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mike_de_bruyn |
Thanks for the reply. I did find a better work around for some of the problems. I realized that using TAGS is a decent work around. I can tag a task as "next week", "A-Crucial", "Summer", "Fridays", etc. A search on "tag contains ..." will give me my list of tasks cut a lot of different ways. And I don't have to pervert the meaning of "Due Date", "Priority", and so forth. I have no idea why this work around did not dawn on me long ago. DUH!
Good job on the description change. That is a much better way to describe it. Thanks again and I am looking forward to the new design. |
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mike_de_bruyn |
Turning that upside down, perhaps, would you consider allowing NOTES on FOLDERS ... possibly even GOALS and other things? My reason is that while it is useful to have a note on a task (Task: Go to music store, Note: Pick up Hammond) I need it more to add notations to my folders. Even better on GOALS (Goal: Learn to play piano. Note: It is a pain to make time for something new but it will be very satisfying to be able .... , etc.)
I use folders to group my tasks ... this makes FOLDERS actually PROJECTS in my mind ... and you suggest as much. (BTW, it would be useful to allow us to apply our own name to some of these things.) Since FOLDERS are PROJECTS, perhaps you can see why I'd like to be able to write a bit about the project with a note. For example, I'm using a system that is a riff on the Tony Robbins OPA/RPM system. The key to it is that projects should be notated with the reasons one has for doing them. I've always felt that approach makes loads of sense. So my current (and rather clumsy) work around is to just make a separate note for each folder using the name of the folder as the title of the note. The difficulty is that I have to take a separate step to get to the NOTE rather than have it right there with it's own little icon, as you have implemented in TASKS. You clearly suggest noting consequences in a NOTE on the TASK, but it really should be a NOTE on a PROJECT. I'd be spending all day in TD and never get around to actually DOING anything if I had to put a NOTE on every TASK! That is too fine a granularity to consider consequences. One idea: simply provide a link to an Evernote Note. As it is, I have to do my planning there because of TD's weak implementation of NOTES. One thing puzzles me: You allow the NOTE to attach the FOLDER name, but I don't see that it is active in any way. IOW, it is not a clickable link. Why is it there? What am I missing? One more thing, as long as I'm going on a bit ;-) It would be VERY helpful if more things were possible without a workaround. By this I mean ... your suggestions for doing things that are not implemented directly often involve changing the meaning of fields which then confuses the user even more. Worse, sometimes we end up with multiple meanings for various fields. The one that is bedeviling me right now came out of your mini-tutorial on "Eat the Frog". You suggested adding values like "This week" and "Next week" as GOALS; "A", "B", "C" as CONTEXTS; and putting NOTES on TASKS, rather than FOLDERS. Right, doing it THIS WEEK is really a goal, but it is a goal for managing the accomplishment of the TASK, not a goal for the accomplishment of one's life. And the last is the way you envisioned GOALS in the first place. You have three levels: "Lifetime", "Long Term", and "Short Term". It would make more sense (i.e. be logically consistent) for you to add: "This Week", "Next Week", "Next Month", "This Year", etc. as grouping choices for goals rather than goals themselves. (I'm going to experiment with just using the due date for "This Week", but that is much more cumbersome and does not QUITE mean the same thing as having a due date of this Friday. It is subtle but how one thinks about these thinks is often what makes them succeed or fail.) A similar problem occurs with your suggestion to use the A,B,C,D,E method by making them CONTEXTS. Not a bad workaround, but it suffers from the same problem of creating confusion ... CONTEXT now means both IMPORTANCE and something like LOCATION, which you also have wonderfully implemented as it's own thing. In an answer to someone's confusion on this forum you advise that using the 3,2,1,0,-1 priority field and point out that it does not matter if the label is "A" or "3" as those are simply symbols. Right, but this neglects the obvious confusion brought about by HOTLIST which depends, in part, on how the priorities are set. One gets the feeling that PRIORITY is actually "urgency" whereas in the A,B,C type system, those are IMPORTANCE indicators ... a very different way of looking at things. Example: One of my life goals is to learn piano. That is an "A" for me ... which means very important, but it is not urgent. In the Steven Covey method it is clearly a Q2, which needs special focus when all of those urgent things are barking at you or it will never get done. I can only imagine the snarl of code that is affected by changes to things like this, but if you are doing a reWRITE of some parts of the code, it might pay to consider a reDESIGN as well. If you keep absolute clarity on what fields MEAN, at least there is the possibility of getting them to work out right when you code them. Over 30 years in software has taught me the crucial importance of having a single meaning for things. Know what I mean? It really matters if one considers the focus of one's system to be one's GOAL or PROJECT or TASK, for example. That focus controls how one looks at one's day. If I'm looking at my GOALS in order to sort my day out, I don't want to see "This week" as a goal. It introduces scheduling at the point where I'm looking at PLANNING. "Learn Piano" is a GOAL to be focused on; "Get Piano Tuned" is a task to be scheduled. The two relate but are not at the same level and require different thinking. Sorry to ramble a bit. I love the product and I think your updating of it is going well. I will probably offer to do beta testing. Oh, last thing ;-) TD is usually portrayed as a Time Management system. It is so much more than that. And in keeping with the goal of calling things what they are, you really ought to start calling something like a Life Management system. After all, you now allow some degree of tracking of Goals and Habits ... one reason some people don't get why you include Habits is that they are thinking TD is only Task Management. This message was edited Jul 31, 2015. |
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mike_de_bruyn |
Posted May 01, 2015 in: Feature Request for Outlines
Score: 1
I know it is probably already on your list but just in case ...
