Things: Project templates!

Cultured Code released Things Cloud “Nimbus” a couple of days ago. I found myself skimming their Twitter feed and saw:

Mac: While viewing the Projects focus (⌘+5) — i.e. you aren’t viewing the details and To Do items within a project — select the project you’d like to copy, then press ⌘+D (Duplicate) to create an identical copy of the project.

(You can also duplicate To Do items.)

Despite not having read the Project Templates support page from Basecamp Help, I recently learned that I could create project templates in Basecamp—which include To Do lists—and longed for similar functionality in Things.

I…think they had it all along. 🙂

It should be listed on the keyboard shortcuts page (required reading for all Things for Mac users striving to be super efficient).

Here are some project template ideas:

• Packing list
• Important weekly/monthly checklists
• Irregular projects (new clients, employees, taxes)

How would I create, organize, and save the project templates for future use?

Initial setup will take less than a minute:

1. Open the Tags window (⇧⌘+T), and create a tag named Template for the project.
2. Click the blank area—in the row of the tag—furthest to the right, which will display a text area with a blinking cursor. Choose a letter to be used for a keyboard shortcut for the tag, like “T”.

Goal thus far — When viewing the Project focus (⌘+5), find your project templates quickly by pressing Ctrl and the letter you chose in step 2 earlier. (e.g. Ctrl+T)

Create a project template:

1. Create a new project, which will be your template.
2. Add your desired project tags, notes, and To Do items.
3. Navigate to the Project focus (⌘+5), press the keyboard shortcut you’ve chosen for the Template tag (Ctrl+T, for this example), then move the project to the Someday focus (⌘+Y) to hide it from your Active Projects list in the sidebar. Once you’ve created several project templates, you can use the up (↑) and down (↓) arrow keys to select a project.
4. Optional: While viewing the Project focus (⌘+5), select the newly-created project template, and File (⇧⌘+F) the project in the correct Area.
5. Repeat steps 1–4 for additional project templates, as needed.

Now, you’re a few keyboard shortcuts away from creating a new project from one of your templates. By few, I literally mean:

1. (⌘+5) Navigate to the Project focus.
2. (Ctrl+T) View all projects with the Template tag.
3. (↓ or ↓) Navigate to your desired Project item.
4. (⌘+D) Duplicate the project template.
5. (⏎) Open the duplicated project, remove the Template tag.
6. Edit the project to be specific to the scenario (a.k.a. profit).