Craft

Things 3: The Complete System

Every feature, every workflow, every mistake to avoid. The only Things 3 reference you need.

I have used every task manager. Todoist, OmniFocus, TickTick, Apple Reminders, plain text files, sticky notes. None of them stuck. Then I found Things 3 and something clicked.

This is not a review. This is the complete reference I wish I had when I started. Every feature, every workflow, every mistake to avoid. If you already use Things 3, this will sharpen your system. If you are considering it, this will tell you exactly what you are getting into.

TL;DR

Things 3 runs on two axes: temporal (When: Today, Upcoming, Anytime, Someday) and contextual (Where: Areas, Projects)
Inbox is temporary. Process it to zero daily. Every item gets a date, a project, or gets deleted.
Today is sacred. Only actual commitments, never aspirational. If you end the day with 10+ uncompleted items, your Today is too ambitious.
Anytime is your available work pool. Undated, active tasks you could do right now. Pull from here after clearing Today.
Someday is an incubator, not a graveyard. Entire projects can hibernate here. Review weekly.
Areas are ongoing life roles (3-7 max). Projects are finite goals with endpoints.
Start dates hide tasks. Deadlines keep them visible. Know the difference.
The whole system works on two habits: daily Inbox processing and weekly review.

The Dual-Axis System

Things 3 structures task management around two complementary perspectives:

Temporal (When) sorts tasks by urgency and timing: Today, Upcoming, Anytime, Someday
Contextual (Where) groups them by life role and project: Areas, Projects

Every task occupies exactly one temporal state while simultaneously belonging to an optional Area or Project. This is deeply influenced by David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology, though Cultured Code never explicitly brands it as a GTD app.

Inbox: The Capture Bin

The Inbox is where every thought, task, email, or idea lands before you decide what to do with it. Cultured Code's guidance: "Each and every thing that you want to accomplish needs to end up in one place."

Tasks enter via Quick Entry (Ctrl+Space, works from any app), Siri, Mail to Things, share extensions, or just opening the app and typing. Any to-do created without a parent project or start date defaults here.

The critical discipline: process Inbox to zero daily. Each item gets clarified ("What is this? Is it actionable?") and organized: assigned a date, moved to a project or area, tagged if needed. Once an item receives a date or destination, it leaves the Inbox automatically.

Today: Your Actual Commitments

Today is the most opinionated feature in Things 3. It contains your commitments for the current day. If the start date, deadline, or repeating rule of any to-do matches today, it shows up here. Calendar events appear at the top when integration is enabled.

The unique This Evening feature slides tasks to a separate bottom section, visible but unobtrusive until you are ready for them.

The #1 rule: Today should contain ONLY tasks you will actually complete today. Not aspirational. Not "it would be nice." Actual commitments. An overloaded Today list is the single most common mistake people make. If you regularly end the day with 10+ uncompleted items, your Today is too ambitious.

This connects to something fundamental: time is the one resource you cannot manufacture. A realistic Today list respects that constraint instead of pretending it does not exist.

Upcoming: The Tickler File

Upcoming contains to-dos and projects with specific future start dates. The view shows the next seven days individually, then groups remaining items by month.

Tasks here are hibernating. They disappear from Anytime and the sidebar. When the start date arrives, the task automatically promotes to Today. Think of it as a tickler file: defer items you literally cannot or should not act on until a specific date.

Important: only tasks with start dates appear here. Tasks with only deadlines do not. Those stay in Anytime because they are still actionable now.

Anytime: Your Available Work Pool

Anytime holds all active, undated tasks. Everything you could theoretically work on right now. Nothing is blocking these tasks; they have no future start date pushing them into hibernation.

Common misconception: Anytime is NOT "all tasks with dates set." It is the opposite. Tasks specifically WITHOUT start dates. Tasks with deadlines remain here because they are still actionable today.

After clearing your Today list and having energy left, pull from Anytime. It should function as your weekly focus list of bonus work. Today tasks also appear in Anytime marked with a yellow star. Otherwise, Anytime and the other temporal lists are mutually exclusive.

Someday: The Incubator

Someday is for items with no current commitment. Both individual tasks and entire projects can live here. They are deliberately hidden from Anytime, Upcoming, and the sidebar to reduce noise.

The practical test when processing Inbox:

"Will I realistically work on this in the next week or two?" Then Anytime.
"Cool idea but not now" Then Someday.

Someday is not a graveyard. It is an incubator. Every week, scan it and ask "is any of this ready to activate?" If yes, move to Anytime. If something has been in Someday for months and you feel nothing about it, delete it.

Entire projects can go here. Got a project that lost momentum? Move the whole project to Someday. It vanishes from the sidebar. Pull it back during weekly review when ready.

Mental model: Anytime is the menu of what is available today. Someday is ideas marinating in the fridge.

