Goals & task detail

Turning on Goals & task detail gives your tasks statuses and types, adds two more views to the Tasks screen, and fills in the Goals tab. The switch is on Settings → Tasks.

Turning it back off hides all of that and destroys none of it. Your statuses stay defined, your goals stay written, and the list goes back to the simple checklist, a ring you tap. Goals stays on the menu with the switch off and says which switch fills it in. In the phone app that page opens Settings in one tap. Turn it on again a month later and everything is where you left it.

Goals is on the menu everywhere: in the browser, on a phone's browser, and on the installed phone app. All three list the same rows under the same three views, and all three open a single goal onto its own page, with its writing, its tasks and its journal.

A status says where a task stands, and the words are yours. Settings → Tasks → Your statuses lists what you have under its four group headings, and opening one lets you rename it, recolour it from the palette, and write what it means. + Add status under a group adds one to that group. Open, Scheduled, Done and Cancel are the four the app writes itself, so those recolour but keep their names, and none of the four can be deleted.

Every status belongs to one of four groups, and those four are fixed because the rest of the app reads them.

Active

Being worked, or needs un-sticking.

Upcoming

Agreed to, not started.

Later

Deliberately set aside. Still on the list, behind everything upcoming in the Status view.

Closed

Finished, in any of its senses.

A status shows as a coloured word beside its task, and the colour is the status's own, so renaming or adding one can never break how a list reads. The ring beside a task only ever means open or done. Deleting a status asks where its tasks should go before it removes anything, so no task ends up with a status that no longer exists.

Clicking the status on a task opens the list of your statuses, and you can work it from the keyboard alone: type a few letters to narrow it, use the up and down arrows to move through what is left, and press Return to set the highlighted one. A status whose name starts with what you typed is the one you get, so d means Done rather than the first status that happens to contain a d.

One status is written by the app rather than picked by you. Give an Open task a date still to come and it moves to Scheduled, which sits just ahead of Open, and the morning that date arrives it goes back to Open. Take the date off and it goes back to Open too. A task carrying any other status keeps it whatever its date, so work you marked as mattering now stays where you put it.

The Scheduled section opens on the days in front of you rather than on everything it holds. It shows the next two days at least, then whole days beyond that until six tasks are on screen, and Show more under the last row opens the rest.

The Goals tab is one row per goal. The goal's name leads the row, with the status you declared sitting at the far end of the same line in that status's colour. Under the name, quieter, comes the life area, then your own word for the kind of thing it is, then how much is open under it. A goal with nothing open says nothing in that last slot, so the number appears where there is something to count. The kind drops off the row while the list is sectioned by kind, since the heading above it has already said it.

Kind, Areas and Status above the list arrange the same goals three ways, the way the view names above Tasks do. Kind opens first, and after that the list opens on whichever of the three you left it on. Under Status the sections follow the order your statuses are in, and under Areas they follow the order of your life areas, so a section of one can lead a section of ten. A kind has no order of its own to follow, so under Kind the biggest section comes first. A row drops whichever field the heading above it has already said, so the kind goes under Kind and the area goes under Areas, and the status stays on every row because it is the control that changes it. A kind you have no goals of gets no heading, and a list that is all one kind gets no headings at all. Every heading folds, and a folded section says how many goals are inside it and stays folded until you open it again. Goals you never gave a kind gather under General at the end, and the same slot reads No area or No status under the other two. A sideways swipe across the goals moves between the three, the way it does above Tasks: a finger in the phone app or in a phone's browser, two fingers on a laptop's trackpad.

You can put the goals in your own order. On a computer, drag a row where you want it: the pointer turns to a grab, and lines appear at the row's right edge as you pass over it. On the phone, hold the lines at the end of the row until it lifts, then drag it. Your order holds under every one of the three views, and it is one order rather than one per screen, so the phone and the computer read the same list. It outranks whatever the app would have sorted by. A goal you have never moved keeps to the end of the list rather than landing in the middle of the ones you placed, which is where a goal made after you ordered them starts out.

