Productivity’s a bitch. It’s a never-ending quest to do more with less. So if there’s a new way us productivity geeks have a chance to become one percent more efficient by switching tools, we do so! Now switching to Tana might well be the very last switch you make for your next task management adventure or todo app. Yes, there’s a proper learning curve but boy… this one’s powerful! Pretty sure you don’t want to get back.

What’s so amazing about Tana?

At the core, Tana’s a note taking app, outliner style. That’s just the start though. Tana has supertags and it is those supertags that turn this app. Into a platform of its own. Supertags allow you to capture information within nodes, in a very structured way, building a very robust and scalable knowledge platform. For you, for your team, for any specific person you give access to a node.

Combine supertags with search queries. And views. And all the sudden, you have the core principles of what an app is. An app within an app that is. You can build your blog writing app in Tana (guess how this blog is being produced). I built my half-marathon training schedule in Tana, as an app. I keep track of the 1-1’s with my team members through Tana. And yes, I use it extensively for todo’s and task management. As of today, I have 2544 tasks (both done and undone) tracked in my to do app. So, in essence, you will never need another productivity app again since you can now just build your next productivity app yourself.

But that’s not all yet. Those supertags I talked about: they talk to each other. So, when in a #meeting node, I can add #tasks. When in a 1:1 call, I can retrieve the tasks I have asked my team member to follow up on. etc. etc. etc. Starting to get the picture? Or am I just making things more abstract? It really enables you to build anything you can think off.

By the way: there’s AI too. But that deserves an entire piece of its own. So let’s get started and unravel how my task management app looks and works.

Core principles

Before showing you the actual app, there’s one more thing I need to do. I want to take a moment to highlight the core principles I adhered to when building this app. Nothing too magic but after having tried many of them I thought it would be good to give the structure a proper thought, look at the bigger picture, before just rushing out something again.

First of all, I wanted one app that contained both my private and work related tasks. I have been in situations before where I used Todoist for home and Microsoft To Do for work and that just didn’t work. So. One app to rule them all. And to be honest, I have not succeeded there. In our team, we use monday.com. And yes, I did built an integration from Monday to Tana but I decided to not actively embed that into my process, for reasons known to me.

Great. So, all tasks in one app. But… I wanted the ability to focus. On work during day. On private stuff at other times. And it had to be easy. Meaning filtered views. And more.

Next, I wanted to embed some of Tiago Forte’s PARA framework, which I think he actually should have written as ARPA, since Area’s are more important and fundamental to me than Projects. PARA’s just marketing. In Tana, I have embraced three levels. At the highest level, I have two domains: private and work. Subsequently, each area is connected to a domain. Marketing strategy is work. Personal development sits under private. On level three, there’s projects. A project is always linked to an area.

And finally, there’s tasks. Tasks can be put both under a project and under an area. Initially, I had the ability to also link tasks to tasks (infinite-level subtasks!!!1!) but that became very messy very quickly.

I never adopted anything like Tiago’s Resources. I am also not a big Zettelkasten fan. It’s just not for me. I could not even finish the “How to take smart notes” book.

I have an extension of the task supertag (extensions?? What’s that??) that is the recurring task. It uses all fields from the task supertag and add one more specific on: the occurrence. Combined with the deadline date, and extra command, it allows me to schedule recurring tasks such as booking my hours, filing my expenses and others.

The supertag structure

At the core, there’s the task supertag: #task. Applying this supertag to a node gives it a nice orange label. And it adds the following fields to it:

• Parent area or Project. A lookup to all active Areas and Projects. Both areas and projects have status fields (active / inactive, or something similar), enabling to include only the active ones in the lookup search query (do you see the power of Tana? Query based lookups!)
• Deadline Date. A data picker. Wat more shall I say.
• Priority. A simple dropdown with four options ranging from P1 – NOW to P4 – Overhead (for the things I really hate to do). I use this to filter and focus, with P1 being the exception to the rule as a priority status that overrules even the domain separation. Combined with the deadline dates, this is a powerful mechanism to really not forget things that absolutely must happen on a given day.
• Someday. I have an ‘inbox’ view that shows me all tasks I still need to process (did I say I also embraced some GTD principles?). Tasks appear there if either the parent or date is missing. Except when the someday flag is checked. That moves them out of that view and onto the someday list.
• And, for integration with my 1:1’s, I have the Team member and Delegated to fields. Team member for tasks I need to do for specific people (which will show up as my tasks in the 1:1 with that person. Delegated to does the same but then puts the tasks on their list. That is, my list of things I will ask them to pick up on.

