Part 2: Tasks, Events and Reminders

Learn more about:

Welcome to the second part! If you use NotePlan to keep track of everything daily, your Daily Notes will fill up very quickly. You might ask yourself,

→ How do I manage incomplete tasks from yesterday?

Prioritize tasks, don't build bucket lists

That's what you are going to learn today. We will also have a look at events, reminders, and time blocking.

✅ Managing Tasks in Daily Notes

First, open yesterday's note and review everything. If you still have open tasks, there are (at least) four things you can do to manage them:

If you have completed the task, click on the circle to mark it done (shortcut: CMD+D).
If the task is no longer relevant, click on the arrow button to the left of the task and mark it canceled (shortcut: CMD+R).
If the task is still relevant...
- Drag & drop it from the editor into another day in the calendar. Use the "Move" option or keep Shift pressed upon dropping.
- Either reschedule it to a future date by clicking the arrow button and then select a date from the calendar (shortcut: CMD+Shift+D),
- Or cut & paste the task into today's note.
If the task is not relevant now, but is still important, you can leave it inside the daily note and review it later. The days with overdue tasks are marked red in the calendar.

Tasks do not automatically "roll over" in NotePlan, and this is intentional. The added bit of manual work forces you to reconsider each open point and prevents building up a massive list of tasks.

📅 Events and Reminders

NotePlan integrates with calendar accounts on your device (if you don't see your calendar, read this).

You will also see your Reminders with specified dates in the calendar sidebar (Mac) or above the daily note (iOS). Reminders that have no date won't be displayed in NotePlan.

Create an Event or Reminder

On Mac, click into the timeline in the right sidebar to create an event or reminder. At the top, you can choose between "Event" and "Reminder."

On iOS, you can open the menu in the top right of a note, then select "Create an Event or Reminder."

⏱️ Timeblocking

Structure your day into blocks of time. Timeblocking allows for increased productivity, better time management, and reduced stress by breaking down tasks into manageable chunks and assigning specific time slots to complete them.

How? Drag a task from the editor into the timeline and select "timeblock" or "event".

Learn more 📖 here or 🍿watch a video diving into timeblocking.

Want to see up to 7 days in your timeline? Watch in this video how the multi-day timeline works.

It's your turn

Open yesterday's note, review each open task and close it (complete, cancel, reschedule or cut & paste). Then, in today's note, block out some focus time for your most demanding tasks.

In the following email, you will learn how to manage projects which don't fit into your Daily Notes, so you don't have to keep carrying forward everything from day to day.

Pro Tips

Use the shortcut CMD+0 to reschedule an open task to today, CMD+1 to tomorrow, CMD+2 to the day after, and CMD+3 to next week.
Under "Review" in the left sidebar, you can filter for overdue tasks by selecting "Overdue" (more on that in another email).
Instead of selecting a start and end time for a new event or reminder, use natural language to type it into the event or reminder title field, i.e., Meeting at 3pm - 4pm.
Use CMD+E to create events and CMD+Shift+E to create reminders.
If you don't see any events or reminders, open NotePlan's preferences and, under the "Calendars" tab, click on "Request Permissions."
On the monthly calendar in the right sidebar, the days with overdue tasks have a red background.
Create recurring events and set the "alert" field to get reminded about important things. Or create recurring Reminders.

Next up: Part 3: Project Notes and Backlinks →

Jump to: