Help with building a Tasks table on top of a larger data table

I’m building a Life Planning doc that helps me connect my daily tasks to my broader, 1- and 10-year goals.

My question is: should I build a tasks table that relates to the table with my long-term goals? And if so, how should I do that? I explain each view and this specific question in the “Q1 Tasks” table here.

More background:
I’m making one big table to categorize my goals. That includes:
Categories, 10-year goals for each category 1-year goals for each category, Quarterly goals for 1-year goals, and monthly tasks for quarterly goals. To illustrate further:

Table: Life plan

  • Categories
  • 1 and 10-year goals for each category

1-year plan (view of Life Plan table)

  • Categories
  • 1-year plan
  • Quarterly plan to achieve 1-year plan

Quarterly plan (view of Life Plan table)

  • Categories
  • Quarterly plan
  • Monthly plan to achieve Quarterly plan

Quarterly tasks (New table, or view of Life Plan table?)

  • Shows monthly tasks
  • I can add priority, due dates, etc. to each task

Dear @Robert_DuBois,

Welcome to the community!

Related to your question, my personal vision on this subject is;

On you “Life plan” is a long term vision, I call it a high(est) level flight :airplane:, like in the plane, when you look down, you only see the bigger objects, but can’t indentify the details.

When on the “high(est) level flight”, you can set “milestones”, when you fly over Paris, on the way to Madrid, you can say “I want to visit Paris”, but till your trip to Paris doesn’t get shape you can’t make plans (tasks). At that moment you can’t see the “Eifel Tower” or you don’t know if you will get a visa ( imagine it’s applicable to you)

When you come at a “mid-flight level”, your milestones become goals. When you shedule to go to Paris in Feb 2021, it becomes more visible what you want to do/go see in Paris. Visits of the Eifel tower, musea become projects.

When you come at a “low-flight level”, the goals become very clear and you can assign tasks, like hotel booking, investigate what to see.

When you come at a “landed level” (arrived, happend), you come at a reflection point, what have been good/bad descisions, what should change next time and so on.

Some other learning I had, don’t make it too complex and time consuming, it should over time remain fun to do, as you benefit from it.

Over time your vision and circumstances change of various reasons, so keep it at the “lower levels” adaptive and only the" high level goals" are of course good to keep in focus.

:bulb: Of course it doesn’t mean that this is the only right vision!

Thanks for your thoughtful reply, Jean Pierre.

Have you tried constructing a coda doc to track this? I don’t want to make the system too formal, but I do love experimenting with systems. : )

Dear @Robert_DuBois,

To be honest no, but in case you are interested in flight levels, the book “Practical Kanban” from Klaus Leopold, and this Youtube video are good resources

The video is more about production flows, bottle necks

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