Elements of a Task

Original: Elements of a task in Noteplan 3 by Rhubarb


In NotePlan a task is a line of plain text in a Markdown file, that may look like this:

* Buy groceries for Alex

Depending on user preferences, containing notes, task states and previous interactions, a task could also look like this:

- [ ] Buy #groceries for @alex >2021-04-24
- [>] Buy #groceries for @alex >2021-04-24
- [x] Buy #groceries for @alex <2021-04-23 @done(2021-04-24)

What are the elements of a task in Noteplan?

Two kinds of notes that can contain the task

YYYYMMDD.md day notes, daily notes
foobar.md regular notes, general notes

Five task states

- inactive, non-task
- [ ] active, open, undone
- [x] completed, done
- [-] canceled, not to be done
- [>] rescheduled, postponed

Appended date and time

>YYYY-MM-DD date tag* only regular notes
@done(YYYY-MM-DD) date stamp only manual edit
@done(YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm) time stamp

*: do not confuse with link (see below)

[[YYYY-MM-DD]] link to day note only manual edit
[[foobar]] link to a regular note only manual edit
>YYYY-MM-DD link* to day note
with target copy
of a rescheduled task
only day note
<YYYY-MM-DD link to day note
with source copy
of a rescheduled task
only day note

*: do not confuse with date tag (see above)

Tags

#foo hashtags
@bar mentions
>YYYY-MM-DD date tag*

*: only in regular notes (see above)

Configurable syntax

Recognize -, *, 1. as active tasks instead of non-tasks. Use * as default instead of - to render task states. A combination of both could create these task states:

- inactive, non-task
* active, open, undone
* [x] completed, done
* [-] canceled, not to be done
* [>] rescheduled, postponed