snsokstan

@PinkElephant On EN for Mac, this is a daily annoyance. To open a pinned note on the Home dashboard, I have to click on the ellipsis in the upper right corner then click on Open Note in New Window. I go to this note multiple times per day For simplicity there should be an option for single or double click anywhere on the pinned not to open it. Having to click on a certain square centimeter on a 27" screen is not good UI/UX.

Thanks. That visual is very helpful. So this note indicates whether you've done your journal, checked weather, etc but isn't the place that info is kept. I'm trying to do everything in one daily note: My plan was to use a daily planner/calendar/meeting minutes note that I would archive each day as a journal entry. Undone things would carry to the next day but it would be otherwise fresh.

@DTlow Would you be willing to share a blank daily planner note template? Seeing what you've done successfully will be instructive.

I'd love to see how you configure your daily planner note and where in EN you keep it.

@DTlow Still thinking about that. Right now, the steps to complete a project are just checkbox todos.They only become tasks when moved to a unique note. What I haven't figured out is how to structure a Project note in such a way that I know what project needs what work on a particular day. I am trying reminders for that. The solution to that is David Allen's GTD weekly review on a Sunday night (which usually gets prioritized behind Netflix). My projects and task notes are tagged to "personal" or any one of several companies I consult for. So when I sit down to do work for one company, a Saved Search only shows the projects for that company.

@Mishkafofer Thanks for sharing the template. You are more organized than I am. I will give it a try for one of my current projects.

So I am a few weeks into using a separate notebook (called !TASKS) and a note for each task but not using the formal "task" functionality. One thing I missed was a way to sort tasks by priority. Tags couldn't do that. I needed a better way to prioritize. So I started prepending each note title with a symbol. I used ! for high priority, & for medium and so forth. The idea was to have the list sort by priority by just sorting the notebook A-Z. But that looked weird. What I've done is prepend each note title with a colored square symbol as in the attached screen snip. In MacOS, an A-Z sort on these symbols conveniently sorts them red, then yellow, then green then purple then brown. That fits my prioritization of high, medium, low, waiting for and project. In a Projects note, I use a series of todo checkboxes to create the necessary steps. Then I just copy then next-up todo to its own note when it's ready to be a task. I use my text expander program (Alfred in my case) to let a simple keyboard shortcut to quickly produce the symbols. @DTLow thanks for your ideas about a dedicated notebook and notes as tasks..

@cgkCurious why you don't use OneNote if you are in a microsoft ecosystem. I love the way you can arrange a OneNote page with multiple items and move stuff around. A few years ago i worked for an employer using Windows and almost abandoned EN in favor of OneNote. I stopped trying when the conversion process couldn't bring everything across.

So I've revised my to-do strategy for the umpteenth time and am using a separate EN note à la @DTLow for each task and project and I keep them in a dedicated notebook. I'm using internal links in EN to connect tasks to resources (or using my own version of Zettelkasten I mentioned here). One obstacle: I assign a priority tag to each task, from "!!!!" to "!!!" etc. That makes it easy to filter by priority. For a global view of all my tasks, I open the Tasks Notebook. Here's one issue. You can't sort by tag to display them according to priority. So I've taken to adding symbols to the title of each task that allow and A-Z or Z-A sorting of the task notes. These do a nice high-to-low sort: !!! Rake leaves & Buy soap $ Read that book

@UConnFan Not clear what "filters api" means. Google didn't help find a "filters application programming interface"

@Mishkafofer Using a saved search for find updated tasks is a nice idea. Do you put reminders/due dates on your project page or your task page?

I think I get it. My confusion may be around the difference between a generic task @DTLow and an Evernote "Task Feature" (embedded task block). I tried way back using notes as generic tasks but never developed the fluency to easily sort, re-sort, change priorities, etc. Time to try again. So @idoc going back to top of thread, are you using the new Embedded Task Feature and if so, are you using embedding those task within a note that's just details of the task? Or as you adding an embedded task block within regular EN notes that contain more than just task details?

My task list search box won't find tags in notes unless I manually append the tag name to the task. I am not understanding whether you are using a dedicated set of notes, tagged as above, and then filtered in the main EN window. Or are you embedding an EN task inside each of these task notes and filtering in the new task functionality? Screenshot attached to illustrate my question.

