Taskwarrior Projects

I went on a work trip to Las Vegas last weekend. I brought a couple shirts from my Design By Humans store, thinking my coworkers might appreciate them. They did! Turns out random strangers on the street also loved them! More than one asked for my business card. I have none, so those strangers needed to walk away empty handed.

I need to order business cards. I need to put together a simple design for them, maybe incorporating one of my drawings. I should find out how much it costs for some cards — depending on how nice I want them. It might be a good idea to create a master store link here on the site. That way I can still use the cards if I use a different store.

This sounds like a project. Fortunately, Taskwarrior can help me track it. I mentioned projects at the beginning of this series. It’s about time I tried understanding them a little better.

What is a project in Taskwarrior

A Taskwarrior project is a name that can be shared by many tasks, sort of like a tag. Unlike tags, each task can only have one project name at a time. This lets you collect closely related tasks under a single label.

Defining a project

Every task has a project field, so all you must do to assign a project is give that field a value.

$ task add +social project:cards order business cards
$ task add project:cards +art draft design
Created task 107.
The project 'cards' has changed.  Project 'cards' is 0% complete (2 of 2 tasks remaining).
$ task add project:cards +money figure out pricing
Created task 108.
The project 'cards' has changed.  Project 'cards' is 0% complete (3 of 3 tasks remaining).
$ task add project:cards +site 'blog -> store master link'
Created task 109.
The project 'cards' has changed.  Project 'cards' is 0% complete (4 of 4 tasks remaining).

As you add and complete tasks in a project, Taskwarrior gives you a quick summary of the project’s status. Taskwarrior includes a quick blurb about project status as you add and complete tasks in that project.

Projects work for these new tasks. They all work towards the same goal, even though there isn’t a clear dependency between them. I suppose I could wait until I have the design, pricing, and link ready, but those other items can be finished in any order. To be honest, I don’t mess much with depends unless I need the reminder.

Now let’s take a look at those tasks. They’ll get lost with all the others, so filter by project name.

$ task project:cards

Since some tasks have a project, Taskwarrior creates a new column in the next report. There’s also a slight bump to Urgency when you define a project.

It’s often useful to see what active projects you have.

Listing projects

The projects report lists your projects with pending tasks, and the number of tasks for each project.

$ task projects

There’s also an entry for tasks that have no project, but fight the temptation to make a project for every task. That can end up making things more confusing.

Subprojects

Notice how I have an “Artbiz” project? That’s supposed to be focusing on ways to make money with my art. That may or may not be a good thing to lump under a project, but there it is.

My cards project is obviously part of the broader “Artbiz” project, and I can show that with subprojects.

$ task project:cards modify project:Artbiz.cards
- Project will be changed from 'cards' to 'Artbiz.cards'.
Modify task 106 'order business cards'? (yes/no/all/quit) all
Modifying task 106 'order business cards'.
Modifying task 107 'draft design'.
Modifying task 108 'figure out pricing'.
Modifying task 109 'blog -> store master link'.
Modified 4 tasks.
The project 'cards' has changed.  Project 'cards' is 0% complete (0 of 0 tasks remaining).
The project 'Artbiz.cards' has changed.  Project 'Artbiz.cards' is 0% complete (4 of 4 tasks remaining).

The period character separates the name of the main project from its subproject. Subprojects can have their own subprojects, but be careful about making your life too complicated. This is still just a single string of text, and a typo can create an unintended new project.

Then again — because it’s just a single string, it’s easy enough to change back with modify.

What does projects look like when you have subprojects? The subproject is listed beneath its main project, indented slightly to show the relation.

The projects report is useful as a minimal project listing, but what if you want more information?

Summarizing tasks by project

That’s when you use the summary report.

$ task summary

The first two columns of summary give the same information as projects. You also get the average age of pending tasks in each project, and the percentage completed for each project, both as a number and as a progress bar!

Isn’t that cool?

I think it’s cool, anyways.

Wrapping up

That about wraps it up for Taskwarrior projects. Oh I do have one more note.

I tried an experiment. Every task would get put into a project or subproject. I thought it would help me categorize my tasks with something broader than a tag. Something like how I use categories here. Then I could use project history to track my progress in these broad categories.

It didn’t work out like that.

Suddenly every task required additional work, limiting Taskwarrior’s utility for jotting down quick ideas. Even after creating a task, my urge to organize had me shuffling assigned projects for existing tasks. And what about completed tasks? Should I assign them to projects?

No. Basically, no. I quit the experiment.

Sometimes a TODO is just a TODO. Tags usually provide all you need to categorize tasks. Sometimes a project is described well enough by dependencies.

Do I still use projects? Sure! Usually well after task creation, when I see the relations better.

What rules do I use for projects now?

• If some tasks clearly contribute to the same specific goal, I might put them in a shared project.
• Even though this site won’t end until I die, its tasks are already mentally slotted into an ongoing project. I reflect that with my Site project, with occasional subprojects for specific goals within the context of the Web site.

That is enough advice from me. Do whatever works best for you.

Have fun! Get stuff done!