To-dos are meant to be a short term place to store tasks that you may need to complete within a day, for a project or even for a long period of time like goals. # Overview of Properties | Structure | Main Concern | Organization | Strength | Weakness | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------ | ----------------- | ----------- | --------------- | | "Such and such needs to be completed by this time, when this condition is true, within project XYZ" | Tasks | Project-dependant | Ease of use | Lack of context | ## Structure It's structure will typically be in the form > "Such and such needs to be completed by this time, when this condition is true, within project XYZ". ### Examples - Do XYZ in project ABC - Schedule meeting with John Doe for Tuesday - Send meeting summary after meeting ## Main Concern __Tasks__ are the significant unit for to-dos. >Although, it is possible,and common, for to-dos to correlate to a unit of time but it is likely difficult to estimate that amount of time, not always relevant to the task itself to specify. The focus of a to-do tends to be a very low-level task for a project that is primarily written only to not be forgotten and referenced later. They are embedded within the context of the current context of the project (time, place, activity) and therefore are really difficult to extract anything from if at all. ## Organization To-dos organization is primarily __Project-dependant__. The main focus is the capturing of to-dos items - not so much how they are actually organized, prioritized or executed upon; but, simply around their capture. Whether that is within the same system as the Second Brain or otherwise. ## Strengths To-dos primary strength is their __ease of use__. The power of a to-do is it's ease of use in interfacing, it is something that you can interact with in a single tap or quickly enter something in during a meeting. Therefore the name of the game for to-dos is ease of use, anything that can be done to lower the barrier to entry will increase the capture of information throughput. ## Weaknesses To-dos primary weakness is their __lack of context__. The strength of to-do's flip-side is its weakness, it is very good at allowing you to keep track of your current in progress tasks but it offers nothing actionable past checking it off. Think about it, you'll almost never want to go through someone elses to do list because it will offer you little in return past: "these items were done on that day".