Separation of concerns, or "Why I don't keep tasks in Obsidian" - eviltoast

Just wanted to talk about the only separation I have in my workflow. Obsidian was a game changer for me when I discovered it a couple of years ago. Suddenly remembering and following up on thoughts was a game, and even more excitingly, a collection.

I fell off the productivity bandwagon a few months after. When I returned to the software about a month ago, the first thing I did was identify what went wrong the last time. Aside from going too crazy with community plugins towards the end, I believe my primary pain point was keeping all of my tasks readily at hand. Frequently I would write something to do in my daily note only for it to be lost and never followed up on. I would return to a note and see either a task I had completely forgotten about or a task that was later duplicated somewhere else in my vault.

This time around I have had a lot of success using a different utility specifically for tasks. This is not a Todoist sub so I won’t go into detail but it’s absolutely the missing piece of the puzzle. I try to minimize time from thought to writing, but this tiny bit of extra friction to categorize between “want to do” and “want to know” was a big help.

Curious on other peoples’ thoughts on this! I know some people do absolutely everything in Obsidian. What has worked for you and what hasn’t in terms of keeping your action items readily at hand?

  • Lawliss@midwest.social
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    1 year ago

    I’ve drifted back and forth between keeping tasks in Obsidian via Tasks, and keeping tasks separate in Todoist but connected via the Todoist plugin.

    I’ve finally settled for Todoist for now. I think until the Obsidian developers make good on their promise to make Obsidian task management a more comprehensive, native thing; there’s going to be too much friction for me keeping my tasks in Obsidian.

    Most of my task capturing is either via email or iOS, neither of which are as easy as Todoist. Additionally, Todoist is much easier to process on mobile.