The Source System
Six practices for keeping your thinking connected to your doing.
If you are already writing in a note when a task occurs to you, make the task there, in that note, at that moment. The link is created automatically and never needs to be recreated.
Tasks from conversations, messages, or other contexts can be created directly and linked manually afterwards, or left unlinked if genuinely standalone. The practice is about not breaking a connection that already exists.
Not a project. Not a folder. One note. If you cannot identify which note a task belongs to, the task may not be specific enough to be actionable. Tasks that could belong to three notes are often three tasks inadequately separated.
"Finalise before Thursday" is a fine task title, if it carries a link to the note that explains it. Without that link it is noise. The practice is not to write better titles. It is to link every task that has a note it belongs to.
Before opening the task list, identify one task to begin with: the task with the most context available, the clearest note link, and a reasonable deadline proximity. Open that note. Read it. Begin. The list review happens after, not before.
At the start of any complex project session, two minutes looking at the structure: which notes generated which tasks, which threads are open, which ideas have produced no action. Urgency is visible in the task list. Context is visible in the connections.
A task list tells you what's due. It doesn't tell you that Tuesday is already impossible, or that three projects are converging on the same three days. Before accepting a new commitment, look at the distribution, not just the deadline.
The orphaned task
A task that came from a note but lost its connection. Identifiable: no linked note, cannot be understood without one.
The Source System is part of how Tareea works. Tareea is a connected workspace where every task remembers where it came from.