A task in Maptero has these meaningful parts:
- Title. The action itself. Keep it to the core action: no dates, names, or projects in the title. Maptero pulls those out into their own fields.
- Type. To-do (on you) or Waiting-for (on someone else). Maptero infers this from your words: active phrasing reads as a to-do, while "waiting for," "pending," or "expecting" reads as a waiting-for. You can flip it any time.
- Status. Open, Done, or Cancelled. Open is the only state you act on. Both Done and Cancelled move the task into the Completed section. Cancelled is for tasks that became irrelevant rather than finished.
- Deadline. A date, or none. With a deadline the task is on the timeline; without one it sits in your backlog (unless it is off-peak).
- Off-peak. When on, the task has no deadline and lives in its own off-peak area.
- Effort. Intense or not. Intense tasks show as larger cards.
- Important. On or off. Important tasks rise to the top of their bucket.
- Project. An optional group the task belongs to.
- Contacts. The people involved (you can link several).
- Blockers. Other tasks that must be resolved before this one can be completed or continued.
- Recurrence. An optional rule that brings the task back when you close it. A recurring task always has a deadline and is never off-peak.
The four states a task can be in
Every open task is in exactly one of these scheduling states, and they never overlap:
- Backlog: open, with no deadline and not off-peak. Your inbox of untreated thoughts.
- Off-peak: open, with no deadline, deliberately parked. It stays off the timeline.
- Scheduled: open, with a deadline, so it lives on the timeline in the right bucket.
A deadline and off-peak can never both be set. Giving an off-peak task a deadline moves it onto the timeline and clears the off-peak flag. Marking a scheduled task off-peak clears its deadline. Closed tasks (Done or Cancelled) move to the Completed section no matter which state they were in.