How to Use Today's Tasks
Most onboarding guides for to-do apps want twenty minutes of your time. This one wants three. The whole app is one input, three lanes, and a Completed section — that's the entire surface area you need to learn. Below I walk through the order I do things in on a typical Monday morning, plus a few patterns that took me a while to figure out: when to demote a task from High to General, what the midnight reset actually does to old items, and why the Completed lane is more useful than people expect. If you've used Todoist or Apple Reminders, most of this will feel obvious — the differences are at the edges, and the midnight reset is the biggest one.
Table of Contents
Getting Started
Today's Tasks is designed to be simple and intuitive. No registration is required—just open the website and start organizing your day in seconds. Your tasks are saved directly in your browser’s LocalStorage, which means they never leave your device.
Adding Tasks
Type the item into the input at the top of the page, choose a priority (High, Due Today, or General), then click Add Task. Tasks appear instantly in the correct lane.
Organizing Priorities
Use the three lanes to separate urgent work from ongoing responsibilities. High is for critical deadlines, Due Today helps you finish daily goals, and General keeps longer-term tasks visible without clutter.
The pattern that took me longest to learn: demote freely. If a task has been in High for three consecutive mornings without progress, it's almost never actually High — it's a different kind of stuck. Move it to General, write the next concrete step (not the outcome) on a fresh line, and put that in Due Today instead. I do this most Wednesdays around 11am when my list has visibly drifted, and it consistently unblocks the week.
Completing and Restoring
Click the green checkmark to mark a task complete. Completed tasks move into a separate section where you can restore them anytime. This makes it easy to track progress without losing visibility.
Automatic Reset
At midnight, the app automatically resets your daily tasks to keep your list clean. Important long-term items can be re-added the next day.
Pro Tips (Make It Stick)
- Start with a daily intention. One sentence that defines success for today.
- Batch admin work. Keep email and errands to one or two windows per day.
- Use short, named blocks. e.g., “Draft client email (25 min)”.
- Plan the next step, not the entire project. Every task should be completable in one sitting.
- Close with a 2-minute review. Move items forward and tee up tomorrow’s top three.
A real morning, end to end
Abstractions get fuzzy fast, so here is exactly what an average Tuesday looks like for me using Today's Tasks. Times are real, not aspirational.
07:40 — I open my laptop and the browser. Today's Tasks is one of three pinned tabs. The list is empty because of the midnight reset, which is the whole point: I start from scratch every day.
07:41 — I type the three things I actually need to finish today, in plain language. Not "marketing project Q3" — that's a folder, not a task. The actual tasks today: "Draft launch-day Slack note (4 bullets)," "Reply to N. with revised contract terms," "Push the Tuesday newsletter to Buttondown." All three go into High Priority. That's the cap.
07:43 — Two more things go into Due Today: "Expense report for last week's contractor invoice," "Buy birthday card for D." They are due, but they are not high-priority — getting them done is one short hop, not a focused work block.
07:45 — General gets two items I want to keep in front of me without committing to today: "Sketch outline for next pillar guide," "Look at three competing comparison articles for the time-blocking page." General is the lane I forgive myself for not finishing.
11:15 — Halfway through the morning I check the list. Two High items are done. The third one — the launch-day Slack note — has been sitting unmoved for three hours. I do the demote-freely move I described above: I move it to General, write the actual next sub-step ("decide on the order of the four bullets") in Due Today, and immediately knock that out. The original block of inertia evaporates.
17:30 — End of day. I look at what's still uncompleted. Anything in High that I didn't finish gets one honest sentence in my head: "is this still High, or am I just used to seeing it there?" Most of the time it gets demoted. Tomorrow's reset will clear everything, so I trust that the genuinely high items will come back on their own when I sit down and type them in.
Two anti-patterns to avoid
Most failures I've seen with this kind of list happen because someone is fighting the constraint instead of using it. The two big ones:
1. Treating High Priority as an inbox
If High has nine items, you don't have a priority list — you have a regular list with a colour change. The constraint of three (or four, on the world's worst Wednesday) is what makes the lane do its job. If you find yourself wanting to add a tenth, that's the moment to ask which of the existing items is actually a "today" thing.
2. Re-adding the same untouched task for five days running
If a task survives five midnight resets without progress, the task is wrong. Usually it's too big ("Write the Q3 report"), too vague ("Think about the redesign"), or it's a task whose actual blocker is somebody else. Don't keep re-adding. Either break it into a concrete next step, schedule a 30-minute block to do it, or accept that you aren't going to do it and remove it.
FAQ
Do I need an account?
No. Everything runs locally in your browser (LocalStorage). Nothing is sent to our servers.
Will I lose my list?
Your daily lanes reset at midnight by design. For long-term items, keep them in General or re-add them the next day.
Can I use it on mobile?
Yes. The layout is responsive for phones and desktops.