Now / Later

Our simplest workflow with sections. It serves as a default workflow upon which our more advanced workflows are built, like our Kanban or Must/Should/Want workflows (think of them as extensions of this workflow).

In this workflow, tasks live in two buckets called Now and Later. Now bucket is where you keep tasks to work on now, while Later holds candidates to work on in the future.

tip

Use Shift+Arrow Right and Shift+Arrow Left shortcuts to quickly move tasks between sections.

How to add your tasks

There are three ways to create a new task:

• Click the big blue "add" button at the bottom of the menu on the left
• Hover over the name of any section, and the button to add a new task into the section will appear
• Press A on the keyboard. Alternatively, CMD+N (on Mac) and Ctrl+N (on other platforms) work as well.

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In area settings, you can change the initial status for newly created tasks. By default, it is Later, but it can be switched to Now. This is useful when you have a long backlog of tasks in Later you don't intend to work on in the near future.

Prioritization

This workflow features our signature automatic prioritization. Tasks in each bucket are sorted first by their assigned priority, then by their age.

As in other workflows, start working on tasks from the top. If you have trouble getting started on a task, try starting a timer.

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To quickly increase a task's priority, use Shift+Arrow Up keyboard shortcut.

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No need to look at tasks that are not relevant now — once you plan the tasks to work on next, collapse Later section by clicking its name. This works for all sections in all workflows.

info

The task with the highest urgency will be highlighted in bold in the list as the next task to work on. This can be disabled in the settings.

Work-in-progress limit

This workflow follows the work-in-progress limit when enabled and configured in the settings. A warning will show when there are too many tasks in Now section.

Estimation

To see the sum of estimates for all the tasks in a particular section, hover over the section name and the total time will show.