I must say that I’m very pleased with my current setup within GT. You can really make GT adapt to you instead of the other way around. I’m not a very busy person and my setup is probably very basic but I think it would also work for more complex situations by just adding more tags and lists.
So I have 4 native reminders lists and they work as “areas”; Inbox (default), Private, Work, Project1. Tasks will always remain in one of these lists.
Then I have the following smart lists; Today, Scheduled, Anytime, Someday (I also have the lists Recurring and Location which are self-explanatory).
I have the following 2 tags; #someday, #focus (quick-action switch)
Today
- tasks scheduled for today
- overdue tasks (they are separated by default)
- undated tasks with the tag #focus
Scheduled
- Scheduled tasks only, including today (I always wanted the Today tasks to be included in the Upcoming list in Things 3, at least as an option)
- tasks with a start date within the chosen time period (day, week or month)
Anytime (tasks that I will do but haven’t decided when)
- undated tasks without the tag #focus
- undated tasks without the tag #someday
- exclude the Inbox list
Someday (tasks that I might do someday, e.g. long-term things)
- undated tasks with the tag #someday
- exclude the Inbox list
So when I add a new task, the default “area” list is Inbox which basically contains tasks that I have yet not assigned to an area (Private, Work or Project1) or given a date. So I can easily throw all my ideas and tasks in here with Siri just by saying “Hey Siri, remind me about …”, particularly with my apple watch.
Now I assign it to its area list (Private, Work or Project1) with a switch quick-action and it moves accordingly from the Inbox to the chosen area list.
If I don’t assign a date, the task will also automatically show up in the smart list Anytime.
If I assign the tag #someday, it will instead only show up in the smart list Someday.
If I assign the tag #focus, it will instead only show up in the smart list Today. I use the tag #focus for undated tasks that I want to keep in focus (today) but where I still don’t want to assign a date. This means they will stay in Today until I complete them or remove the tag. Very handy when I go through my Anytime or Someday lists and see something that I want to do now-ish but still don’t want to assigned a certain date.
If I assign a date to it, it will obviously show up in the scheduled list as well as the Today list if the assigned date is today.
I first didn’t have an iCloud list called Inbox because all my tasks should be in one of my areas anyway. So I used the Private list as my default list. The reason why I changed is that want to have an Inbox where I can throw in all kind of ideas and tasks. And I sometimes forgot to change the area of the tasks to the Work or Project1 lists and by having a default Inbox list I force myself to assign a task to its correct area. And even if I forget to assign it to an area it will still remain in my Inbox even if I accidentally assign a date to it. (In Things 3, you can really lose sight of tasks if you assign a date but no area/project, particularly if the date is far in the future, since they don’t stay in the inbox but only show up in the Upcoming list.
I think that GoodTask is amazing, at least for me.