Most academics wear different hats: Researcher, supervisor, organiser, or admin. Unfortunately, this also means a lot of project management and many burnt-out academics. In this article, we are going to look into two aspects, which need to be realised: A strategy to avoid procrastination and prioritisation to avoid overwhelm and falling behind. The Obsidian Task List Kanban plugin helps with both, because it allows for analysing tasks from multiple angles to make the best possible planning decisions.

The methods in this article are based on Obsidian, a perfect note-taking tool for academics. If you are not using Obsidian or a similar tool, check out “Why every academic needs to use a note-taking app” and take a look at the Quick Starter Guide to get started.

Short video walk through of the post:

Problem: Why you don’t get your tasks done in time

If you struggle to get things done (and assuming you theoretically have enough time), there are two problems that lead to chaos: a priority problem and a strategy problem. The priority tells you what to do, and the strategy tells you when and how to do it.

For example, if you are reactive and tend to get on tasks “right away” (especially easy ones), you will likely fall behind on important, larger tasks that require your continuous attention to complete. This is a prioritisation problem – you fail to distinguish impact from noise.

If, on the other hand, you tend to procrastinate and don’t know how to “write the discussion” or a similarly vaguely formulated task, you have a strategy problem. While you know what needs to be done, you don’t know how to get there.

You can also have both problems at the same time. For example, imagine you keep a growing pen-and-paper to-do list. Eventually, the list becomes so large that you start reacting only to recent or easy tasks, while important older tasks disappear into the background. This is both a prioritisation and a strategy problem. It is a prioritisation problem because too many tasks compete for your attention at once, making it difficult to distinguish what truly matters. At the same time, it is a strategy problem because the system gives you no clear structure for when tasks should be completed or how to realistically manage your workload.

Prioritising well means being able to discern what you can and can’t do. Remember: “If everything is a priority, nothing is”.

Strategising well means being able to tell when you can do it and not overcommit. Remember: “Stop starting. Start finishing.”

Let’s now look at a tool which can help us resolve this issue.

Solution: The Multi-Lens View on Tasks

The key to strategising and prioritising well is to see your tasks from multiple angles. Bad decisions are less of a personality issue, but more of a data issue. Once you have your tasks categorised properly, creating a strategy and prioritising becomes easy. For example:

• By priority: What is important and what should I focus on? (Typically: Eisenhower Matrix)
• By time: What needs to be done urgently and cannot be delayed. (Typically: Eisenhower Matrix)
• By status: What is “hanging” because I am waiting or something else (i.e. a reply from a colleague) (Typically: Kanban board)
• By plan: What do I plan to accomplish today, tomorrow and by the end of this week? (Typically: Calendar Integration)
• By project: Which tasks contribute to which project
• …. or any personally meaningful schemes.

The important aspect is that you need to see the same tasks through a different lens. This allows you to make the best decision on what to do now and how to handle overdue tasks. Here is an example:

These sets of tasks are organised in two “boards”:

• A planning one with the sections: “This week”, “Today”, “Blocked” and “Done”. This gives you an idea when you’re going to do something.
• A priority one with the sections: “Important”, “Urgent”, “Important + Urgent”, and “Ignore”. This is a typical Eisenhower matrix style way of prioritising your tasks.

If you look closely, some tasks have problems: For instance, “Send Hedemarrie the script” is “Blocked” (Maybe you are waiting for the script to be finished by a colleague), at the same time, the task is “urgent” on the other board, meaning that she urgently needs this script. This insight allows you to immediately take action to get the script done sooner, or inform Hedemarrie that she won’t get it in time.

Realising this system is, of course, almost impossible using a pen-and-paper list or calendar, as a task can only ever be in one list.

Let’s see how we can technically implement this using Obsidian and the “Task List Kanban” plugin.

If you’re unfamiliar with Obsidian start here:

The Task List Kanban Obsidian Plugin

The Task List Kanban plugin aggregates tasks that you can place into any node inside your vault and allows you to create boards organised by time, priority, status, or whatever else you would want. For all this to work, it uses tags assigned to the todo.

Let’s break down step-by-step how to use it.

Step 1: Create Tasks in Markdown/Obsidian

To create a task in Obsidian, you simply need to type in `- [ ] ` or use the Ctrl/Cmd+L hotkey.

An important property here is that these tasks can be added anywhere you want, and the note that the task is added to is meaningful as well. For instance, if you have a note on the paper Smith 2020 that you are reading, you could add a task called “Print this paper for Sophie”. Since the task is located in the note corresponding to Smith 2020, you don’t need to spell it out. Moreover, since the task is now linked to the note on Smith 2020, you will likely have access to the PDF there as well, making it faster for you to send this paper.

