ForumsQuestionsHow to best model a repeating ORDERED SEQUENCE of tasks
How to best model a repeating ORDERED SEQUENCE of tasks
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shelbyp |
I am curious if someone has a good way of modelling a sequence of tasks, which is repeatable on completion date.
For example I may want to have a simple practice schedule for music where day 1: rhythms day 2: harmony ... similarly at work it might be a project at work where 1: prepare meeting agenda 2: meeting set time and place 3: prepare and distribute post meeting steps... Similarly for my workout schedule, etc there are in fact many applications for this... The problem is there is no simple way to model this neatly. In particular for these types of task I would only like 1. ONLY the 1st item in the sequence which is not marked complete to appear in the hotlist 2. an easy way for the sequence to start again (repeat when I have completed the last task) The closest solution I have come up with is to have a template tagged task with subtasks. When I label everything as complete, I then clone to create a new task, based on the template, but this is far from a clean solution ( no automated repeat, no proper imposing of the sequence, and clutter in the hotlist). Note that a simple repeatable task with subtasks does not work, because as we label the subtasks complete, they disappear. So that when the parent is labelled complete the subtasks are NOT repeated with the parent. As I use Toodledo more and more, I am finding that the repeatable tasks are creating clutter in the hotlist, and the main reason is that I have no way to easily hide all but the "current" item of the sequence. There are many cases where only the current item is useful (examples above of music practice, repetitive actions at work, workout plan etc), so I think a clean solution would help improve the app and GTD in general... Actually there is no specific feature request here... mostly my brainstorming, the feature may already exist and I may not know how to exploit it! thanks for any help! shelby |
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shelbyp |
just as a followup to my own question, I think what is needed is some kind of event driven task creation.
This is in fact a generalization of the repeating of a task. In this case the completion of the task triggers the event to create the same task again. This could be extended so that on completion of the task, the creation of another task is triggered. This would allow modelling a sequence of tasks cleanly. Some tasks would not in fact be tasks at all, but just templates which are created automatically on some event (here the completion of a given task). |
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Jake Toodledo Founder |
Event driven task creation is an interesting idea. You could do it via our API, but it would require some work and programming knowledge. It is unlikely that we will implement something like this, but I'll put it on our todo list.
You may also be able to get by with CSV imports whenever you need to make a batch of tasks. |
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shelbyp |
Jake: thanks for the response, in fact I am a software developer so will look into the API, I checked the doc and it really looks quite powerful!
I also noted your other post on how you use Outlines to tick of a sequence of steps to perform testing of a new feature... This is quite similar to what I need, and I think Outlines will do the trick. For a full solution, the outline would have to link somehow to a task and ideally have some IOS support, but I know these are upcoming, so the solution basically exists. NOTE: for this to work it would require that when a task with an outline repeats, the outline should (optionally/configurably) be cloned on repeat. So that we can start ticking off the outline steps from a new blank outline. shelby |
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