Hello, fellow RTMers!

Today, I’d like to share how I use MilkScript to improve my focus.

During the day, I want to focus until the most important things on my to do list. However, during the last hour of the working day, I want to focus on different things: less important, more paperwork-style, things that, if they pile up, would become a stressor.

So, I developed a system of a smart list that changes its contents over the course of a day.

To achieve this, I wrote two MilkScripts, which I trigger with a timer (in my case, with IFTTT, which has a simple ‘clock’ trigger. I trigger it at 0:05am, the daily reset, and at 3:00pm, to switch the focus to the lower-priority tasks). Here are my two scripts:



The Daily Reset (run at 0:05am):

const focusList = rtm.getSmartLists().find(smartList => smartList.getName() === 'Focus');

focusList.setFilter('dueBefore:tomorrow AND NOT list:WaitingFor AND NOT tag:afternoon AND NOT tag:evening AND NOT tag:mail AND NOT priority:none AND NOT priority:3');



The Last Hour (run at 15:00):

const focusList = rtm.getSmartLists().find(smartList => smartList.getName() === 'Focus');

focusList.setFilter('dueBefore:tomorrow');





I also figured out that I’m an avid postponer of things: I want to see many tasks I could do today, but I often simply leave things for tomorrow.

To accomodate for that, and to avoid me having to postpone all things from yesterday to today, I wrote another MilkScript:


Bonus: Postpone everything to today that’s overdue:

const tasks = rtm.getTasks('status:incomplete and dueBefore:today');
console.log('Incomplete tasks due today: %d', tasks.length);

tasks.forEach(function(element, index) {
console.log('Element: ' + element.getName() + ' at Index: ' + index);
element.postpone()
});



… it will take all overdue tasks and simply move them to today. (Of course, that means that I’ll have to know myself which one of them is *really* due today…)