Task management is one of those things that can be as simple as a to-do list on a clipboard or as complicated as a JIRA project with “swim lanes”, “story points”, and “blockers”. If you don’t know what any of this means, consider yourself lucky!

As a Notion enthusiast, I manage all my tasks in Notion. Well, except when I use the Reminders app on my Apple devices. And when I flag emails. Alright, enough exposing myself - most of my task management happens in Notion.

However, I must admit that there are much better task management apps out there. Todoist and Ticktick are probably in the top 5, but there are many others.

I personally use Notion for task management for the same reason that many others do - I like having all my stuff in one place. My journal, my content, my notes, and my tasks are all in one Notion workspace. And that unlocks a whole lot of value for me - especially when you get into advanced Notion features like relations and rollups.

Let’s get into the basic aspects of task management in Notion.

The ‘Tasks’ Database

Many things in Notion are driven by databases. Databases are perfect for organizing information in a strict, structured way - and that’s why we’ll be using it for our tasks. For the rest of this article, I will assume that you’re familiar with Notion databases. If not, here’s a good primer.

I recommend that you create a single database to house all of your tasks. In addition, you should create the following database properties:

• Deadline (date property)
• Hard deadline (checkbox property)
• Done (checkbox property)
• Scheduled (date property)
• Hours (number property)

These properties are essential to estimate your workload for each task, assign deadlines, and schedule them. By the way, if you want my simple task database template, find it here.

The Views

Database views are a great way to look at your task list in different ways. I have a few essential views that I use:

• Now. These are all my tasks that are scheduled today. It is laid out as a table.
• Plan. These are my scheduled tasks laid out over the current week. It is laid out as a calendar.
• Scheduled. These are my scheduled tasks. It is laid out as a table.
• Unscheduled. These are my unscheduled tasks. It is laid out as a table.
• All. Self explanatory. Laid out as a table.

I spend most of my time in the ‘Now’ view, where I focus only on the tasks I need to get done today. I occasionally glance over at the other views but I don’t manually plan my work (because I use Dreamtask!)

Creating Tasks

One thing Notion really sucks at compared to purpose-built task managers is the “Capture” step. Creating tasks is a bit clunky - especially on mobile, where the ‘new’ button on database pages is small.

About half the time, I create tasks using an iOS shortcut. The details of this are a bit complex, so I’ll link to this video which explains the process.

Alternatively, you can use Raycast which has an integration with Notion. I have never used Raycast, but others swear by it.

Another way I create tasks is by using the Notion Web clipper. It is a browser extension that works for a few major browsers.

Finally, emails. Creating a task from an email is quite handy, especially if you want to declutter your inbox. This is mostly a failure of mail apps not having enough management features, but I digress. Here’s a good guide on how to send emails to your Notion task list.

Wrapping up

This is just the beginning of learning how to manage your tasks in Notion, so I purposely kept things simple and brief. If you want to get more advanced or have questions about how Dreamtask makes task management easy, feel free to reach out to me at info@dreambyte.ai.