Things tip: moving items to headings

I'll Bold and Capitalise Things features for clarity.

Quick tip for the Things users. Let's say you have a Project named 21 Products and in there a Heading named 21.35 JDHQ. Which I do. (The names aren't important; substitute your own.)

I use Things' lovely Move… feature to flick items from my Inbox to these Headings. I prefer to use the number, because I know it and it's faster. My ideal workflow is:

  1. When processing the item, press Shift-Cmd-M for Move.
  2. Type 21.35, which matches a Heading inside a Project.
  3. Press return.

The problem is I've created work packages whose number contains 21.25. Things will prefer matching a number in a Project and if it finds one, it won't offer you the number even if it matches a Heading.

Screenshot of Things. I've invoked the 'Move' feature and typed '21'. It only offers me 2x work packages, both of which contain the number '21'.
Figure 0252A. Things won't ever offer '21.35 JDHQ' as it's a Heading, and the Projects matches that are shown here override it.

Stack your searches

The solution is deceptively simple: just use a more specific search.

If you use 21 21.35 it seems to understand that I want to search in Project 21 for Heading 21.35. And that's exactly what I want.

Screenshot of Things showing the match as described above.
Figure 0252B. Of course it was this simple. ❤️ Things.

If you're interested in how I manage my life using Things – it drives everything that I do – take the 5-hour Task and Project Management course, available with Pro memberships and higher.