Projects
Projects are flat buckets for grouping related tasks by context. "Work." "Home renovation." "Side hustle." Every task belongs to exactly one project, or to the default Personal bucket if you haven't picked one.
What a Project Is
A project is the simplest kind of folder - a name and (optionally) a description. That's it. No colors, no icons, no priority levels, no deadlines, no nesting.
Tasks are what's inside projects. A project's "content" is the list of tasks assigned to it.
Projects vs Goals
Scope has two ways to group tasks - projects and goals. They don't overlap; they complement each other.
| Projects | Goals | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Organization by context | An objective with a time horizon |
| Shape | Flat buckets | Trees with sub-goals, milestones |
| Task assignment | Each task in exactly one project | A task can be linked to multiple goals |
| Have progress? | No | Yes (progress bar) |
| Can complete? | No (buckets don't "finish") | Yes (goals complete when their content is done) |
| Tied to a dungeon? | No | Premade goals can unlock dungeons |
| Best for | "Which area of life is this?" | "What am I working toward?" |
A task can have both a project and goal links. "Email client about proposal" might be in the "Work" project and linked to a "Close Q2 deals" goal.
The Personal Bucket
There's always a Personal bucket - the default destination for tasks you haven't assigned to a project. You can't delete Personal; it's the system's safety net for unaffiliated tasks.
See Personal Bucket.
Filtering by Project
The Lifegrid has a project filter at the top. Pick one, and only that project's tasks show across every period view. Pick "All" to see everything. Pick "Personal" to narrow to unaffiliated tasks.
The filter is persistent across your session. Pick "Work" in the morning, and your Lifegrid stays work-focused for the rest of the day until you change it.
Use projects to focus
If you're context-switching between work and home life, setting the project filter to the current context removes the other's noise from your view. You see fewer tasks, but the right ones.
When to Create a Project
- You have enough tasks in one area that scrolling through them all is friction.
- The area has a clear name ("Fitness," "Side hustle," "Reading list").
- You'd benefit from filtering to just that area sometimes.
If a project only has one or two tasks, Personal is probably fine.