As it stands now, the OUTLINE feature is pretty pointless. One can do the same thing in NOTES using some tabs or spaces. In fact, I have done that since I found TD in 2009. I stopped using TD because my ToDo list got Toodlelong ;-) I began to make a simple check list in EverNote so the big urgent items did not get missed. This worked well since I keep EN open as a journal and collection tool. Once I found TaskClone, I ran back to Toodledo because it was so easy to move items from EverNote to TD. In particular, I have PROJECT NOTES in EN which I then edit so that TaskClone creates TD tasks. When I saw the OUTLINE feature in TD I thought I hit the motherload. Alas, this one seems to be played out. The Outline function in TD does LESS than the combination of EV -> TaskClone -> TD. What is needed is a way to make each level of the outline into a task or folder. Then one would have the ability to do some head scratching in the OUTLINE section and create action items (TASKS) once the roadmap was clear. I could not believe that I could not do it. I moved my cursor all over and found no magic button or link to make an Outline item into a Task. I can't imagine that you are done with this. I mean, there have to be 200 gazillion outline programs out there ... even MS Word has an outliner (or you can just use bullets and tabs to do it.) Anyway, and as always, thanks for one of the most useful productivity programs out there. I seldom pay for software, as developers all to often go out of business leaving me holding the bag :-( However, once I get the bugs worked out of my TD system, I am definitely going to subscribe to get the added features. As it stands now, TD (along with Evernote, TaskClone, and IFTTT) make up a solid core of productivity programs. Well done. |
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mike_de_bruyn |
Posted Apr 29, 2015 in: Lists not visible in iphone app?
Score: 0
Posted by jbenninghoff:
I would like to see it on the Android app as well. In the meantime, I have to continue using Google Keep. I am in EXACTLY the same position. I had been using Toodledo for some years but stopped for a while ... my to dos were getting too long :-( I decided to try it again just yesterday and noticed the LIST and HABIT sections. I did not remember those being there and was thrilled. Finally I can ditch Google Keep (a good idea poorly implemented in the extreme). I put in a test shopping list and found that there was no way to get to it on my Android phone. WTF? I then watched the tutorial on how to use the LIST feature and now I have some idea of the problems involved. It is not just a simple text list, as I had thought, but has smart fields and sorts and all of that. Nice. VERY nice. However, I can see that there is a lot of heartburn in porting something that complex. That said, I'd love to see it ported to the Android app. As the other poster said, logging on with a browser is NOT a good option. The simplest reason is that one has to be connected to do that and very often a store will block cell phone use. (WalMart seems to be the major offender here.) Even if I can connect, it is much slower. I do hope that you are working on the Android application and not just the iOS version. Thanks for a really great product. |
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mike_de_bruyn |
Posted May 01, 2014 in: "Note to self" is creating weekly repeats
Score: 0
On a very slightly different topic: is it possible to get tasks OUT of Toodledo using Google Now or equivalent? I'd love to be able to say: "What's next?" and have it read the next item from my ToDo list. Even better would be: "What's next on my X list?" Where X= Grocery, or ToDO, or whatever. From a technical perspective, if Google can process natural language and then get all kinds of random information from the web, it really should be trivial for it to read the top item from a simple list.
