Last week I posted a video on how to do Task Management in Obsidian, and today I'm arguing why you shouldn't use them. I think there is something inherently broken about how we do task management. There's a few high performance, superpowered, motivated beings who manage to keep an organised list of tasks and work through it every day. Same people who hit inbox zero daily. Most of us aren't like that. Most of us are messy, procrastination loving sloths with bursts of productivity few and far between. I'm one of the sloths. I've started and stopped task management systems way too often. The list keeps growing, I stop looking at it because it hurts to see what's still open, and when I finally do look, most of it is already done. Through my work sessions. So here's the question I've been chewing on since I published the task management video: if so many people fail at keeping a clean task list, is the clean task list actually the best way? Or is it just the "passable" way, and there's a more natural shape we haven't settled on yet? Cars are a good example. They're all starting to look the same, not because every car maker developed the same taste, but because the wind tunnel keeps giving the same answer. Once you know the most aerodynamic shape, every car drifts toward it. I think knowledge management is drifting toward its own shape, and I don't think it has a task list in it. The way I see it, a task in Obsidian can live in three forms: 1. A one-line task, pulled onto the project page 2. A task note, with status, priority, subtasks 3. A work session, where the AI reads the previous sessions on the project and tells you where you left off The first two are explicit and satisfying to tick off. The third one is what I actually use. The tasks and their status get carried from session to session, so there's no list to maintain, no weekly clean-up, no thinking about what's next. Just a trail of work sessions until the project is done. Task list as drag. Work session as the shape with the least resistance.

How do you use tasks in Obsidian? And how do you stop it becoming one uncontrollably long list? Every task system I have ever used worked for about a week. Then the list hits 100, it starts looking like my email inbox, and I stop opening it because it makes me feel bad. I just finished the video on how I do it now, and it comes down to two rules. RULE 1: EVERY TASK BELONGS TO A PROJECT No project, no task. If it has nowhere to go, it does not get created. The list shrinks on its own, because half of it never had a home. RULE 2: EVERY FINISHED TASK GETS A MOMENT OF REFLECTION Before you move on, ask: did I learn anything here I will need again? A process, a set of steps, a link, a way of doing it. If yes, that becomes a knowledge note that outlasts the task. Most tasks earn nothing. The ones that do are what make the next project easier. The picture shows it. Today's tasks point up to their project. Some of them leave reusable knowledge behind. Next time the same kind of project comes around, the knowledge is already there and the tasks start from it instead of from zero. POLL: How do you handle tasks right now? One question for the comments: What do you do with a task once it is done? Does anything survive it?

Information coming in faster than you can do anything with, and that constant feeling of being disorganised... Know that feeling? That was the problem a recent client came to me with. CEO of a small tech startup, liked the Obsidian way of thinking, drowning in volume. Meetings, articles, email, ideas: all piling up quicker than he could process them. Here is what we set up. Every step is something you can start on your own this week, so treat it as a menu. 1. THINK IN PROJECTS BEFORE YOU TOUCH ANY TOOLS We spent two full sessions getting everything in his career area out on paper, then building the structure in Obsidian: areas, hubs, projects. Nothing else until the containers existed. For you: write down every open loop in one life area. Group them. Each group with an end state is a project, each one without is a hub. Filing this year's taxes is a project. Health is a hub. Use the Life Mapping Workbook to do this properly. 2. PRACTICE INPUTS AND OUTPUTS Once the containers were there we spent a session doing nothing but running information through the system by hand: daily note, log entry, project note, work session or meeting note, artefacts, outputs. And then we repeat that MULTIPLE times... Repetition is how the habit gets built. This is the step most people feel they don't need a whole session for. It's also where people waste the most time (ironically, trying to save time and money), because they skip it and then wonder why the system breaks down. A couple of weeks later I ask to see the daily note and it's as empty as my willpower bank when there are Oreos in the cupboard. For you: track something on your daily note every day for the next week. - A gym log with a workout note - The day rating and a one-line summary - 3 pictures from the day - A meeting log with its meeting note - What you ate and the recipes you find on insta or the You of Tubes

Hey everyone, I just wanted to chat about daily logging. I don't know if I'm over logging or under logging, I know all this is subjective. Do you log everything you do all day long? Like 'Coffee with a friend and we chatted about whatever' even though it's not something that would be relevant years from now? Yesterday I had a friend visiting me here in Thailand, and he wanted to hire a scooter so we went around and found a shop. I logged it, but this one could be valid because I might want to know what shop it was one day .. But if something is not relevant years from now, would you log it just for the sake of the weekly roll up, giving you a good idea of what you did that week? What about routine things like let's say you go for a morning walk always at the same place. Would you bother logging it every day? I understand you could log a gym session every day and just note what you worked on though.. What if you just have very quiet routine days for a couple of days? What's there to log? Keen to hear how you all use the logs..

Welcome to The Construct. This is a small group of people who look at Obsidian the same way: not as a note app, but as the place your whole life runs from. Work, studies, health, admin, a business, all of it in one system that makes things simpler instead of adding another thing to manage. If that's how you think, you're among your people. Most of the world doesn't get it. Everyone here does. I built this place because a vault is the starting point, not the finish line. The real system gets built over months, adjusted to your actual life, and that goes faster when other people are building next to you. One note about communities like this: the value isn't in the content, it's in the people. Everyone who's ever got something out of a group like this posted. Nobody who only read did. Reading gets you nothing here. So the first thing to do is say hello. Copy this, fill it in, post it as a comment: Hi, I'm [name] from [city]. I do [what you do]. I've been in Obsidian for [how long]. I want my system to run [work / studies / a business / everything]. The thing that frustrates me right now is [one thing]. When you do, three things happen: I reply to you personally, I unlock the free Obsidian + Claude Basics course for you, and the next person who joins reads yours and posts too. How this place works: - Stuck on anything? Post it in Help. No question is too basic. - Built something? Post it in Showcase. Screenshots looks prettier than descriptions. - Own the Evergreen Vault? You're a Builder: the Builder Kit and the live call every two weeks are yours. Your turn.