Why I Started Using Workflowy For Capturing Micro Tasks
I’ve tried almost every productivity hack known to man — punch cards in Trello, emails to myself, 15 different Todoist setups — but micro tasks always fall through the cracks. Especially dumb little ones like “remember to follow up with Dan about the Miro permissions thing” or “double-check the thumbnail export before publishing.” These aren’t big enough to schedule on a calendar or even put in a formal list. They come in hot while I’m working, and if I stop to format them anywhere, the entire flow breaks. 😵💫
Workflowy ended up being the weirdly perfect solution — mostly because it completely lacks structure. Unlike Notion (which nags me to add a title, category, tag, and existential purpose for every thought), Workflowy lets me brain-dump in bullet form, mid-thought, with no friction. No title. No format. Just a bullet. If I want to write “Fix CSS on modal spacing,” I can. If I want to just write “modal border dumb again,” I can do that too. It’s forgiving.
So I set up a way to keep a single section in Workflowy where micro tasks go the second they hit my brain. Not later — *immediately while working*. The key is not switching contexts. Let me walk through how it works in practice.
Setting Up One Bullet To Rule Them All
First thing I did: I made a bullet in Workflowy called `0 Capture Inbox`. That’s my holding cell for all frictionless captures. I keep it pinned and starred, so it shows up immediately on mobile or desktop.
Then, I added a keyboard shortcut to jump to it. On Windows, alt+shift+9. On Mac, I made a BetterTouchTool shortcut — three-finger tap on my trackpad — that immediately jumps to that exact bullet in the Workflowy app.
No matter where I am, a quick shortcut pulls up a list where I can add a new task with just a dash and a few words:
– remember to test new Zapier path 🤦
– check airtable field type for that new record
– fix money field formatting on embed
That’s it. No folders, no databases. It’s basically a scratchpad that never judges me.
I wrote those while actively testing a webhook that was mysteriously breaking only for customers with ampersands in their usernames. Had I opened up Notion or Todoist to “log” them, I would’ve broken flow mid-debug.
What Happens When You Never Clean Up The List
I made the mistake of never processing that micro task inbox for… let’s just say longer than ideal 🙃. Turns out, dumping everything into one bullet without any review creates what I now call Bullet Soup.
I had 40+ lines of forgotten thoughts:
– check why notion API is slow after move
– remember to call Bryan about slack roles
– reenable toggles on preview — still broken??
– confirm if dropbox link auto expires??
About half of those are now mysteries even to me. That Dropbox one? No idea. The Bryan Slack roles one sounds like something I meant to do before a major reorg two months ago and is probably void.
So now, every morning (I mean, most mornings), I glance through that inbox bullet and either:
– Move the item into a real task list (I use a `Today` and `Backlog/tasks` bullet system)
– Delete it if it makes no sense
– Comment on it if it’s something worth investigating later
Yes, Workflowy supports inline comments. You can hover, click a bullet dot, then comment — I use that on things like:
– “Check if button delay bug is on Firefox only” → *(comment: noticed on latest ESR build, maybe relevant)*
Workflowy doesn’t nag you to clean house, so it’s 100% your responsibility to review. But that makes it beautifully silent.
Capturing Without Switching Apps Or Devices
I tested possible shortcuts from four different contexts:
1. Laptop with browser open in a million tabs
2. Mobile while walking the dog
3. iPad (I don’t like using my phone in front of clients)
4. Terminal while SSH’d into a staging server
Honestly? The biggest challenge was mobile. Workflowy’s mobile app is fast enough, but it takes too many taps if you have to manually navigate. But if your inbox bullet is starred, it’s literally one tap to open, one tap to add, then done.
On Android, I used a widget to open straight to Workflowy. On iOS, Spotlight search for “Capture Inbox” becomes muscle memory. I also tested using Siri Shortcuts but gave up quickly — felt like too much ceremony for a silly 3-word task blurt.
Terminal capture was harder. I wrote a bash function that uses `curl` to post to Workflowy’s API, which is… fragile. They don’t really support external writes. Honestly, I just leave Workflowy open in another tmux window most days now.
Distinguishing Between Micro Tasks And Micro Notes
I realized midway through using this system that not everything I dumped was actually a task. Some were just thoughts I wanted to revisit:
– “Maybe Airtable formula could be changed to support variants instead of separate views?”
– “Clients seem confused about the new filter UX — survey them?”
– “Check if Zapier’s new versions support looping simpler”
These aren’t actionable right away. They’re like… mental pings.
So I started tagging them `#idea` or `#note` inline. Workflowy lets you instantly filter by tag. Now I do a search for `#idea` once a week and toss thread-worthy ones into their own bullets or write more luxurious thoughts around them. Anything I ignore for too long gets deleted. Cold-hearted, I know 😬
Still, tagging matters. Helps restore some structure without losing the laziness of capture.
Using Mirror Bullets To Route Tasks Later
Okay — this part feels like a superpower. Workflowy lets you “mirror” bullets. Instead of copy-pasting a task, you can press `Shift+Ctrl+M` (or right-click → Mirror) and it becomes a live-sync’d duplicate anywhere in your Workflowy.
Why care about that?
If I write something like:
– test new permission model in prod ⚠️
I can mirror that under both:
– Today / Dev Tasks
– Capture Inbox
Now I can work out of my Today list and still process the rest of my Inbox later, without losing tasks or context. If I check it off in one place, it updates everywhere. Feels like cheating 🙂
I mirror about 30% of my micro tasks. The others I just migrate manually once I’m ready.
When Workflowy Is Not Enough On Its Own
This system is awesome until it isn’t — when you’re managing a team or coordinating across tools like Asana, Jira, or even Monday (shudders). Workflowy is solitary. It’s a great brain partner, but it won’t notify anyone, assign anything, or integrate with other PM tools out of the box.
So what I started doing:
Every few days, I revisit capture entries that turn into shared tasks. Let’s say I had this:
– “still need custom webhook for job retry logic on fail”
I’d clean it up to:
– **Create retry webhook for job fails** → and via Zapier, I send that bullet content into our shared Jira backlog under the right label.
You can sort of script this using Workflowy’s API (unofficial), or just manually copy it over. I tried both. Got cloudy fast. Now I just trust my own brain to decide if something needs to move into a more formal system.
Simple Checklist To Keep It Flowing
Here’s my current checklist I use to keep my capture flow from collapsing again:
– [ ] Is my Capture Inbox bullet pinned and starred?
– [ ] Do I still remember the shortcut to open it?
– [ ] Can I add from phone in two taps or less?
– [ ] Did I check Inbox for any tasks that need mirroring or upgrading today?
– [ ] Did I delete anything that has grown dusty or cryptic?
– [ ] Did I search `#note` or `#idea` recently?
If 4 or more are false, it’s time to rebuild the system (again).
¯\_(ツ)_/¯