Adding text to the section numbering

Question

I wish to add some text prior to the number given to a subsection, e.g.:

Task 1.1  Blablabla
...
Task 1.2  Blablabla

How?

Answer 1

To add text before the section, you can use:

\renewcommand{\thesection}{Text \arabic{section}}

or for subsection you can use:

\renewcommand{\thesubsection}{Text \arabic{section}}

Code: section

\documentclass{article}

\renewcommand{\thesection}{Text \arabic{section}}

\begin{document}
\section{First section}
Some text.

\section{Second section}
Some more text.
\end{document}

Code: subsection:

\documentclass{article}

\renewcommand{\thesubsection}{Text \arabic{subsection}}

\begin{document}
\section{First section}
\subsection{First sub section}
Some text.
\subsection{Second sub section}
Some more text.
\end{document}

Answer 2

Peter's answer has the disadvantage of printing the text you put before subsection numbers in references to the subsections and in the ToC, as well.

To avoid that, instead of renewing the meaning of \thesubsection, it's better to load the titlesec package and define

\titleformat{\subsection}{\normalfont\large\bfseries}{Task \thesubsection}{1em}{}

MWE:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{titlesec}
\titleformat{\subsection}{\normalfont\large\bfseries}{Task \thesubsection}{1em}{}

\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
\section{A section}
\subsection{First subsection}\label{subsec:first}
Some text from subsection \ref{subsec:second}.
\subsection{Second subsection}\label{subsec:second}
Some text from subsection \ref{subsec:first}.
\end{document} 

Output:

If you want similar behavior for sections, you can use something like

\titleformat{\section}{\normalfont\Large\bfseries}{Text \thesection}{1em}{}

---

If you also want that word before subsection numbers in the ToC, add the following code to your preamble

\usepackage[titles]{tocloft}
\renewcommand{\cftsubsecpresnum}{Task\space}
\newlength\mylength
\settowidth\mylength{\cftsubsecpresnum}
\addtolength\cftsubsecnumwidth{\mylength}

to get