Statuses
Tasks in Herding Cats can have any of the following statuses, and move freely between them. You can see records of the statuses your task has been through on the task detail view and the logs view.
Idea
Ideas are tasks which you don’t need to action right now, but would like to remember that you wanted to do them. This might be things like researching a new topic, trying a new hobby, reading a particular book, that don’t directly impact your work now. They never show up in your main list, but do show up in your All Tasks list. This is somewhat similar to the idea of a “Someday Maybe” list from GTD.
Put anything and everything in your Ideas, with as much context as you can provide in the notes field about what you wanted to do and why, so when you revisit them later you remember what you were thinking when you created them.
It’s a good idea to review your Idea tasks every so often, to decide whether any of them are now things you actively want or need to do, so Todo status, or things that you no longer care about, so Nope status.
Todo
Tasks in this status are things you want or need to do, but haven’t started work on yet. Most of your tasks probably start here.
Started
These are tasks you’ve started working on but not finished yet. Starting a timer on a task automatically puts it into the Started status.
Waiting
For tasks you need someone else to do something before you can make more progress. When you mark a task as waiting, you need to give a reason, and a date when you should check in to see if the task is available again.
To mark a task as waiting, click/tap the button with the clock icon on the task’s details view.
The button to mark a task as waiting, with a clock icon
Waiting tasks won’t show up in your main list until the date you said you should check back in on them.
Done
Done is for completed tasks. You can mark a task as done using the Complete Task button on the task’s detail view.
When you do this, you’ll get some confetti on-screen to celebrate your achievement. Configure how much confetti you get, or disable it completely, in the settings.
Nope
Nope is for when you’ve decided you don’t need or want to complete a task. When you change a task’s status to Nope, you should probably record why you made that decision in the Notes field.