Categories are the big areas of your life, like Work, Home or Health. They're the top level of your Master List and everything else lives inside them. Setting them up takes a few minutes and makes every task easier to put away and find again.
[IMAGE] The "Set Up Your Life Areas" screen with five or six colorful categories added.
What makes a good set of categories
Cover your whole life, not just work. If you'd like to remember it, it needs a home. Personal errands, family, health and hobbies all count.
Keep them from overlapping. Each task should have one obvious place to go. If you keep hesitating between two categories, merge them.
Start with fewer. Five to eight is plenty for most people. You can split a category later when it gets crowded.
Areas, not projects. "Health" is a category. "Run a half marathon" is a project inside it.
Some examples people use: Work, My Business, Side Hustle, Home, Personal, Self Care, Health, Finance, School, Learning, Social, Admin, Hobby, Volunteering.
Setting up your categories
You'll see this screen when you sign up and pick the simple setup. You can also open it any time from your Master List (see below).
On Set Up Your Life Areas, look at the chips under Quick add & rename. Click any that fit you to add them.
Missing one? Type a name under Or create one, then press Enter or click +.
Right-click a category to Rename or Delete it. The small x on a category removes it too.
Drag categories to put them in the order you like.
Click Continue when you're happy with the list. (When you open this screen later from the Master List, the button says Done.)
[IMAGE] Close-up of the Quick add & rename chips and the "Or create one" field.
Don't worry about getting it perfect. Every category can be renamed, moved or deleted later without losing the tasks inside.
Colors and icons
Each category gets a color and an icon so you can recognize it at a glance, in lists, in Today and on your calendar.
Click a category to pick its color. Click + in the color grid to use a custom color.
In the same popup, click Pick icon to change its icon.
Click Change palette to switch the whole set to a different color family.
Click Color remix to shuffle colors across your categories.
[IMAGE] The icon and color picker open for one category, with the palette options visible.
Changing your categories later
Open the Master List (the folder icon in the sidebar).
Open the menu at the top of the first column.
Choose Organize Categories.
[IMAGE] The Master List column menu with "Organize Categories" highlighted.
This opens the same screen as above, so you can add, rename, recolor and delete in one place.
Subcategories
If one area gets big, you can nest categories inside it. For example, Work might hold Clients, Admin and Marketing. Start without subcategories and only add them when a category feels crowded.
<!-- On your phone: add a short section here once the new mobile onboarding (describe your life, suggested categories) has shipped. -->
Next step
Your categories are ready. Now fill them: Empty your mind (braindump).
Quick Summary
Creating Main Categories
The main categories represent the different areas of your life.
Everything gets sorted into one of the main category so make sure there is no overlap.
When you first open the Master List, you will see the "Set up Main Categories" button. Clicking on it will open a menu where you can select categories from a list of suggested category names, and you'll also be able to create new categories using names that aren't listed.
After that, you can always create new categories by clicking the folder icon button to add a new category.
Examples of Main Categories
Assign a color and icon to each main category
Click the folder icon to add a color and change the icon for each category.
If your custom icon is not showing up, make sure to click on the "Configure View" button in the top-right corner, and enable it at least for "Main Categories".
Use subcategories
If you have a very large and complex main category it can be helpful to use subcategories.
Dumping your brain into Marvin
For each category think about all the things on your plate at the moment and add them as tasks.
Convert any big item (something that takes you multiple steps over multiple days to accomplish) to a project using the "Turn into project" button. To access it, first Shift-click on the far-most button in the hover menu. This will open a menu with all available actions, where you'll find the "Turn into project" button too.
You can also use the Braindump feature to help you quickly add tasks.
Examples of Projects
Importing tasks into Marvin
If you already have a task list in another app, check the import page to see if you can import your tasks.
Keep in mind that Marvin has its own organization scheme (categories, projects and tasks) so make sure you understand the three item types in Marvin and convert your imported items as needed.
Tweak as you go
As you use Marvin you will likely tweak your task organization as you settle into a good system. It takes some time to figure out what works best for you.