Can you amplify on that? I also use tags for projects but I don't see how to generate a filtered task list. @DTLow

I am an EN user since March 2008 and it's organized my life ever since. Except for tasks. I've tried 3 times to make it my task/project manager and I just can't get with the UI/UX. The flyout task manager "bar" is just too little real estate. Adding the ability to resize the task fly-out to most or all of the screen would be a major UX improvement. I love having tasks associated with notes. But sorting by notes in the task column just clutters up the column. I want more ability to sort by task and have the note be under the task rather than the current reverse. We need the ability to drag tasks up and down on the list. That's a critical need. Sometimes at the beginning of hte day or during the day, you gotta move tasks up simply and quickly. You can drag a task out from under the associated note in the task fly-out but I don't understand the utility of doing that. I use tags on my notes extensively as I consult for a number of companies. How about the ability to filter tasks by tags in the notes that contain tags. I've never found a task manager that allows me integrate EN nicely. You are almost there. Is there a discussion group on improving Tasks in EN?

@patnpm Thanks. That's actually what I have been doing as I am also a Drafts user. I did have some trouble getting the Drafts action to work flawlessly on iPad, iPhone and MacOS. I was trying to simplify things by doing it directly in EN. Having the new multiple scratch pad functionality in EN seemed like a good replacement. I follow the Drafts Forum and someday I will understand the depth of the program.

@PinkElephantThis note doesn’t grow by the day. It’s just the stuff I will be using on a particular day. I edit it at the end of the day, removing what I don’t need and adding what I do. I just want to capture and memorialize what’s there before I edit it.

@DTLowI've tried every which way including starting a new note each day and I just can't make it a habit. Personal productivity is like clothing--no one size, no one color fits everyone. So that's why I just kept that scratch pad open throughout the day, adding and removing items, reminders, todos, etc. That's been very useful for my needs except I don't memorialize the note each day. I've tried dozens of task managers, journaling apps but I always come back to EN. I tried several EN templates but never got to what I want.

I love Scratch Pad (except for some limitations like too little capacity). I created a second instance of Scratch Pad widget that I call my "Daily Note." I want to keep a flowing journal using my scratch pad "Daily Note". At the end of each day, I would save it as a point in time in my Journal folder. I want the note to persist in scratch pad so I don't have to copy/paste it back in. In other words, my daily note becomes immortal but I save a snapshot each day. Oh, and @EverNote, if I have a second instance of the Scratch Pad widget open and entitled "Daily Note" , PLEASE save it to a note entitled "Daily Note" and not "scratch pad.",

@DTLow Much better view. Thanks.

Throughout my day, i go back to my overall task list--the one that slides out in the desktop app when you click on Tasks Early Access. To me, that view is cluttered as it's broken up by the headers of each note that contains a task. To see it all is 3 presses of the PageDown key for me Seeing a list of just the tasks would be nice. I love the ability to add tasks to notes. That's powerful. I just miss that consolidated 30,000 ft view that other task managers offer. UI/UX is an important feature. That's why I've been with EN since Mar 2008 despite all the competitors.

Yeah, that was very helpful. My search for this topic didn't turn up this thread. Ian left this comment that isn't clear to me. Tasks created without starting a note first go into the Things to Do note. Yes, I can add text or whatever below or above a task but that just makes more clutter. Someone that other thread didn't like the clutter UX of the default task list. Thanks for the advice. If there were a perfect task manager, there wouldn't be a bazillion task/GTD apps out there.

Thanks. I understand the design. I only wish it were a little different. My hope was to be able to have a bit richer content in the task view. I like seeing all the tasks at one time, regardless which notebook they are in or if just in the inbox. But I find the current display--fragmented by location of task--to be less helpful. I don't see the ability to prioritize/move up or down tasks in the all tasks view. You can move them within the note they occur. A master sortable list would be nice.

I keep sensitive documents outside of Evernote (at their recommendation). I would like to link an external documents to a task related to that document by copying the path to the document into the task. However, tasks don't seem to offer more than one line of text and they get kind of ugly when pasting in a long operating system path to the external documents. I know I can embed a link back to EN from within the folder containing those documents but that's not the desired direction. So any way to include text otherwise in a task or as a subtask?

I have been using the Evernote Folder Import action on my Mac. Once the file is imported, it's deleted from the Import folder. With the new Import Folder, it looks like now I will have two copies of every file until I delete the file from the Import Folder. So far it looks like a one-way sync; the file stays in EN after deleting from the folder in Finder. Is that correct?