Managing Projects with Shortcuts

This guide follows one real setup: a librarian who runs an annual series of training conferences. Every site gets the same 150-odd tasks (reservations, print material, badges, and so on), and the only way to keep that many tasks from drowning Today is to give each one a start date and let Kan Do hide it until then. The same ideas work for any project that repeats with small variations: product launches, events, onboarding, audits.

The pieces are all in the app already. This page shows how they fit together, and how a few shortcuts turn an hour of dragging into one tap.

#1. Give every task a start date

A task with a Start Date stays out of Today and Upcoming until that day arrives, then shows every day through its due date. See Dates and Repeating. For a big project this is the whole trick: a task you can't act on for six weeks doesn't exist yet as far as your lists are concerned.

Set start dates in the task's Fields sheet, or let a shortcut do it. The Add Task and Edit Task actions in the Shortcuts app accept Start Date, Start Time, and Start Date & Time, so a shortcut that creates a site's task list can set every start date relative to the event date: Event Date − 45 days, Event Date − 30 days, and so on, using Shortcuts' Adjust Date action.

#2. A "Started" smart list

Today only shows tasks that are started and due or dated for today. If you want everything that has started and isn't finished, whatever its due date, make a smart list:

1. Sidebar ▸ Smart Lists ▸ New Smart List.
2. Name it Started.
3. Set Start Date to Started.
4. Optionally add Projects or Spaces to keep it to one conference.

That's it. Open tasks whose start date is today or earlier, nothing else. Not Started Yet and Starts Today are the companions: one list for what's coming, one for what just opened up. Details in Custom Smart Lists.

#3. Tag by type of work

Tag each task with its kind of action: Reservations, Print, Badges, Catering. Tags cut across projects, so "every print job for every site" is one tap in the sidebar, and they are what the shortcuts below use to pick tasks. See Tags.

If you keep a master project as a template, duplicate it for each new site (Project ▸ Duplicate) and the tags come along.

#4. Build an action board with a shortcut

An action board is a project with one column per kind of work, so a site's board reads Reservations ▸ Print ▸ Badges ▸ Catering, left to right. Here is a shortcut that builds those columns and moves the tagged tasks into them:

1. Choose from List: Reservations, Print, Badges, Catering (the tag names, which will also be the column names).
2. Get Tasks: Project = the site's project, Tags = (none yet).
3. Repeat with Each over the chosen names:
   1. Add Column: Project = the site's project, Name = Repeat Item. With Reuse Existing on (the default), running the shortcut twice never makes duplicate columns.
   2. Get Tasks: Project = the site's project, Tag Names = Repeat Item.
   3. Repeat with Each over those tasks ▸ Edit Task: Task = Repeat Item, Column = the column from Add Column.

The Column field on Edit Task accepts the column variable from Add Column directly. If you would rather pass text, use Column Name instead: the task moves to the column with that name in its own project.

#5. A date-range board

For a board that answers "what is late, what is this week, what is next month", make columns for the ranges and let a shortcut file tasks into them by due date:

1. Add Column four times, or a Repeat over the names: Past Due, This Week, Next 2 Weeks, Next Month.
2. Get Tasks: Project = the site's project.
3. Repeat with Each task:
   1. If Due Date is before Today ▸ Edit Task with Column Name "Past Due".
   2. Otherwise If Due Date is before Today + 7 days ▸ Column Name "This Week".
   3. Otherwise If Due Date is before Today + 14 days ▸ Column Name "Next 2 Weeks".
   4. Otherwise ▸ Column Name "Next Month".

Run it every Monday with a Shortcuts automation and the board re-sorts itself. The task's own due date and start date never change, only its column.

#6. The full picture

• Project per site, duplicated from a master.
• Start dates on everything, set relative to the event date by the shortcut that creates the tasks.
• Started smart list for the daily view, Today for what is due.
• Tags for the kind of work, which also name the columns.
• Add Column + Get Tasks + Edit Task to build action boards and date-range boards on demand.

Every action and field is listed in Shortcuts. The actions also run from the Mac's menu bar, the Action Button, and Siri, so the whole thing works without opening the Shortcuts app once it is built.