These are the exact words Maptero uses and what each one means.
- Task. A single commitment. The basic unit of everything in Maptero.
- To-do. A task where the action is on you. Shown on a yellow card.
- Waiting-for. A task where you are waiting on someone else. Shown on a blue card.
- Important. A simple on/off flag meaning "this matters to me right now." It is shown as a star on the card (red when on). It is not a 1-to-5 priority score, just a single yes/no, because scoring tasks tends to create guilt about everything that is not at the top.
- Intense (also shown as Intensive). An on/off flag meaning "this task needs deep focus or real time." An intense task is drawn as a larger card so it stands out.
- Deadline. The date a task is due. A task with a deadline lives on the timeline. Maptero always lands a deadline on one of your working days; if you set a date that falls on a non-working day, it nudges forward to the next working day.
- Backlog. An open task with no deadline that you have not parked as off-peak. This is your inbox of captured thoughts, held safely until you are ready to deal with them. The backlog is guilt-free: it is not work to feel bad about, just things you have not mapped yet.
- Off-peak. A task that matters but has no deadline and that you have deliberately deprioritized. Off-peak tasks stay off your timeline so they do not nag you, but they are not lost. A task cannot be both off-peak and have a deadline.
- Bucket. A column (on desktop) or a section (on mobile) on the timeline that groups tasks by when they are due. The order is always: Overdue, Today, Tomorrow, Within a week, Within a month, Later. Plus the two side areas that do not sit on the time axis: Backlog and Off-peak.
- Project. A container you create for related tasks. It has a name and a short name (a short uppercase label, up to 12 characters) that shows as a colored chip on cards. Projects are yours alone and are not shared.
- Goal. A single deliverable or milestone inside a project. You link tasks to a goal, and the goal counts as done automatically once all its linked tasks are done.
- Overview. The short written summary of where a project stands, shown above its goals.
- Contact. A person you work with (first and last name, optionally company and job title). Contacts are yours alone. A task can be linked to several contacts.
- Blocker. A dependency: task A is blocked by task B, meaning you cannot finish A until B is done or cancelled.
- Continue. The way you evolve a task: you close the current one and create a successor that carries on from it, keeping the two linked. (In casual conversation this is sometimes called a "chain," but in the app the button always says Continue.)
- Recurrence. A rule that brings a task back with a new deadline each time you close it.
- Sparks. The unit that measures your voice usage. You have a monthly budget of sparks, and after each voice command Maptero shows how many you have left.
- All caught up. The state where you have nothing overdue, nothing due today, and an empty backlog. Maptero celebrates it.
- Send to bottom. A quick way to push a task to the bottom of its bucket for now. It is temporary and resets the next time you edit the task.
What the card colors and sizes mean
The look of a card tells you its state at a glance:
- Yellow card: a to-do (something on you). This is the default.
- Blue card: a waiting-for (something you are waiting on from someone else).
- Gray card: the task has at least one active blocker. The gray overrides the normal color so blocked work is obvious.
- Green check chip: all of that task's blockers are now resolved (the lock is gone), so it is ready to act on.
- Brief glow: a task just landed in your backlog (for example, one you just captured).
- Larger card: the task is marked intense. The bigger size is the main signal that a task needs deep focus.