ForumsQuestionsHolidays
Holidays
| Author | Message |
|---|---|
|
gashton34 |
Say I'm on holiday for two weeks. Can I input this to over every day of those weeks, or would I have to input 'holiday' for every single day manually?
|
|
Jake Toodledo Founder |
Well, "Holiday" isn't really a task, so I wouldn't put it on my to-do list. If you really want to, you could make a daily repeating task called "Have fun and relax" and check it off each day that you accomplish it :)
|
|
gashton34 |
No it isn't a task. However, in a diary you would 'block book' several days as holiday time, so that you would know not to book any other tasks in for that day. Then when you looked into the future for specific days, you would see the holiday marked down and therefore wouldn't put any tasks in there. So it seems that to carry out the same procedure on here, I'd have to create a task for every single day of my holiday period.
I love toodledo, but I think it lacks some of the functionality of a paper diary. It seems pointless and a waste of time to me to keep both a to-do list AND a diary - why not merge them into one piece of software? |
|
cabbage |
Because a calendars and to do lists serve different purposes:
- A to do list is a list of things you have to do. - A Calendar is a list of appointments. Some tasks can only be done at a certain time or on a certain day. These need appointments and should be on the calendar. Others might have a deadline but that's a different sort of time commitment. You might work for part of every day on something that needs to get done by the end of the month, but you don't need to make appointments for it. Of course, you CAN make appointments with yourself to do any task, even those that are not time-sensitive at all. But it's a personal choice, and those of us who use the two tools separately like to keep them separate. |
|
cabbage |
Sorry, I went back and reread your post. I have nothing against an integrated piece of software, as long as the option to keep my to-dos out of the calendar is there.
|
|
gashton34 |
Would it be so difficult from a programming standpoint to have a feature to enable you to input a 'block' task to cover several consecutive days? i.e. something that once you've inputed it, you could make it appear on several days in a row at once, then you would just tick off each day's entry as it happened. That way, when you looked forward to a particular date, you would know not to book anything in as you'd be on holiday. I understand the differences between a to-do list and appointments, but why make them separate, when they could be together, thus saving mistakes through double-booking and overlap. I have no idea whether this is possible, but it would certainly make my life easier. So far it's been the one and only sticking point for me using Toodledo.
|
|
Salgud |
@gashton
There are other ways besides Allen's approach to view your task list and your calendar. Allen and his disciples believe that tasks and appointments are two entirely different things. Others of us believe that an appointment is just a special kind of task that must be done at a specific time. In this approach, there is a continuum from tasks that have no specific time relationship and can be done at any time, to tasks with a due date, and maybe a due time, to appointments, which start, and often end, at specific times. But they are all viewed as "tasks". So my ideal task manager is one that manages all of this, so I can plan my day or week with all of my "tasks" in mind. What we're really talking about here is a "time manager" software that helps me manage my time. For me, and others, the Holy Grail of time managers would be something that encompasses all of this, and incorporates my Contacts list as well, since virtually all of my appointments and many of my tasks in some way or another involve the people and organizations in my Contacts list. I've had such programs at times, such as DateBk on my Palm devices back in the day. I'm currently looking at Pocket Informant as such a product. I like TD, though I wish it was moving toward being a Time Manager, it doesn't appear to be their goal. The latest version of their Calendar view is less feature-rich than the previous one, signalling me that they aren't particularly interested in making the calendar more integrated with the task list. They have a lot of GTDrs aboard, so this makes sense from a marketing POV. It's nice that they even have a Calendar, but it's not useful to me in it's current form because it doesn't show my appointments for me to plan around. That said, I continue to use TD because it's feature rich (I use about 90% of the features) and very well supported by it's developer. At least I consider it well supported, though others need more personal replies to their queries to stroke their fragile egos! :) Just wanted to give another perspective on time management besides the ever-popular GTD. I'm not knocking GTD, just saying it's not for everybody, that is has it's limitations, and is certainly not the only approach. This message was edited Apr 05, 2012. |
|
Folke X |
I agree that an app capable of all would be perfect. It should not need to be the case that you have to have two different apps for time mangagement.
Generally I like to keeps things as open as possible, so for me it makes sense to have firm appointments in a calendar and tasks somewhere else, almost totally unrelated to time and calendars. I definitely do not like to schedule (pre-program) tasks unless I really have to (appointments being one such case). This means I am probably as close to a "true GTDer" as you you can possibly get - or even more so, it would seem at times :-) But I agree that everything across the spectrum definitely is possible, and indeed appropriate at times. For example, if you have a day packed with external appointments in different locations I find it smart to create a 'schedule' (or sequence order) for that day which includes errands near those places, even if there are no time factors involved for those errands. Or to 'soft schedule' certain tasks to within a given time window, such as a holiday period. For a true GTDer I think none of this needs to be a problem. It usually can be seen as a GTD project (more than one related task) which involves creating a particular context for a limited period of time. Let's say you have plenty of excursions you would like to make by car, but you do not own a car. Then you need to create that context (rent or borrow a car for a few days) and consequently also plan your excursions to take place during those particular days. Like Salgud, I think the differences between an "open" (opportunistic, review-based) time management style (like GTD) and the more traditional scheduling style (rigid time allocation) would be possible to bridge in a smart enough app. And for example, a project meeting (an appointment) may well belong both in the project (todo app) and in the calendar, which means there is a case for careful integration. But just like cabbage, I really hate to have my todos showing up in my calendar just because they have a deadline or a tickler date (start date). Unfortunately, it is this, the most useless, form of calendar integration that is usually offered in current apps. This message was edited Apr 05, 2012. |
|
Salgud |
@ Folke X
I agree, except that it's rutabagas that I hate in my calendar. :) I liked DateBk, an old Palm app (that's still around). It was highly customizable and one option was a "blended" view which would show me a list of my appointments for the day and a list of tasks due that day. But it had the capability to show whatever you wanted, so if you don't want to see your tasks for the day, or just your tasks, you could have that too. It allowed you to format and filter in a gazillion ways. Sometimes, it was overwhelming. It certainly had a steep learning curve, and the printed PDF manual was over 100 pages, if I remember correctly. There were a number of setup screens, each cluttered with a dozen or more choices crammed into a Palm window. But once you figured it out and set it up to your tastes, it was so handy. After that, I only had to tweak it occasionally to make small adjustments. The options also included the ability to show or not show your tasks in the calendar views. Since it had Day, Week and Month views, you could determine whether tasks showed by view, so I had tasks showing in Day view, but not in Week or month view, in default mode, as they were already cluttered on that small screen. Still, it had the option to toggle tasks on or off in each view. Very flexible. Still, I'm not sure it would make the more purist GTDrs happy, as your tasks, appointments and contacts were all together in one app. I agree that I prefer not to schedule tasks in general. It never works out the way I planned it (mice, men, etc.) and I just get frustrated and waste more time adjusting all the times I put in that have now changed, again. But in some circumstances, planning a task, especially something like an errand, works well. Or even when I have an hour between appointments, which is not enough time to get home and back, I can schedule tasks in the gap, as long as I have the resources available. In that case, scheduling a task to that time slot makes perfect sense. So I prefer a task manager that is what I have dubbed a "time manager", which helps me plan my time, whether for appointments, tasks, or anything else that uses my time. Lots of flexibility to show/not show stuff in whatever format I need at that moment on whatever device I have along, is, for me, the Holy Grail of task management. |
You cannot reply yet
U Back to topic home
R Post a reply
To participate in these forums, you must be signed in.