ForumsQuestionsAged tasks
Aged tasks
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johnprince2112 |
I did a search on here but could not find anything I'm wanting to know about aged tasks. I'm not concerned with date added, but instead want to know how long a task has been in a state. Because I use 'Status' types, tasks often traverse Active>Next Action, Starred, etc).
Consequently, I'm using the date modified tag. So as an example I want a result set that returns all tasks that have had a star longer than two days. Should I query: Where Star=Yes Last Modified date='Was Not in the last 2 Days' I ask because I did and it does not seem to return what I want. My questions 1. Am I not using the correct query? 2. If a tasks has not been modified does use the Added date as the last modified date? I'm hoping so, else in my example above, all tasks that were initially saved with a Star would not appear, so I assume. Thanks! |
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Salgud |
Seems like an interesting idea for a filter, but the filter you're using won't return only those tasks which have had a star more than 2 days, but any task that is starred and was modified more than 2 days ago, which would include if you changed anything else such as Due Date or Status or whatever. To do what you want it to, your filter depends on the fact that you do not routinely change other attributes of your tasks once they have been starred. This may be true in your case, but is certainly not the case in mine. Only you know if it's true for you. Is this possibly the problem?
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johnprince2112 |
Hmmm..apologies, as I'm not quite understanding your question. My need is not dependent how often--if ever--modify a task. In some instances, I might not ever modify, but instead only add. This is why I inquired about the 'Modify' date field and if it's populated on initial task insert. With that said, ALL tasks will be acted upon in my process. Even if I add and complete, the task has been modified.Said differently. if I'm not constantly modifying tasks, I'm either not getting much done or my tasks are at an extremely high level and are listed in +1 day format.
So with tasks, I complete, I backfill, complete, backfill, etc. This instead of complete, think what I should add next in the system, complete, think what I should add next etc. I imagine we all do, just want to clarify that Now if I'm still not understanding your questions/suggestion ...read the gory details below as to my INTENT. ;-) I have a process that allows me to view only the tasks I can possibly do at that time, location, based on whom I'm with and how much energy/time I have available and most importantly, what the priority of those tasks are. In other words I use each of task's properties (4-5 of them) as 'context' instead of just the 'context' field itself.I never really want to *only* know I was probably not as clear as I could be. Understand I break my views up in to three different categories, which comprise of the three (only and all) reason I would run a view. Thus I categorized these in to 'types' of views (this is all abstract by the way) 1. Do: See what I should be doing based on day part, location, available time/energy, importance, and whom I with (even if it's just me, myself, and I.) ;-) I run these throughout the day as my 'context' changes so does my 'What should I be doing now' view. nOW is defined as the next four house. This way I only have to fun 3-4 views per day to know what I need to know. Tasks are propagated in to the "Do" category from the types of views below 2. Select: Selecting the most appropriate tasks to backfill the tasks I've completed....usually run ad hoc. I have a 'War Board' I use that has everything ready to go and allows me to only select the tasks that are appropriate for that (overall) context. 3. Maintain: System maintenance (orphaned tasks, required property missing, etc)....usually run weekly I've found these are the three reasons I would run a view. I can actually accomplish everything to do this incorporating only four properties to a task which takes less than 4 seconds seconds). I think things can be implemented to make it faster but that is low priority for me. A fifth property is used to move a tasks up the food chain in to "today's" bucket. That is the STAR. This is used in "Select" domain of views noted above. I look at my "War Board" which is just a task selection board prioritzed for what I should be doing in context. I like the stars because I can quickly say "I have 1.75 hours, I'll take this and that, and this one too" (Star, star, star). These tasks already have all the proper properties so once I star it, the task will appear within specific day part. Once starred, I then run my #1 type views, which provide what I should be doing that I can be doing for the next four hours. I make no more changes to these buckets of views. I run the "Do" views 'by day part' so my tasks are within context and prioritized in a four-hour window. In other words what tasks should I accomplish this morning, this afternoon, and this evening but with further granularity using it's other properties (at location, whom I'm with, my amount of energy/time) etc. Regardless of the type of use, the tasks are always in a "state" ready to: Do, Select, or Maintain. They will all be acted on, either completed, moved up the food chain, or modified (tasks with missing properties), etc. An example of how I would use this. 1. While looking at my 'Warboard' view during the day, or perhaps during my weekly review 2. I wonder how many tasks I have on deck, that are prioritized as important. but I've had three opportunities to select it as a backfill but I didn't. Maybe those tasks aren't truly that important" So during my weekly review I might adjust. 