I use Areas to separate Work items from the rest of my life, but in some cases there is overlap. One way this happens is in my Notebook “Things to Buy” which can contain work and non-work items
Currently, the Notebook itself uses tags and thus will only display in the sidebar if the tags match the Area (i.e if I have no tags on the Notebook, it will not display in the sidebar when I am in the “Work” Area). It would be much nicer if the Notebook displayed in the side bar if any items in the Notebook matched the current Area. In other words, filtering the items in the Notebook, rather than the Notebook itself (but hiding the Notebook if no items match the filter)
I could, of course, solve this by having two or more Notebook, one per area, but that feels very clunky, especially if you have many areas.
I can’t believe I didn’t actually think of that - that does, of course, work.
However, there’s still 2 edge cases, I think?
Use of “unassigned” Area - I use this for “home” tasks as it’s by far the largest category and saves me the extra step of assigning an Area tag for it. But if I have any Area tags on the Notebook, then it’ll disappear from Unassigned (or if it has no tags it’ll disappear from Work, etc)
Where there are many Notebooks, it would still be nice to hide the ones that have no items in (that match the current Area), just to cut down on screen clutter.
Both of these are minor, I think - but I can’t say I really want to go and add a Home tag to 100+ items…
- that does, of course, work.