I spent yesterday on it and I find the integration excellent for getting items IN to Toodledo but not OUT. |
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mike_de_bruyn |
Posted Apr 01, 2013 in: 4 Pro features now for free
Score: 0
Very nice, thank you. This is a most useful tool. The only real wish I have is for an Android app. The ones in the Play Store suck. They don't have nearly enough function. In contrast, the iPhone app is magnificent. I had not been using it for a while and when I saw it a few days ago I was very impressed. THAT is the way apps should be written. Bravo.
Oh, and in the category of different strokes: I love chains and would prefer you leave them as is. This message was edited Apr 01, 2013. |
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mike_de_bruyn |
Posted Sep 26, 2012 in: My Toodledo Quick Start Guide
Score: 0
After another reading I have a few more thoughts. Things needed time to settle in my mind ;-)
1) I did not read far enough into the bowels of your document to see that 6/12 was actually months. I don't know WHY I missed that. Sheeesh ;-) 2) I guess most of my questions are answered by a change in perspective. I come from a computer background and to me, giving attributes multiple meanings is the kiss of death. I can't tell you how much has been lost over the years doing that. So, while "Next Action" means that the task can be done NEXT, i.e. has no predecessors, I take it that to YOU it is a way to get it to appear on the right list at the right time. For me, "3" priority is urgent and I don't need to put ! in front of the text. Likewise, a "Date Due" is the date things are due, and has no other meaning. That one, in particular has given me much trouble. I have not been able to find a way to get tasks to list on today's list without setting the due date to today. I've also been unable to find a way to get tasks sorted in the order I want to see them without putting "01" etc. in front of the text in the title. Sad. I think all of this fussing would be moot if a few more specific fields were added. Looking though your document again, it is very clear how much work you put into getting your tasks listed the way you want, WHEN you want. I'm not sure I'd ever be able to keep track of the vagaries of dates, statuses, and priorities such as to make things pop up when wanted. There is really not much logic to it, in the sense that the attributes of a task causes it to appear when it should appear. Your system seems mostly driven by the arbitrary way in which Toodledo chooses to display things. Oh, and thanks for your Excel document with repeating tasks. It will be very valuable to me. It is very generous of you to share so much as you have. I can see the years of development reflected in your documents. |
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mike_de_bruyn |
Posted Sep 26, 2012 in: My Toodledo Quick Start Guide
Score: 0
I've been working through you're system for a few days now. I have to say that it looks very comprehensive. I have a couple of questions for you, if you don't mind.
1) What the heck is 6/12? 2) Why did you duplicate some (quite a lot actually) of the Toodledo functionality with textual prepends and such. For example, there is already a "Next Action" status but you put a symbol in front of the title as well. There is also a "Someday" status but you use -1 priority for someday. There is a "Delegated" status yet you put a "D" in front of the text. I also wonder why you discriminate between various durations of waiting tasks. I'd think that a search on "status=waiting" sorted by due date would get you the list you need. In fact, I have a saved search I call "Tickler" which is: Status is Waiting or Status is Delegated or Status is Postponed or Status is Hold which gives me a list of everything I have lurking and I review it periodically. (In fact, I've found that while it is aesthetically pleasing to distinguish between "Hold" and "Postponed" I don't use it in practice. They are ALL things that I need to keep track of but not do anything about just now.) It is interesting that you found ways to do things similar to mine in some cases. You have a number in front of folders for the area they are in ... I use a few letters to get the structure I need, for example: DEV:TM:Toodledo for a folder about learning Toodledo, to expand my Time Management tools, in the area of personal development. Your way is shorter, but I'd probably forget what area "1" was ;-) I think I'd be in heaven if Toodledo would simply allow me to assign parameters (like priority and status) to folders, as well as give me a more extensive priority field. (I'm a big user of the A,B,C 1,2,3 technique.) I mostly think in terms of projects rather than tasks so when I do a review, I want to know which PROJECTS are in play. For now, in the absence of the ability to assign status to a folder, I put a "*" in front of the active ones so they are right on top of any list sorted by folder. I'd even settle for a user defined, sortable field. I can't imagine why this is so long coming. It is a database program, after all. ;-) Again, thanks for your nice writeup. While I'd never get my system that complicated, I do like seeing how other people think. I particularly like how you defined the exact meaning of each of the fields you use. Very smart. This message was edited Sep 26, 2012. |
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mike_de_bruyn |
Thanks for your response. I'm glad you have it on your list. Global commands are notoriously dangerous ;-)
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mike_de_bruyn |
Is it possible to lock certain records so they will not be changed by global commands. I'm thinking of some inadvertant changes I've made to tasks with far out dates ... ticklers, actually. I've wanted to make some global changes but did not realize that I had records that I wanted left unchanged.