3. Or I might want to know 'How many tasks have I neglected which I committed to doing but I haven't in two days. Should I revisit these and possibly adjust? I know that is a LOT, but it's the way I attack views. I run a scorecard concerning my productivity, but within that I measure my process. This also helps. So I can judge if I've been a slacker, or not properly defining tasks, or...sometimes things just change. ;-) So knowing this, how would you accomplish task aging? I'm very happy to create a five minute video walk-thru of all that blabber up top if it helps. It sounds like a lot but I find it works very well for me....and ironically part of my need for aged tasks is to validate this. Thanks and sorry again for the long walk through, I didn't fully understand your question/suggestion so thought it would help if I just elaborate some.Like I said if you are inquiring about my process and need for this I can probably better illustrate what I've found achieves this intent showing it in action. I continually ask myself if I'm leveraging the current technology as I should for my intent (see my question about due date modifiers) and have no problem blowing up how I incorporate my intent in to this system. . As you alluded, my intent is not yours, and that is rule #1 in any GTD/variant thereof processes, IMO. Ironically this is one of the rare things I've been disciplined with enough to consistently monitor for over 30 years now. (20 of them post pc boom) But the intent has always been how can I most effectively write stuff down so that it can be presented to me in a way that tells what I really should be doing at this moment in time. Pretty sure that is most folks intent, it just helps me to continually approach it at that abstract layer. This message was edited Sep 09, 2016. |
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johnprince2112 |
Jake/Salgud/anyone who knows: with the above blabber aside, am I not understanding that search object properly? How would I go about showing which tasks have remained in a given "state" (which i define) greater than x amount of time.
Simple example is which tasks have had a Star greater than three days. Business rules/process aside (I can handle those with the other search objects). Thanks This message was edited Sep 09, 2016. |
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lotsapoppa |
@johnprince2112, give this a try.
1. Open Advanced Search. 2. First search argument should be "Status Is [Status_Value]", where the [Status_Value] could be Active, for example. 3. Second search argument should be "Date Modified Was Not In the Last [Number] Days", where the [Number] could be 10, for example. The results will show all the current tasks that are X days old or older without being modified that have the status value noted by you. You'll have to create a search argument for each status you want to review. |
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Salgud |
To all above,
There seems to be quite a bit of confusion about something that is relatively simple. Maybe my explanation above was unclear, so I'll take another shot at it. AFAIK, there is no way to determine exclusively when a task was Starred, or any other specific attribute was changed. Date Modified merely tells me that some attribute of that task was modified on that date, but not which attribute was changed. So it I Star it Monday, change the Due Date Tuesday, and edit the name on Wed., Wed is going to be the current Date Modified. You can't test to see how long ago it was Starred. Setting test criteria of: Starred | Yes and Date Modified | was in the last | x days will return a list of Starred tasks that have had ANY ATTRIBUTE changed in the last x days, including but NOT LIMITED TO Starring. This test will only work in your intended way if you know that the last change you made was Starring it. I hope that clarifies how the Search criteria work. |
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Jake Toodledo Founder |
The "modification date" can be used in a saved search to find tasks modified on a certain date. This value updates every time a task is updated for any reason.
We do not keep track of the individual modification dates for each attribute of a task, so there is no way to find out when the "star" was changed or when a task was put into a particular folder. |
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johnprince2112 |
Jake, object-based modification alerts is not what I seek..Salgud interpreted as such, but this is not the case at all. Remember my initial post:
[Queue dream music]... "So as an example I want a result set that returns all tasks that have had a star longer than two days. Should I query: Where Star=Yes Last Modified date='Was Not in the last 2 Days' The date itself will work. Please read my example again (I'll provide another one below)" ------------- 1. I add a task on June 1st 2016. It is not starred. 2. I star the task on June 28 2016. I have no intentions of modifying it again other than un-star or complete. I want to know how many tasks have been in a starred state for three+ days. I want to run a query of tasks that have a star and were modified more than 3 days ago. If I run this query on July 15, I expect this task (which has not been touched since 6/28) to appear. RIght now, it's not. I'm using "modified date" as the argument. Let me try Lotsapappa's suggestion and I'll respond to the group. This seems on track. This message was edited Sep 16, 2016. |
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Duo |
Jake, if johnprince2112 is looking for a modification of any kind then it doesn't seem like this would be hard to do using the current search functionality EXCEPT that when I tested it every task had a modification date.
