Adding the ability to assign task to a period (=higher horizon) instead of just a date or time

[mathisgauthey]

Hi everyone!

After using Timestripe and Noteplan, I discovered something that changed how I think about task management: the problem isn't that I'm bad at finishing tasks. The problem is that most tools use the wrong granularity.

Context with what I call the treadmill problem

Most task systems, including Obsidian TaskNotes today, anchor every task to a specific date. Anything you don't finish gets pushed to tomorrow, then the next day, accumulating a quiet sense of failure without any real change in your priorities. You're not late because the task became less important. You're late because the date was too precise from the start.

The horizon model

For those familiar with GTD Horizons and periodic reviews, you'll know where I'm going.
For the rest, the fix is enhancing dates with horizons: Life, Decade, Year, Quarter, Month, Week, Day.

A task doesn't need a due/schedule date until it genuinely has one. It lives at the level of ambition it actually represents.

The workflow flows in two directions:

• Pull down: at the start of the week, you look at your monthly tasks and decide what belongs this week. On Monday morning, you pull from the week into today.
• Push up: when something gets delayed or deprioritized, you don't necessarily push it to tomorrow. You push it back to the week or the month, which reflects a real change in planning rather than a small daily failure.

This distinction matters psychologically. Rescheduling a task to tomorrow every day feels like stagnation. Moving it to next week's horizon feels like a deliberate choice. The first erodes confidence, the second preserves it.

And you do these moving up and down at the start of every period, adjusting your priorities with what is on your plate at the moment.

Two views that make this work

Timestripe implements this through two complementary layouts, and I'd love to see something equivalent in TaskNotes:

1. The stacked calendar view

All horizons visible simultaneously, stacked from Life down to Days. Your decade-level intentions sit above your yearly goals, which sit above your quarters, months, weeks, and finally your daily grid. You always have context. You can see at a glance whether your daily tasks connect to anything meaningful above them.

2. The horizons board view

A horizontal kanban-style layout where each column is a horizon: Today / This week / This month / This quarter / This year / This decade / Life. Tasks sit in the column that matches how far out they live, and you drag them leftward as the time approaches. This view is particularly useful for weekly reviews.

For a live demo of the full workflow, Timestripe's beginner tutorial is worth a look.

What this could look like in Obsidian

Obsidian already has the infrastructure through periodic notes. The natural implementation would be:

• Tasks can now be assigned to a periodic note instead of a hard due date or datetime : [[2026-W16]], [[2026-04]], [[2026-Q2]].
• The plugin renders the stacked view by pulling tasks from each periodic note and grouping them by horizon.
• A drag-and-drop interaction (or a command) moves a task between periodic notes and dates, updating the link.
• For the calendar integration, task with a periodic note attached could be seen as day event on the first day of the concerned period ?

The heavy lifting is already there. TaskNotes would provide the two views on top of the periodic notes you already maintain.

Prior writing on this topic

I've explored these ideas in a few posts if you want more context:

• Timestripe: An innovative move in a crowded space
• The Missing Piece: How Periodic Notes Could Elevate Capacities
• How I use Capacities for Task and Project management

And the reddit post that inspired my writing.

Would love to hear if others have been missing this workflow in Obsidian, and whether the TaskNotes team sees this as something feasible to build toward.