Making a goal takes a name and nothing else. In a browser it is New goal in the header, or the blank page's own prompt. In the phone app it is the bar at the foot of the list, which reads Name a goal; the new goal joins the list under whichever heading its own facts put it, and where that is somewhere you cannot see, a copy of the row stands above the bar so you can tell it took.

In a browser, a right-click on a row, or a press and hold on a touch screen, opens the goal's own panel: its name, its status, the kind of thing it is, its life area, a way through to its page, and Delete. The installed phone app has no such panel, since a press and hold there lifts the row to reorder it; everything the panel holds is on the goal's own page, one tap away.

A task can become one too. On the Tasks page, right-click it on a computer or press and hold it in a phone's browser, and choose Make this a goal. It asks first, since the task leaves the list when it lands. It keeps its area, its dates and everything written against it, and anything that was a subtask of it becomes one of the goal's tasks. A meeting stays a meeting. The installed phone app does the same from Make it a goal at the foot of the task's own page. It does not ask there. The page closes, and the Tasks list you land back on says the goal it became, with a Goals link that takes you to it. Both surfaces say that, since a row that empties out with nothing said reads as a delete.

A task filed under a goal says so wherever you meet it. Its row on Tasks reads the life area first, then the date, then the goal’s name, which is the order a journal entry’s row already uses. On a computer that name is a link to the goal’s page. The one place it is left off is that page itself, where the title above the tasks has already said it.

Closing a goal is a status change rather than a separate action, so a closed goal moves under Show closed and stays readable, with Back to open goals for the way out. That is the ordinary way to be done with one, since what you were once aiming at is worth keeping. Delete is on the goal’s own page, at the very bottom, for a goal you never meant to make. It asks twice: the first press arms it and the second removes the goal for good. The tasks that were filed under it stay on your list.

Clicking a goal's name opens its page. The top says where it stands, with its status, its life area, and a verdict on whether it is moving. That verdict reads Moving when something happened on it in the last two weeks, and Stalled since the day it last did when nothing has. A goal nothing has happened to yet gets no verdict, rather than an invented one.

Everything in that top line is also the control that changes it. The name opens for typing, and the status, the life area, the kind of thing it is and the days the goal runs between each open where they are shown. The kind is your own word, picked from the kinds already on your other goals or typed in when it is a new one. It is the word the goals list opens sectioned by, so this is where a goal moves from one section to another. The two dates are set together, since a start and an end are one decision, and an end before its start is refused. A goal with neither reads No dates, and a goal with no kind reads No kind.

Under that is the long-form text, which is the goal rather than a note attached to it. It is the same editor a document uses and it saves itself the same way, so History in the top corner reads back what the text said before. On the phone, tapping the text opens that editor over the page, the way it does on a task's page. Write what the goal answers and what being done would mean into that text like anything else. Two separate fields held those two things until Aug 30 2026. Whatever you had written in them is the first paragraph of the text now, word for word.

Below the text are the tasks under this goal, then the writing against it, one after the other down a single column, neither section folded away. Finished tasks are the exception, kept behind Show finished under the open ones, which says how many there are and opens them. Each ends with a bar for adding to it, and a section with nothing in it is that bar alone rather than a heading over an empty space. What you add appears once. The new row joins its own list, and where that list is not drawing it, a copy of the row stands above the bar you typed it into instead, so you can see it took. A task that landed behind the fold and a note filed under a day the log does not reach are the two ways that happens. A journal update written here is an ordinary entry on your Journal and your Day. A timer still running shows its count in that list and a Stop beside it, so a session started against this goal ends where you can see it rather than back on the Journal. The Journal shows it under the goal's life area when you gave it none of its own, since the area is borrowed at reading time rather than written onto the entry. Notes filed under the goal fold away at the bottom, behind References and a count of them. That line is there only when something is filed.