If this is not already possible, I wonder if it could be put on the list for future development. It sure would be nice to leave the due date for my passport renewal alone when I do some kind of mass change. |
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mike_de_bruyn |
FWIW, I started by setting up GOALS and sub goals. Like this:
Health:*General Health:Lose Weight Health:Eat Healthier Finance:*General Finance:File Taxes Early Finance:Monitor Investments This way I get goals and sub goals and a general goal area that sorts to the top of each section. Next I set up Folders which to me translates to Projects. So I'll do something similar as in: H:Weight:Set up exercise room F:Invest:Research new Brokerage For each of those I'll add what tasks I can. - Find mat - Find dumb bells - Find exercise books - Call Schwab - Call Fidelity - Check BBB for Brokerage House Complaints - Etc If I don't have a clear idea of all of the tasks, I'll put in a general task and maybe some ideas for follow on tasks as bullet items in the note section of the main task. When my planning is ready to go further, I'll add more tasks and delete some of those notes. Using notes is not a problem because there is no question of due dates or categories or any of that as the planning has not moved forward enough yet. I don't really use contexts. That idea was the main thing that drove me away from GtD. I don't run my life by context. I can do almost everything I do almost anywhere. I.E. I always have a cell phone for @calls, and my cell phone is an iPhone so I always have @internet, my iPhone has my lists and reference materials, etc. What I DO use the context field for is certain categories of tasks: - Waiting - Tickler - Hard deadlines - Things to discuss with my wife - Shopping list items - Books I want to order - etc. I like Mark Forster's systems and am now using his DWM system which uses "due date" in a rather eccentric way -- it is the date on which an item will EXPIRE. IOW, it has nothing at all to do with WHEN to DO the thing, but the last day it will appear on your system. All new tasks are entered with a default due date of "one month" - but you can work on them at any time. If I work on a task but don't finish it I change its due date to "next week". Anything due today that I do not COMPLETE or work on and move a week ahead, is simply deleted. (If I did not do it for a month, or if I did not continue working on it in the last week, I guess I don't really need to do it.) Since I ALSO want to have TD keep track of REAL dates due, I assign them the "hard deadline" category and possibly even "*" them. His system has an interesting psychological effect in that you are always looking FORWARD toward what needs to be done. So you don't wait until the last moment to do a task, you do it as soon as you can find an appropriate time to do it ... even if it LOOKS as if it is a month away. When it finally falls on TODAY, it is about to be lost forever ... IOW, there is never an "overdue" task ... it just drops off. So when things become "overdue", I delete them. So you see tasks coming at you, moving forward, and try to shoot them down like that computer game with the alien ships. LOL ;-) (Mark thinks of it like canoes approach the falls ;-) Anyway, it seems to be changing my mindset so that I try to get things done before they can expire rather than trying to work on things that are overdue. I don't use "importance" and am trying to find a way to turn that off. I'm not against it but it gets in my way for this application. So that is a brief description of how you could set things up from scratch. If your list is long and confusing, try working out some SYSTEM of using folders, contexts, goals, and tags to enable you to slice and dice it. But be sure to keep consistent. OH, I forgot "tags". I use them too but I'm not sure how effective they will be. Perhaps just searching will get me what I need. AH, last tip, be consistent in HOW you NAME a task. You'll eventually remember you had something to do in the attic and not have written the word "attic" in the task name so have to hunt for it. Think about how you will want to find things. Will you want to do all similar actions in the same sitting? Then put an action verb in the title. Will you want to find tasks related to different objects in your life? Then be sure to put "house", "car", "work", "market", etc. in the task name. Either that or be sure you tag things well ;-) This message was edited Feb 14, 2010. |
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mike_de_bruyn |
Posted Feb 14, 2010 in: Web changes take a while to get to iPhone
Score: 0
I don't know if this is the same problem ...