This applied to new tasks with attributes (star and priority) set at creation time and new tasks with only a title. "Date Modified: doesn't exist" never returned any tasks and "Date Modified: exists" always returned the new tasks which had never been modified. I tried removing all new task defaults and also creating tasks which did not have attributes added by being added in a particular Context / Status etc without any luck. So far I haven't been able to find a way to create an unmodified task. Is this a bug, a feature or have I misunderstood how to use the modification date? This message was edited Sep 16, 2016. |
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Jake Toodledo Founder |
When a task is first created its modification date is the same as its added date. A task cannot have a blank modification date.
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Duo |
Thanks Jake.
So if a task cannot have a blank modification date, I don't understand what the two search rules "Date Modified: doesn't exist" and "Date Modified: exists" would be used for. Wouldn't "Date Modified: exists" always return 'true' for any task that exists and "Date Modified: doesn't exist" always return 'false' for any task that exists unless there was a bug in Toodledo? Are theses rules redundant? Could you please suggest a scenario where they could be used to modify a search in a useful way? |
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Jake Toodledo Founder |
The "exists" and "doesn't exist" rules are there for all dates, but really only apply to the due,start,completed dates since the added/modified dates always exist.
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Duo |
Thanks Jake.
I think that it would be useful to add that information to the 'Help' section at some point. This message was edited Sep 19, 2016. |
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johnprince2112 |
For what it's worth, it's a good thing (and good coding practice IMO) to seed the ModifiedDate with the CreateDate upon saving the task. Without this, my approach would not work because I have to consider tasks that have never been modified. i.e. I open a task and do nothing with it (no properties change). That task is still in a state for which I'd like to view the age of tasks within that state and I would assume the modified date is the create date.
Irregardless, I still do not have an answer to the following: ****What would I use to query for any tasks that have a star for longer than 3 days?**** ^^^^^NEED ANSWER TO ABOVE PLEASE^^^^^^^^^^ If I can just get that (forgive me if I missed it) then I can probably run with the rest. ,I appreciate everyone's responses here, I'm sure I've provided what I can (detail and succinct format). Once again: **I would like a query to show if any tasks has had a star for 3+ days** p.s. LotsaPoppa after looking closely at your suggestion, this is what I'm using as my query but it's not returning what I want. This message was edited Sep 22, 2016. |
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Olivir2015 |
As it is now, I believe the only way to track for how long has a task been starred (apart from not using start date for anything else than setting it up to the day you have starred the task) would be to stop making any changes to the task between setting the star and completing it, so that the modified date is kept unchanged.
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Salgud |
Posted by Olivir2015:
As it is now, I believe the only way to track for how long has a task been starred (apart from not using start date for anything else than setting it up to the day you have starred the task) would be to stop making any changes to the task between setting the star and completing it, so that the modified date is kept unchanged. Agreed. This is pretty much what I said above. Twice. Maybe if we repeat it enough times and enough different ways, he'll get it. |
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johnprince2112 |
Salgud, per your comment above, you better watch how you come at me.
All you said is "(paraphrasing) "Why would you even want that?", and I gave you DETAILED reasons...which you had nothing to say in response. So if for some reason you think you are some kind of GTD or even Toodledo expert who is talking down to people in this forum, I suggest you check nuts next time because you have the wrong person here, sir. You've added zero value to this post so don't understand why you are thumping your chest like this. WIth that, I HAVE mentioned that I DON'T change the property once it is a star.In fact where are you even getting the notion I'm changing it? It's like if someone asked "What's the weather today?" and the response is "The 49ers lost". So instead of coming on to this forum, acting like some kind of an expert, you better watch your mouth, OR keep up when dealing with me. Other people on here might let you talk down to them--like you do, but I prefer to keep it in context so save your responses unless you really do want to talk about this subject without playing yourself out to me (or anyone on here). This message was edited Oct 09, 2016. |
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coolexplorer |
My two pennies worth : For the Forum to work well and be useful we probably need to keep comments :
1. short and to the point. 2. objective and fact based. 3. courteous. 4. we could ask for new features or changes in TD (and debate them strongly), but the owners/developers say is final. In the final analysis we can vote with our money and feet and are free to chose which apps we want to subscribe to. Some of the power users (and commentators) may be a bit curt sometimes, but they have helped a lot of users in the TD forum over the years. As I said, my two pennies worth. |
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