Introduction

Welcome to the TaskODrill wiki!

TaskODrill is an open source web application for managing tasks. It is inspired in popular task management methodologies. With TaskODrill you won't have these feelings again:

• That you have too many tasks to do and you don't know how to start
• That you are probably forgetting some important task

TaskODrill is very basic compared with another tools, but it has been designed very specifically to accomplish the objectives above. However, the tools is not the most important thing to accomplish them, it is the process, the workflow. These are the phases that you have to follow in order to obtain the maximum benefits of TaskODrill:

1. Capture
2. Process
3. Do

1. Capture

In the Capture phase, you collect anything that enters your mind. It can be an idea, a task, a project, the name of a book, a film...whatever. When it enters your mind you don't have to decide anything on it, you only have to write it down somewhere. Not in TaskODrill. You don't have to use TaskODrill on the Capture phase. For this phase you can use Evernote, a voice notes app, or any note taking app in your phone. You can also use pen and paper. You don't have to write the idea in any special way. Write it as it has entered your mind. The most important thing here is that you ALWAYS write down whatever enters your mind. If you do it fast, it will be easier to internalize the action.

You are in the Capture phase all the time that you are not in the Process or Do phase. It takes the major part of the time.

Your mail inbox or your job ticketing system (e.g. Jira) are lists of tasks/ideas that have been captured automatically for you. My recommendation is that you process them in the next phase the same way you will process the items that have written down.

2. Process

In some moments during the day you do the Process phase. You can do it two or three time each day although YMMV.

During this phase, you read each item in your Inbox (the place where you have written down everything in the Capture phase), and do two things:

• Decide what it is and what you need to do with it
• Transform it to a task

The decision that you have to take is first to decide if you have to do something with the item or not. If not, you can just delete it. If you have to do something, it may be just information for the future or it may require a task. If it doesn't requiere a task, you can archive it. If you have to do something with it, you have to transform it to one or more tasks.

When you transform it to a task, you have to introduce it in TaskODrill deciding about each attribute of the task. This step takes some time but it is necessary in order to have all your tasks in some place and also for letting TaskODrill do its magic. If you introduce all the attributes in TaskODrill correctly it will sort the tasks in a way that you only will need to worry about the first task on the list. You won't forget anything again and you always will have the feeling that you are working in the most important task right now.

All the attributes on the task form are important, except Length and Priority. You can ignore them as TaskODrill don't use them by now.

Priority is not used? What? Yes. This is a very important concept. TaskODrill don't sort the tasks by its priority, but mainly by its due date. You have to work always on the task that has the due date sooner. It is also important that you don't put a due date to a task if it doesn't have a real due date or deadline. Only put a due date if the task really has a due date, never if you want to finish the task by that date. That is not how it works and TaskODrill cannot sort the tasks for you correctly if you put due dates to tasks that don't have real due dates.

The start date is used to hide tasks until that date. The idea is that all tasks that TaskODrill shows you in the Next Actions lists must be actionable tasks.

3. Do

In this phase, you go to the Next Actions section in TaskODrill and you work on the first task on the list. When you mark it as done you can start working on the next task. If any new idea comes to your mind during this phase just Capture it, but don't start working on that idea if it is not absolutely necessary.