Beyond Simple Lists: My Proven Approach to Managing Complex, Evolving Tasks

Dec 23, 2024

When it comes to managing tasks and projects, many people advocate simple approaches—such as writing down all your tasks in a daily note, or using a single app or plugin to handle everything. While such methods may work for short-term or relatively predictable tasks, they often fall short when facing large-scale, long-term, and highly unpredictable projects. If your project could last a year or even longer, or if it’s fraught with variables and shifting objectives, you need more nuanced strategies.

Below are several strategies drawn from experience, especially with the note-taking tool Obsidian and its associated task management plugins (for example, Dataview, Kanban, Canvas, Tasks), as well as other external tools. These reflections highlight why a single, linear, or overly simplistic method is rarely effective—and what you can do instead.

The Limitations of Daily Notes and Single-Tool Approaches

Unpredictable Task Evolution

Even if you write down your tasks in a daily note, complex projects change over time.

Projects evolve: New tasks emerge, old ones become irrelevant, and some assumptions are overturned as you progress.
Shifting priorities: Tasks that seemed critical at the start may lose importance as new requirements or constraints appear.

Endless Task Migration

When you rely on daily notes, you often try to complete what you wrote down for that day. But in complex scenarios, unexpected events arise: a colleague asks for a crucial email reply, a new project requires urgent deliverables, or unforeseen circumstances demand immediate attention.

Constant rescheduling: Tasks get pushed to the next day, then the next, and so on, resulting in a cycle of merely moving tasks forward rather than completing them.
Wasted energy: This perpetual shifting consumes time and energy—time that could be better spent actually executing tasks rather than managing them.

Over-Reliance on Single Tools

Some people try to rely on one plugin, one note-taking method, or one task manager (such as Dataview, Tasks, or external apps like Todoist). However, as the project grows, you will face:

Sheer complexity: Thousands of tasks can accumulate over the course of a long project. Simply listing them—by priority, due date, or project—does not help you truly understand their relationships and dependencies.
Linear views fail: Traditional lists and single tools don’t easily reveal complex dependencies or help you focus on truly impactful tasks. Marking tasks as “done” doesn’t necessarily mean the underlying objective is resolved, especially if new sub-tasks arise as you progress.

Effective Strategies for Complex Projects

To navigate these challenges, consider the following strategies:

Emphasize Key Tasks

Not all tasks are equal. Among dozens of items, only a few directly influence project progress or final outcomes. Identify these key tasks early on. For instance, if you’re working on a long-term research project, focus on the critical technical hurdles—like designing a crucial controller, validating simulation-to-experiment workflows, or ensuring a testing environment meets real-world conditions.

Outcome-driven focus: Once you highlight the tasks that truly affect your project’s core milestones, the less important or more trivial tasks lose their urgency. This clarity helps you avoid spending time on low-impact activities.

Adopt Non-Linear Task Management

Instead of relying solely on linear lists or daily notes, map out tasks and their dependencies in a more visual, dynamic format. Tools like the Obsidian Canvas let you arrange tasks spatially and draw connections to indicate dependencies. This non-linear representation can show you:

Inter-task dependencies: Understand which tasks must be completed before starting others.
Flexible sequencing: Adapt your strategy as new tasks emerge or old tasks vanish, making it easier to reorganize priorities without shuffling through endless lists.

Use Redundancy to Highlight Important Tasks

Because complex projects generate numerous tasks, you risk losing track of essential ones. To combat this, use multiple methods to emphasize key tasks:

Priority levels: Assign distinct priorities (e.g., four priority tiers) to tasks.
Due dates: Add deadlines to critical items.
Visual boards and reminders: Pin tasks to Kanban and Canvas boards, set calendar reminders, or link them across multiple tasks and notes.

By layering these approaches, you create redundancies that ensure important tasks remain visible and top-of-mind, no matter how cluttered your system becomes.

Embrace Repetition for Ongoing Clarity

Over a year or two, even with non-linear management and redundancy, it’s wise to periodically step back and re-list tasks that are currently top-of-mind. Think of this as a meta-level note—a simple outline of what’s most pressing this week, month, or quarter.

Strategic repetition: Unlike daily notes that force a “must do today” mindset, a strategic outline note takes a higher-level perspective.
Linking back to details: In that meta note, you don’t need full task details. Instead, link back to the original, more detailed task entries. This prevents the trap of endlessly moving tasks day-to-day and instead offers a periodic, holistic view of what truly matters.

Conclusion

Complex, long-term, and unpredictable projects require more than a simplistic approach to task management. While daily notes and single-task tools have their place, they often fall short when facing evolving priorities, increasing complexity, and mounting external distractions. Instead, consider:

Identifying and emphasizing key tasks to maintain focus
Using non-linear visualizations to clarify dependencies and sequence work
Employing redundancy to ensure critical tasks are never lost in the noise
Leveraging periodic repetition of top-of-mind tasks for continual clarity

By applying these strategies, you can move beyond merely “managing” tasks and instead truly drive your project forward, ensuring that the complexities of long-term endeavors don’t overwhelm the essential work that makes them succeed.

Project, Task and Knowledge Management

Discussion about this post