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Outlining 101

Learn outlining basics to organize your thoughts and structure projects.

What Is Outlining?

Outlining is the process of creating hierarchies for whatever you’re thinking or working on. Outlines break complex processes into smaller, more manageable parts.
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The Benefits of Outlining

If you're a writer, you can use outlining for taking notes and structuring documents. But a project outliner like Taskade is a much more versatile tool that’s excellent for:

  • 🪨 Breaking complex ideas/problems into smaller steps
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  • ✅ Managing all your tasks in an organized way.
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  • 👑 Visualizing all kinds of hierarchical systems.
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  • 👁 Planning and managing projects.
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  • 💬 Preparing a meeting agenda/talking points.
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  • 📍 Connecting the dots and visualizing links between ideas.
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  • 🔄 Creating reusable checklists, workflows, and templates.

Outlining Terminology

Taskade is a true outliner. That means it can "understand" relationships between outline elements (nodes). To better visualize those connections, outline elements are commonly referred to as Parents and Children.

📋 In This Article

  • What Is Outlining?

  • The Benefits of Outlining

  • Outlining Terminology

  • Indent/Outdent

  • Fold / Unfold

  • 🌳 Parents (Tasks)
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    • You start an outline (Project) on Taskade by creating tasks.
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    • A task is equivalent to a bullet point in the traditional sense.
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    • A task occupies the highest level of an outline hierarchy.

  • 🍃 Children (Sub-Tasks)
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    • Sub-tasks are the children of a parent task.
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    • A sub-task is “nested” or indented under its parent task.
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    • Every sub-task is also a task, so each sub-task can have its own sub-tasks.

Indent/Outdent

The easiest way to highlight the relationship between tasks and subtasks is to indent/nest lower-level elements in a hierarchy.

  • To indent, select a task and press the ⌨️ Tab Key.
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    • You can create an unlimited number of sub-tasks in a hierarchy.
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  • To outdent, use the ⌨️ Shift + Tab keyboard shortcut.

Fold / Unfold

Outlining gives you the power to hide or show outline levels. Here's how it works:

  • Select the top task in an outline level.
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  • Click the arrow ▽ to the left of the task to fold the level.
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  • Click the arrow again to unfold the level.

💡 Note: Press Ctrl/⌘ + ⬆ to fold or Ctrl/⌘ + ⬇ to unfold outline levels.

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