A task system that worked — just not where his day actually happens
Anthony, a university staff member, had already built out a Tasks collection with his own urgency groupings — sections like Do Now, Decide, and Later that helped him think through what actually needed attention. The problem was location: that structure lived inside a separate collection, not on the daily page he actually opened each morning. Using it meant repeatedly diving into the collection, dragging a task over, then scrolling to find it again — not exactly a fast habit to keep up.
The missing piece: due dates
A related issue: tasks sitting in that collection without a due date never showed up inside Planner at all. Planner only surfaces tasks that have a due date attached — so a well-organized backlog and an actual daily view were, in practice, two disconnected things.
Recreating the same structure, directly on the daily page
Rather than treating the Tasks collection as the only home for triage, the same visual grouping can be rebuilt right on a daily tile: create labeled banner sections — Do Now, Decide, Later, or whatever categories actually fit — directly on the day, then drag tasks between them the same way they'd move between statuses inside a collection. No separate collection to open, and no scrolling afterward to find where a task landed.
Save the layout once, reuse it every day
Once the banners and structure look right, saving the day as a template means the next day opens with the same banner sections already in place, ready for a fresh batch of tasks — no rebuilding the layout from scratch each morning. Saving a template like this is available on the free plan; it's the layout itself that matters, not a paid feature gate.
Where AI-created tasks fit into the same triage
Connecting Claude or ChatGPT through xTiles MCP means a daily routine can review the previous day, move overdue tasks forward, and pull key context from inbox, Slack, and meeting notes. Tasks it creates, and the ones created manually, both land on the same daily page once they carry a due date. From there, sorting them into Do Now / Decide / Later banners is the same drag-and-drop motion, regardless of who — or what — created the task.
Why this fits a morning that starts scattered
For anyone who tends to build a tidy list and then not touch it for weeks, moving the triage step onto the page that's already opened every day removes the extra click of visiting a separate collection. Sorting happens where the day already lives, not somewhere that has to be remembered separately.