The general idea is that the location of the task provides context. This is only possible if your ideas and your task management live in the same software: Obsidian. Combining project and information management creates an incredibly powerful system.

Step 2 (optional): Add a project-based tag to identify relevant tasks

If not all tasks in your vault are relevant, you want to have a possibility to filter them out. I typically go with a project-based task. For example, #tfl can stand for the tree fern literature review, which is a literature review project I am currently working on.

Simply type the hashtag anywhere in the text of the checkbox. For the best overview, put it behind the text.

This step is not strictly necessary, but if you avoid it, all tasks from around the world will be pulled into your Kanban board. This is fine for a small beginner vault.

Step 3: Create the Kanban board

After installing the plugin, simply right-click a folder and select New Kanban. This will create an empty Kanban board containing all the tasks that are available in the vault, filed under “Uncategorized”.

Rename the board file as you see fit, as it will initially have a name containing the timestamp.

Step 4: Set up filters and lanes

The last step is to configure the filters and lanes that your board will have. The lanes will depend on whether you want to sort it by priority, by time, or by status.

Your board is now ready to go, and as you drag the cards around the different columns or lanes, they will get additional tags that will appear and disappear to signify which column the task is currently located. Since all this happens automatically, you don’t need to manage these tags manually.

Step 5: Repeat to create other boards

Now that you have created your first board, create a few more using the same filter from step three but different lanes (step four). This will create this multi-perspective view that we set out to build.

Some possible lanes:

Execution Board: Backlog, Next, In Progress, Waiting, Done. This board gives you a rough plan of what you are working on now and in the near future, as well as shows you how much you have accomplished (don’t underestimate this!)

Reading List Board: To Read, Reading, Processed, Synthesized. Could be a board specifically designed to track your reading progress.

Eisenhower Matrix: Important, Urgent, Important and urgent, Not important & Not urgent. This is a classical priority structure where the not important and not urgent tasks are either delegated or ignored, while the important and urgent tasks are tackled right away. It allows you to see what really matters for you right now.

Weekly Plan: Mon, Tue, …, Fri. This is a really good board to build every Monday so that you know exactly what you’ll be working on throughout the week and how much you can plan to accomplish. This allows you to be realistic with your expectations.

Rules of Project Management

1 – An invisible task is an unmanaged task

You cannot prioritise what you cannot see. The first act of any project management system is to get every task out of your head and onto a board. If it works, make sure that capturing new to-dos becomes very easy. Plugins like QuickAdd help you accomplish this with just one click. (See my plugin collection)

2 – Stop starting. Start finishing.

Limit tasks that are work in progress. Cap them to just a few and allow yourself to work on other tasks only once you have finished what is currently in the pipeline. This ensures that you get things done on time and that no unimportant (but seemingly urgent tasks) sneak in.

3 – One task, many lenses.

This is the principle behind multiple Kanban boards. The task exists once (a single source of truth) but you view it through different lenses depending on which hat you’re wearing: researcher, supervisor, admin. Always consult your boards befor emaking big time commitments.

4 – Name what’s blocking you.

Most academic work isn’t abandoned — it’s waiting. Waiting for feedback from your supervisor. Waiting for ethics approval. Waiting for a co-author. A “Waiting” column makes blocked work visible without cluttering your active tasks. If it has no home, it gets buried.

5 – Pull your work, don’t let it push you around.

Work enters your active column only when you have capacity, not because someone sent an email! This “pull principle” is what separates a reactive inbox-driven workflow from a deliberate one. You decide when to pull new work in; the weekly review is the mechanism. If you need to capture tasks, simply store them in a “backlog”.

6 – Estimate the duration of your tasks

The easiest way to help your plan is to estimate how long a specific task will take you. I typically use rough estimates of 1, 2, 4, or 8 hours for each task. Tasks that are bigger than that should be broken down into smaller chunks. You can simply prepend the number of hours something is going to take to the front of the task name:

How to manage meetings in Obsidian?

The easiest way is to use the Obsidian Full Calendar Plugin and assign every note to a project. The meeting note tutorial uses a base and Obsidian’s daily notes to accomplish this:

How to organise complex data in Obsidian?

The Obsidian canvas is a great solution for organising data pipelines and code bases in Obsidian. Take a look at this article for details:

Summary

In this workflow, tasks in academic life were managed through Obsidian. Each task is just a checkbox with a tag to identify larger projects. The Task List Kanban plugin allowed us to see multiple aspects of each set of tasks. For instance, when something has to be done, how important it is, or at what state of completion it currently is. These different lenses or perspectives allow us to make better planning decisions and avoid overplanning, forgetting or burning out.