How to choose and structure your areas
We only briefly mention the following in our introduction to task management in Lunatask:
Start with just a few areas, like “Work“ and “Personal“, and only add new ones once you’re sure you need them. For example, you might later decide to create a separate area for movies you’d like to watch so they don’t clutter your personal to-dos, but don’t try to overthink it at first.
We’ll dive deeper into the topic and underlying design decisions in this article to help you choose your areas of life correctly, avoid potential issues, and understand the fundamental purpose behind them.
Why “areas of life“ in the first place?
Our concept of “areas of life” is built on and shaped by two intentional design decisions:
First is our helpful, opinionated, and guiding approach to working with tasks – whether it comes to organization or prioritization within individual task lists, or elsewhere.
We avoid general technical terms (like “lists“) that don’t provide much guidance – while we could simply call them “lists”, we choose “areas of life” to be more guiding and better reflect their purpose.
Lunatask was born out of our own pains and struggles with the apps we used before. There were several, but one was those apps mixing both our “Personal“ and “Work“ tasks in a single main view (usually called “Today view“).
So when we then got to work, the first thing we did was pay our phone bill – unsurprisingly, as it was the easiest task to check off. But that wasn’t the reason we came to the office on Monday – those tasks simply distracted us from what we were actually there to do.
There’s already a tendency to start with easy “Work” tasks to feel a false sense of progress – something particularly challenging for those with ADHD. Throwing more easy but “unrelated” or “irrelevant“ tasks into the mix from elsewhere only makes things worse.
Why “areas of life” help, but not fully solve it?
It comes down to how you may interpret the term “area of life” and how Lunatask means it.
Chores, finance, health – those are indeed areas of one's life, so you might be tempted to add those as your areas in Lunatask, but that would be a mistake, making the app harder to use.
You can certainly do so if done intentionally and knowingly, but for most users, these should be goals or folders within a single “Personal life” area 👈
Lunatask offers an amazing, guiding, multi-layered prioritization system, but you can’t use it when competing tasks live in different areas ‼️
Use this as a general rule of thumb: If two tasks compete for the same portion of your time or attention, they should live in the same list 💡
How to view “areas” and choose them correctly
We prefer avoiding overly technical terms, but think of areas of life as workspaces or contexts 💡
The idea behind areas is simple – to create clear boundaries. When you’re at work, you shouldn’t be distracted by personal tasks, whereas when it’s the weekend, you shouldn’t be stressed about work. It’s simply another way our app helps guide and protect you.
Our lists are designed to handle even hundreds of tasks in an organized, focused, and manageable way, so too many areas aren’t needed and could actually be counterproductive, working against you.
The difference between your “Work“ time and “Personal“ time and the context switch there are clear, so let’s expand on the idea further.
Choosing additional areas
It’s the weekend – you spend the day working on personal tasks in your “Personal life” area, whether it’s chores, finances, or other things. In the evening, since you live with your partner, you might decide to have a movie night together.
There's again a switch of context. As evening arrives, you're not giving time to “Work”. You’re no longer focusing on or worrying about your personal tasks (chores, bills, etc). You’re now dedicating time to “Movies” (and your partner, of course) – your focus has shifted.
In this example, you may keep a list of films you want to watch or that friends have recommended in your “Movies” area in Lunatask, so you switch there – nothing else matters at that moment. Many of us will likely have this exact “Movies“ area in Lunatask.
Take Mike, the developer behind Lunatask. After six years of building and using the app, with 4,268 completed and 948 pending tasks in his Lunatask account at the time of writing, he still has just four areas – “Personal”, “Work”, “Movies”, “Music production”, and that’s it.
On the other hand, how many goals or folders he has within those areas, that’s entirely a different question and answer 💡
Your areas should mirror and reflect how you structure and divide your time. In some cases, such as with “Work“, this may be dictated or shaped by external factors.
Don’t overcomplicate this at first, as it may work against you. Lunatask already guides you, helping you organize and prioritize what needs to be done in more ways than one, even when there’s a lot – so add new areas sparingly, and only once you’re sure you need them.
When at work, your home chores aren't important. When having a movie night with your partner, your home chores aren’t relevant. During the weekend, your work isn’t relevant. When back in the office on Monday, your movies aren’t relevant, and so on – that’s how “areas of life” fit into the system 👈
When you come back from work in the evening, you switch the “workspace” in Lunatask from your separate “Work” workspace to your “Personal life” or “Home” workspace – we just call them areas of life, not workspaces, but the concept is the same.
Again, use our general rule of thumb: If two tasks compete for the same portion of your time or attention, they should likely live in the same workspace – or as we call them, areas of life 👈