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The fate of tasks...

fant says:
"shrug it all off - wipe it all clean and you will reach utter stillness" (Marc Aurel, Meditations)

Do you expirence the same as I? Tasks pile up inexorable...

One advantage of impermanence is, that this belongs also to tasks. And the other adavantage is, that RTM has a mighty query feature (aka smartlist).

Here is my pretty simple tip how to get rid of "persistant" tasks:

REQUIREMENTS
Tags: 🐌 (snail) , 💀 (skull)
Smartlist: 💨 dusty
Query:
list:# AND (due:never OR start:never) AND updatedBefore:today NOT updatedWithin:"2 weeks of today"

PROCESS
Review the list every week or so (e.g. weekly review)
Tasks not touched within 2 weeks will appear.
Tasks which have none of the tags above get the tag 🐌 (snail).
The tagged tasks will vanish form the this smartlist, and you can can identify them in your other lists as the slow ones.
If this snail-tagged tasks are not touched again for 2 weeks they will reappear. Change the tag to / or add the tag 💀 (skull).
Now, you can identify tasks in your lists which are about to vanish soon.
Task appearing in this smartlist which already have the tag 💀 (skull) get done immediately, get rephrased/broken down in smaller ones or you bury them with deep grief. I like the last...

Note:
In my setup the list "#" (used in the query) is a smartlist which contains only actionable tasks, so called "next actions"
As I wrote this tip I can't remember why I put "...AND updatedBefore:today..." into the query. Should work without.
Posted at 11:26am on February 22, 2019
fant says:
Sorry, should be ...due:never AND start:never...
Purpose: Tasks which are scheduled should not appear on the smart list.

Thus:
list:# AND due:never AND start:never AND updatedBefore:today NOT updatedWithin:"2 weeks of today"
Posted 5 years ago
brianmury says:
Nice idea, thanks for sharing! I have a lot of old tasks that I never look at. I'm giving this a try.
Posted 5 years ago
emily (Remember The Milk) says:
Hi fant, awesome tip! You're our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week, and we've added a free year of Pro to your Remember The Milk account. :)
Posted 4 years ago
fant says:
Emily, thanks a lot :-)
Posted 4 years ago
lane.lauderdale says:
Are the snail and skulls symbols a new type of tag I'm not aware of, or should I just use the words "snail" and "skull"?
Posted 4 years ago
(closed account) says:
I have the same question that lane.lauderdale has. Are the icons specific to the iphone app perhaps (I did a forum search for icons and saw a few posts or iphone)? I use the web and Android and I'm not seeing icons for tags, though I'd really like to. If it's not an option, I'd like to add that to the suggestion box.

Thanks!
Posted 4 years ago
countdiso says:
Hi Geojono,

I use icons in RTM, whilst using the web version I copy them from https://emojipedia.org/ whilst on the phone it is just the emoji from your phone keyboard.
Posted 4 years ago
(closed account) says:
Thanks, countdiso! Super good information and resource!
Posted 4 years ago
fant says:
Hi, sorry for the late answer.
I meant the emojis as Geojono described. I only wrote (skull) or (snail) because I was not sure if the emojis will be shown correctly in my post.
Posted 4 years ago
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