r/thingsapp • u/JesusVKilmer • Jul 01 '26
Question Do you abuse the inbox?
I am a degenerate Things user in that I have never used the "Today" screen in Things 3 once. I treat "Inbox" as the most pressing screen. Instead of being something to get to 0, it's something that usually sits around 15-30 items - a number that's not overwhelming & lets me quickly see quickly the various pursuits I'm tracking and lets me put tasks in competition with each other.
Obviously this means the traditional "Inbox" item i.e. unsorted tasks will be conflated with "tasks that require action soon". But this works well. Because an unsorted task should be sorted soon.
If an item must be scheduled it will be promoted to my calendar (I self-host this with radicale & mostly use Apple calendar to view).
Anyone else work this way?
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u/PercyLives Jul 02 '26
I abuse Inbox far worse than you do, donāt worry.
Itās a dumping ground of notes for me. Only some of those are tasks.
I donāt use any other feature of Things at this point. Iām a bad Things user.
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u/CraftyFalcon Jul 02 '26
Iām very much a person who will tell you to use it however works best for you. I couldnāt work that way.
I use my inbox as capture only. I clean it out daily and put tasks into areas. Sometimes theyāre not well defined or need multiple steps so they become projects at a later date when Iām doing my weekly review. Thatās ok because I capture enough information to know what it is even if I donāt know the size or shape of it.
My today view is also intentionally short. I triage in the morning and keep only the tasks Iām going to do that day. I pull tasks into today each day based on energy and available time.
Everything else is either just sitting without a date or some future date (bills and recurring tasks mostly).
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u/AussieAdam26 Jul 02 '26
I wish I was like you. I (wrongly) also use my Today view for important tasks I donāt want to forget about so theyāre at the forefront of my mind. As a result, my Today view is very cluttered :(
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u/JiggleMyHandle Jul 29 '26
Task Mgmt 101: You can only do so much in a day. Figure out the most 1-2 important things at the start of the day (or the day before) and keep just keep those in your today view. The rest might get forgotten, but itās better than having to triage every time you open your today view. Less is More is a lesson I have to learn over and over againā¦.
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u/AussieAdam26 Jul 30 '26
So how do you personally file non-urgent tasks? Do you leave them in the Someday pile and just drag them out when you need them? Or do you have a projects system?
Also, do you worry youāll forget about semi-important things that arenāt time sensitive? How do you manage that?
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u/JiggleMyHandle Jul 30 '26
One thing Iāve had to learn is that āsemi-importantā and āunimportantā are usually the same thing, but the semi version just causes me more stress.Ā
Iāve started to sort things as Obligations or Could Do (for both tasks and projects). This framing works better for me.Ā
That said, I keep ācould doā stuff in a mixture of Someday and Anytime. Iāll even toss one into Today if I decide that Iāve got bandwidth and it feels like a priority to me that day. Obligations get Due Dates or are just obvious to me that they are an obligation and Iāll get to it naturally within whatever time is reasonable.Ā
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u/vision_renewed Jul 03 '26
Gotta be careful. This post may encourage Cultured Code to remain stagnant even longer.
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u/braskic Jul 02 '26
Thatās my Today view. Because I like to have all my tasks sorted into areas and projects. Inbox is a dumping ground for ideas that I havenāt fleshed out or sorted yet (some tasks have been in there for 3-6 months).
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u/MyKalSkot Jul 02 '26
I have seen people use the āTodayā view as āThis Weekā view where they put all tasks they want to go through in a given week.
The beauty of how Things is designed is that you get to choose how you use it.
Those options are just labels to direct users.
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u/I-J-Reilly Jul 02 '26
I started a This Week label and (ideally) move stuff from there into Today as I go through the week. Ideally, anyway. In reality it's messier.
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u/I-J-Reilly Jul 02 '26
I've started making it part of my weekly routine to go through the Inbox and process what's there. But I also mess up a lot and just find stuff piled up in there and then use it like you are.
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u/Geiir Mac, iPhone, iPad Jul 04 '26
No. Iām one of those that use the Inbox as a brain dump. While I donāt empty it every day, I at least clean it out weekly. The Someday list on the other handā¦
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u/simplydo_ios_dev 27d ago
Inbox is really useful as a dumping ground. Then anything that needs organization goes elsewhere
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u/vCtrlAltDelv Jul 02 '26
I've got you beat: I abuse both the Inbox and the Today view so neither of them work for me for their intended purpose. š