I have not tried the app yet but I'm using the "slim" option on Safari on the iPhone. The problem is that I added a context on the website last night and it HAS one task in it. On the iPhone web access (slim) the context shows up, there is a (1) after it, but when I click it it says "empty. I've seen the "slim" version get out of whack in some other ways as well. |
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mike_de_bruyn |
Posted Feb 14, 2010 in: Is there a way to control the display order of tasks
Score: 0
Personally, I don't need and would not use a manual sort. I like things sorted in the order I enter them, which seems to be the case now, but I'm not sure as I have not checked it carefully.
What I would like is a way to color code the tasks. This might help those who need manual sorting ... or maybe not ;-) |
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mike_de_bruyn |
Posted Feb 14, 2010 in: Mark Forster's Autofocus
Score: -1
Posted by akingbfd:
I too am getting bogged down, but I think I need to move the "someday list tasks" to a -1 priority and hide them until I have a little "woulda coulda shoulda" time. Don't they make medicine for people who can't let things go:-) ROTF ;-) For the moment I set a "context" for "someday" but I'm not focused on it that much so I probably have not noticed that those things keep showing up. But I'm sure you could construct a "saved filter" or "saved search" or whatever to screen things out any way you needed to. One thing I wish they would add is the ability to color the text anyway we like. That would give up yet another way of marking things. |
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mike_de_bruyn |
Posted Feb 14, 2010 in: Mark Forster's Autofocus
Score: 1
Posted by acedia.acedia:
Hi MIke, NIce to see someone else from the AF forum over here! Yeah. This has promise ;-) Your description of setting the weekly and monthly dates sounds right to me. If you haven't already noticed, the calendar window that opens when you click on the due-date setting, shows quick dates, including one week and one month ahead, so that is very handy for DWM. Yes, that is very nice. Just two clicks to move a task where I want it. To view your tasks, you can sort by due date, as you say, but this will give you one long list, not the series of closed lists that Mark advocates. There isn't a setting in TD to view lists by separate days, as such, BUT there is a work-around: if you use calendar view and then click on each date for the next 30 days in turn, you will see the list for each day, without anything else. I think that will give the effect Mark describes. Is there a way to turn off "importance" for all views and have it stick? It is not that I don't like "importance" but it works against this way of doing things. As you indicate, it would be nice to have tasks aggregated by day but it does not bother me that it is done this way. Sorry, I don't have an iPhone, so can't comment on the merits of TD's native app vs PI. I am starting to see problems with the "slim" version that I pull up in Safari on the iPhone. One context is showing one item in it, and when I click it it says "empty" but on my PC I see the item there. Very odd. Also I don't know if the work-around I just suggested is possible on the iPhone - apologies if it isn't - in that case I think you would have to work from one long list. I don't even mind working from one long list. It is not that much of a bother. Thanks for your response. I'm new to this product and it has great promise. But DAMN, the web interface is way too busy! LOL ;-) |
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mike_de_bruyn |
Posted Feb 08, 2010 in: Mark Forster's Autofocus
Score: -1
The main difference between GtD and any version of AutoFocus (including DWM) is that with GtD you do your planning up front and then execute the plan throughout your day. With AutoFocus, you simply dump everything into it and use your intuition to decide what to do when. Very different philosophies which appeal to different mind sets.
I am just learning Toodledo and accessing it from the iPhone via Personal Informant. My question is how I can use it with DWM, yet another version of Mark Forster's time management system. You can read about it here: http://www.markforster.net/blog/ (You'll have to go down a few items, I just could not get the link to insert correctly. Sorry.) The basic idea is that you enter new tasks a month from today but work on them any time you like. If you don't complete a task, you RE-enter it a week from today. Any tasks remaining undone on today's page are discarded. It seems as if it is simply a matter of setting the default due date to 30 days and manually changing the date on incomplete tasks to a week from today. A simple sort by due date should show all tasks which can be done, in order by the time they will expire. Do I have that about right? Is there any compelling reason to get the iPhone Toodledo App, or will PI on the iPhone give me what I need? (If anyone is familiar with PI, that is ;-) Thanks for any input. I've gotten a lot of good reports about Toodledo and will use it for this purpose if I can. I also plan to add the normal kind of calendar/task events that are used in "normal" time management systems. (Birthdays, renew driver's license, etc.) I'll distinguish those with a tag, or a star or something. I've not decided yet. This message was edited Feb 08, 2010. |