Things' Review Perspective
The last thing I can fix on my list of missing things in Things was the Review Perspective.
I had a lot of attempts but was never really satisfied with the solution.
It mostly was a variation of tagging all projects and then reveal that tag.
At the end of last year it clicked for me. Instead of creating a view in Things I could just open one project after the other and review that one.
With an Action Button (or Back Tap) the ergonomics are also not bad.
It’s also nice that there is no local state. All state lives in Things. So it’s possible to switch devices while reviewing or interrupt at any point and resume later.
How it’s implemented
As a first step I want to clear out my Inbox. So I check whether the Inbox is empty otherwise the Inbox is opened.
Then for the review I use the tags Reviewed, In Review and Not Reviewed.
Ideally Not Reviewed wouldn’t be needed but Shortcuts makes it hard to filter out items which don’t have a tag. (I contacted Cultured Code regarding that - nothing they can do).
When no review is in progress all Areas and Projects are tagged as Not Reviewed and the first item of the list is marked as In Review and opened.
Then it’s time to review this item. When done the shortcut is called again. This will see that there is a In Review item and the shortcut will ask whether to mark as reviewed or return to the item.
When reviewed it‘ll get the next Not Reviewed item and prompt to review it.
Once all items are reviewed all tags are removed and the review is completed.
In the final version of the shortcut there is also a skip review feature which will move the item to the end of queue for reviewing.
Get the shortcut
You need to manually create the tags Reviewed, In Review, Not Reviewed and Skipped Review in Things. I nested them under a GTD.
- Things GTD Review
- Bonus: Things Cancel GTD Review - this resets any changes done by the review.