Logbook: The Archive

The Logbook stores both completed and canceled to-dos and projects. Every logged item stays indefinitely with exact completion dates. Fully searchable.

Use it during weekly reviews as a deliberate "celebrate progress" step. Scan the past week's completions. It is surprisingly motivating to see what you actually accomplished rather than only focusing on what remains.

Areas: Ongoing Life Roles

Areas represent the ongoing, never-ending roles and responsibilities in your life. The different hats you wear. Health. Career. Family. Finances.

Key characteristics:

Areas never complete. No end date, no progress bar, no checkbox.
Can contain both standalone to-dos and projects
Appear in the sidebar as grouping containers
Headings are not available in areas, only in projects

Keep to 3-7 total. Too many creates organizational sprawl. Too few forces awkward groupings. Areas should be stable and rarely change. If you are adding and removing frequently, you are confusing them with projects.

Projects: Finite Goals

Projects are finite, multi-step goals with a clear endpoint. When something requires more than a single to-do, it becomes a project.

Live inside Areas but can also exist independently
Support headings to break tasks into sections and milestones
Progress indicators showing completion percentage
Projects have temporal states too: set to Someday and they disappear from the sidebar entirely. Set to Upcoming and they hibernate until the start date.

The Structural Hierarchy

Areas (ongoing roles, never complete)
  Standalone To-dos
  Projects (finite goals with endpoint)
    Headings (section dividers)
    To-dos
      Checklists (sub-steps within a to-do)

A to-do's parent can be either a Project or an Area directly. A Project's parent is its Area, if assigned. Areas contain Projects; Projects contain To-dos with optional Headings.

The GTD Connection

The relationship between Things 3 and Getting Things Done runs deep. Cultured Code never called it a "GTD app," yet the David Allen Company sells an official 37-page GTD and Things 3 Setup Guide.

How GTD's five steps map:

Capture = Inbox
Clarify = Inbox processing. Deciding what each item is and what action it requires.
Organize = Areas, Projects, Tags, When field
Reflect = No built-in review feature. Build your own habit with a repeating "Weekly Review" project.
Engage = Today view plus tag filtering to narrow by context, energy, or time available

Where Things 3 diverges:

GTD shows only the next action per project. Things displays all tasks by default.
GTD organizes primarily by context (@calls, @computer). Things organizes by project and area, with tags as secondary.
GTD does not prescribe a daily task list. Things' opinionated Today view is arguably its most used feature.

Best Practices

Keep Today Ruthlessly Tight

Only genuine must-dos belong in Today. Everything else lives in Anytime as available bonus work. The transformative moment for many users: moving aspirational tasks to Anytime and reserving Today for true commitments. An overloaded Today creates a defeating feeling every evening.

Start Dates vs Deadlines

Use start dates only when you literally cannot act before that date. Scheduling removes tasks from Anytime, breaking the system's ability to surface available work. Use deadlines for time-sensitive items instead: deadlines keep tasks visible in Anytime so you can knock them out early, while still triggering a Today appearance when the deadline arrives.

Use Tags Sparingly

Heavy tagging adds friction without proportional value. Power users typically maintain 2-5 tags they actually filter by. One effective approach: a single tag for five-minute tasks. Tag inheritance is underused: applying a tag to an Area or Project automatically applies it to all contained tasks.

Build the Review Habit

Daily: process Inbox to zero. Weekly: scan each active area and project, review Someday list for items to activate, flow tasks between Someday and Anytime based on the upcoming week's priorities, celebrate Logbook completions.

Without weekly reviews, Inboxes regularly swell to 30-50+ items. With them, stays at 5-10.

Make Tasks Small and Actionable

If you can spend 30 minutes working on something but not mark it complete, you have made too large a task. Resist adding five steps you think you will need. Often the project shifts direction after step one. Add only the next concrete action; keep future steps in project notes.

The 8 Most Common Mistakes

Overloading Today - treating it as a wish list instead of a commitment list
Confusing start dates with deadlines - start dates hide tasks in Upcoming; deadlines keep them visible in Anytime
Using Inbox as a permanent list - it is a capture bin, process to zero daily
Too many Areas - more than 7 creates sprawl and decision fatigue
Too many tags - most people need 2-5, not 20
Never reviewing Someday - items rot there without a weekly review habit
Confusing Anytime with dated tasks - Anytime is specifically undated active tasks
Making tasks too big - "Work on X" is not actionable; "Draft intro paragraph for X" is

The most successful Things 3 users are not those with the most elaborate setups. They are the ones who maintain two consistent habits: processing the Inbox daily and conducting an honest weekly review. The system rewards trust. Capture everything, review regularly, and the right tasks surface at the right time without anxiety about what you might be forgetting.

The task lifecycle flows naturally: Inbox, then Anytime or Someday, then Today, then Logbook. Understanding this flow and the mutual exclusivity of temporal states is the single most important insight for using Things 3 effectively.