The to do app views

Next, there’s a bunch of views I dial in throughout the day. All views contain search queries and display things in a particular way. Calendar views for multi-week planning. Simple list views for the things I need to do now. Here we go:

• Inbox. This view holds a table that shows all tasks (across areas, projects and domains) that are in need of more information. Most often a parent, a date and sometimes a priority.
• Now. Whenever the house is on fire and I really need to focus, this is where I go. Only shows me tasks with the P1 – Now priority, across domains.
• Work – Leverage. When it comes to displaying work items, I have moved away from labeling stuff as normal and important. Instead I stick with Leverage, Neutral and Overhead. Leverage tasks, for me, are the tasks I see as ‘levers’. They really push things forward, hence I should focus on them. Another thing I found on the internet.
• Work – Neutral. The ordinary work stuff.
• Work – Overhead. The stuff I really don’t want to do. Most often, this view is empty. And if something ends up over there, it will probably remain there for the rest of its life!
• Home Tasks. My private life is less complex than my work life, so I’m sticking with a single view there. It’s a list view, that groups them by date and sorts them by priority within those groups.
• Work Planning & Home planning. Oh yeah, didn’t tell you yet but in addition to list, table and card views, Tana also has calendar views. These views enable me to quickly reschedule things on my list to other weeks or months if necessary.
• Someday. Shows anything that I ticked someday.

The supertag commands

I only have a few basic commands available on my task tagged nodes since well, there’s not too much to do. Guess what: they’re all related to procrastination. The following commands are available on

• Set to today. Sets the deadline date to today.
• Delay with one day. Adds one day to the Deadline date.
• Delay with three days. Self explanatory.
• Delay with seven days. No comment. Procrastination for the win.

There’s one command I display on most of the views described earlier which is a command to bring all late tasks to today. For those lazy days.

How it’s embedded into my daily process

Most of the time, you’ll start using Tana from your daily node, a dynamic page that updates on a, guess what, daily base. One key feature on its own. In my case, I have added two little things to my day page (which comes with the #day supertag…), being:

• A “Work on” button and a “Work off” button. And yes, they are dynamic and only appear when relevant. That is. By default, it shows “Work On”, which means it is off at that given moment. The moment I click it, that Work On changes to Work Off. Different button, you won’t see it.
• Tana allows you to add pieces of ‘related content’ to other pages (or nodes). In my case, I have added a to do list to my day page. And yes, when Work is off, it shows me my private tasks. And yes, that switches to work tasks the moment I push that button earlier.

In my professional life, a large chunk of my work is unfortunately spent on meetings. I mean, nice people, but boy. There’s so much to do and so little time. Yet, given the team I operate in, these things are inevitable. In prepping for my day, I often go through my meetings, with my active tasks in a separate pane (yes, it does that do) and copy references of the task nodes to the meeting. So that, when I am in the meeting, with the meeting node open, I can see the tasks I believe need to be checked of, require an update or need to be put out to somebody else.

If I am not in meetings and not spending time on my email, I typically dive into my task management app. It’s pinned in the left sidebar so I always have easy access to it. From there, I navigate to the right view and take action on one of the open tasks.

Once or twice a day, I’ll check my inbox, to see what tasks need to be planned and categorized. Throughout the day, I will send tasks to Tana, from a variety of sources. I have automations in place for emails and Teams messages, which end up in Tana via the API. Often I create them through the quick create function in Tana, or I use the mobile app. Plenty of options.

Conclusion

That’s it I guess. There’s probably more to tell but in essence, this is what my task management is all about. What I did not touch upon extensively are the recurring tasks. And I stayed away from all the other entities where I have embedded tasks in, either as a search query. Or as an input mechanism. Both are possible, and it is those principles that make Tana so powerful. But I believe I already said that.

Anyway, if you want know more, feel free to reach out to me. You can reach me on Bluesky and LinkedIn. Or you can send me a message using the contact form on my website.