Dynalist is my most important workbench, but it lacks one special feature - a dashboard.
A dashboard for me is a place to plan my day (less often week, month and year). I need to check on whatâs due today and structure my time. A key to this is being able to manually sort tasks so that I can construct a working day. The most important tasks may be something I do at the end of the day when time is more open-ended. As Iâm working, I can then quickly check what needs to be done next, as it rises to the top of the list.
With Dynalistâs improved due dates feature, it is possible now to give an item a recurring date. But still, a search by todayâs date will usually create a view with items scattered across the list which cannot be ordered. You can create a new heading for today and manually copy the link across for each due item, but that is cumbersome.
Thankfully, we have @Piotrâs Powerpack 3. With it, you can generate a neat Agenda list of due items, though that cannot be sorted. Actually, the key advantage for me is the Workspaces feature, which enables you to create work panes that can contain external sites.
Iâd been occasionally using Todoist for tricky recurring items that couldnât be integrated into Dynalist. The recent new feature of recurring items paradoxically pushed me back to Todoist as it was so much better at natural language and recurrences such as âfirst saturday of monthâ. But then I inevitably came up against its limits, particularly its stubborn refusal to have manual sorting in filtered views (like Google, it relies too heavily on the algorithm).
Then I found TickTick, which not only has manual sorting, but also checklists within repeating tasks. What I can do now, thanks to Piotr, is create a workspace with the left pane set to - https://www.ticktick.com/#q/all/today. I can then use that as my dashboard throughout the day.
Itâs not perfect. Unlike the internal date items, links open in a separate tab rather than in the adjacent pane. But as a hybrid model, itâs looking to be a very workable way of getting through the day.