Happy Friday… er… Thursday!

Quick note:

I’m sending this newsletter a day early in case you’re interested in joining Cohort Seven of AP Productivity. If you get value from the Diagram and Deploy workflow-building method I explore in this newsletter and the one before it, I encourage you to sign up for the cohort. We cover the approach in much finer detail. Join us—we start tomorrow (Friday, 1/13)! (If you’re in my Tana for Tasks course or you’ve been in a past cohort, check the Circle community for the appropriate discount link.)

Blast from the past

…the not-too-distant past. In Weekend Upgrade 25, I presented the “Diagram” portion of my Diagram and Deploy methodology for building workflows.

As a quick refresher, the three types of diagrams—practical, functional, and structural—help you “unbend your mind” by providing a simple way to visualize your workflows. Simultaneously designing and implementing workflows is confusing and frustrating. Diagrams help clarify your thinking.

That last newsletter presented diagrams designed in Obsidian’s Canvas tool. This edition includes mostly screenshots from my productivity tool of choice, Tana.

💡 Deploy your Diagram 💡

👆 That’s your weekend upgrade.

We left off last edition with this Structural Diagram for my Task Management Hub, the core workflow of my Hub & Subsystems architecture.

In the diagram, I establish the Tana supertags required for the workflow, and I include details about the supertags’ fields and the relationships between them. From here, I’m ready to create the system in Tana!

For the remainder of the newsletter, I will detail how my Structural Diagram becomes my Tana Task Management Hub. You’re welcome to use aspects of the system I create, but my larger goal is to provide you an example of how you can create and adapt your own Subsystems. (Which, of course, we explore in far more detail in AP Productivity Cohort Seven!)

Deploying the Task Management Hub

The User Manual

This is the “User Manual” of my Task Management Hub in Tana. In it, I list every supertag the system requires, along with the description of each. If you compare this to the Structural Diagram above, you’ll see that every required supertag is accounted for.

As a side note, I don’t create a Subsystem User Manual first. I do it near the end of the process, when I’m mostly sure I have the setup the way I want it. I only present it first to help orient you, and to draw the parallel between this and the Structural Diagram above.

The Core Supertags

#day

My #day supertag is where the Agenda and Log live. My Agenda is where my tasks meet my time. There’s a Calendar where I list my events—appointments, meetings, anything with a set time attached. Then there are four queries that find nodes tagged #todo: one for Today’s Recurring Tasks, one for Today’s Scheduled Tasks, one for Overdue Tasks, and one for todos I’ve assigned to the “This Week” Horizon.

When I’ve chosen my work for the day, I assemble the Agenda by slotting the todos into gaps between my events. I make sure the todos "make sense”—that if I’m in my office, for instance, they’re tasks I can do in my office. Then as the day progresses, my Agenda becomes my Log as I track what I actually do. Sometimes that’s a pretty close reflection of what I planned, sometimes it isn’t!

#todo

My #todo supertag is the most critical entity in the Task Management Hub. Almost all the queries are searching for todos of some variety or another. The four queries I listed in the #day supertag are geared mostly around dates. But I also have a Tasks Dashboard with queries that draw on Available, Deferred, and Delayed Horizons.

Note the Associated bin, project, or goal field. This is a relationship. All tasks are assigned to a particular #bin, #project, or #goal, and then can be accessed and filtered by queries related to that “higher level" entity. Because that assignment happens at the #todo level, it only takes two seconds to assign. You can do that when the task is created, no matter where in your Tana workspace you create the task!

#project (and #bin)

These two tags serve a similar function, though the information associated with them differs. #bin is a simple container for todos related by category—think “Home & Auto” or “One-off Work Tasks.”

The #project supertag extends #bin and adds additional context. Above you’ll see Due and Start Dates and Associated goal, but in a more complex project you could have a Project History, Resources, Clients/Collaborators, and anything else you need. Tasks assigned to a project are all aligned toward a specific outcome.

#event

The simple #event supertag is for generic events, and also serves as a basis for and tags that extend it, like #meeting or specific types of recurring events. By default, events have a date (assigned by the Day Node the event is on) as well as Start and End Times and a Location.

When I prepare my Agenda & Log each #day, I start with the list of events. It helps me structure the day by working in and around the already-scheduled appointments.

Recurrence Supertags

The deeper magic of Task Management begins with these supertags, which capture recurrence so your work becomes more efficient, effective, and accurate.

Recurrence can exist at three levels: individual task (Recurring Task), process (Procedure), and project (Project Template). All three are powerful by themselves, but are especially useful as the gateway to Subsystems. (Subsystems, as you’ll recall, are explored in depth in Cohort Seven of AP Productivity!)

#recurring task

It’s likely that Tana will soon simplify Recurring Tasks by creating a native version, but until then, my version that leverages the Day of Week, Month, or Year will suffice. Recurring Tasks ensure you stay on top of the little tasks in your work and life, and provide a tool for reminders and preventative maintenance as well.

For Subsystems, Recurring Tasks are the “activator.” They remind you to engage with your various Subsystems so you don’t create a workflow and then never use it.

#procedure

The #procedure supertag provides simple checklists for recurring processes. Whenever you create a new procedure, instead of using the #procedure tag directly, I extend it with a new dedicated supertag. I have a #Sunday morning checklist for work I need to do between Masses at my church music job. I also have a #BNI Weekly Meeting procedure (which also extends #event) that contains the checklist for getting that meeting started.

#project template

My #project template supertag is similar to the #procedure tag, in that I extend it rather than use it directly. I create this newsletter with the #Weekend Upgrade supertag. My templates extend both #project (for the project fields) and #project template (for the field that contains the template’s tasks).

The Subsystem Creation Process

This is an awfully clinical edition of the newsletter, I realize. But if you pair it with Weekend Upgrade 25, you now have a method for creating workflows in Tana from scratch.

One last note: Workflow creation is not a strictly linear process. Frequently I’ll work back and forth between phases of the diagrams or between the Tana implementation and the Structural Diagram. It’s an ebb and flow of understanding between the visual map of the subsystem and the actual implementation.

So if you give this a try and get stuck, don’t hesitate to bounce back and forth between working in an outliner like Tana and sketching visual relationships on a whiteboard like Obsidian Canvas. (And if you’re really stuck… maybe join Cohort Seven? 😊)

What do I do next?

(1) Take 2 minutes and answer this question: What’s one thing I learned in this newsletter that I can put into practice right away?

By committing to a specific action, you make it much more likely you’ll do it.

(2) Build a Tana implementation of the workflow you diagrammed for last week’s newsletter.

Work back and forth between Tana and the Structural Diagram until you have a working Subsystem!

If this was valuable for you:

Share the newsletter with someone you think would also get value from it! https://rjn.st/weekend-upgrade-newsletters.

Until next time, friends:

Diagram and Deploy—your workflows will thank you by being way more effective!

R.J.
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