome.  Long standing request for deeper nesting of notebooks, search the forums if you want to read the dialogue.  End of the day, EN has not shown any interest in adding the capability. 

FWIW, with almost 32k notes I manage to get by on 8 notebooks (two of which are Inbox and Scans which are mostly empty). Doesn't work for every use case or perspective though..