ForumsQuestionsWorking with many tasks
Working with many tasks
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stu |
I'm finding it difficult to work with many tasks identified. How do I sequence tasks? I can't seem to arrange subtasks so they show in a sequential order, or link tasks such that they become active only when the previous tasks have been completed.
If I try to use the status, I not only have to mark a task as complete, but I have to find any tasks that were waiting on that one and mark them as next action or something like that. Since that is very cumbersome on the computer and not even worth trying on the iphone, I just don't bother. But now I have many tasks, of which only one or two in a group may be actionable. How do you solve this problem? And what's planned for new features that might help this issue work better? |
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stu |
Another part that is cumbersome is making a common change to several tasks. It looks like the multi-edit works on a filtered view. What I want is to be able to select multiple todo items and make a change on those. The UI paradigm for that might be to check multiple entries and operate on the checked entries. Another more user friendly approach is the multi-select in a list and operate on the multi-selected group
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Anders |
For the first question, I personally use the technique you disregard as not worth trying, and it is highly effective for me, but it is obviously not for you. Another way to do it is to use the Star to designate next actions. It can be quickly applied to any task even in the iPhone app. Since manual sorting is not currently possible, you have to figure out a way to take advantage of the many automatic sorts to get your subtasks in a particular order. I usually use Priority, although Status mostly does the job for me. You can also put letter or number prefixes on your subtask names, and then use alphabetic sorting, or use the tag field for something similar.
Edit: I forgot, in terms of planned features, Toodledo has said that task dependencies are on their to do list. Manual sorting, at least on the website, is Toodledo has expressed interest in doing as well, but it is a very big project that would require significant changes to how Toodledo operates internally. To your second point, having multiedit everywhere would be awesome, and it is a very popular suggestion. If you do some searching in the forums, you will find several threads of people discussing how they think it should work, and different selection methods, etc. I have gotten pretty good with the advanced search, and can usually get whatever I want in a result for multiedit. It just takes some practice, but I completely agree that it would be a huge step up to have it everywhere. This message was edited Sep 06, 2009. |
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stu |
Any ideas when ordering tasks, and multi-edit capabilities will appear in Toodledo, and the iPhone app?
I'm listening to the GTD book and a key emphasis that David Allen makes is to make it as effortless as possible. For example, if you have to walk across the room to file something you will be inclined to create a stack, and the stack will grow to the point where it becomes daunting to go file it and then it doesn't happen. David advocates having the files within arms reach so you can file it in seconds. Likewise I see the same thing happening with my lists in toodledo. Since there isn't a super easy way to order them, they are growing and are starting to become daunting. I reviewed my list with my wife this morning, and a full half of the list wasn't actionable at the moment. What's more, the reason things were not actionable was not evident in the list. I did have some tasks saying that they were waiting, but waiting on what? And many tasks were waiting on other tasks to be completed. I like toodledo. I've paid for the iPhone app, and a pro subscription thinking I could make it work. However it seems to be missing some key conceptual usability factors to align it with the concepts in GTD. Is there a roadmap of features, and when they are planned for that could be published? That would certainly help at least give me an idea how much effort I should put into continuing to look for a solution vs working with something that doesn't really meet my needs. This message was edited Sep 06, 2009. |
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Jake Toodledo Founder |
We don't publish our roadmap or comment on timelines, but "task dependency" and "manually reordering" are both frequently requested features that are on our to-do list.
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Proximo |
@stu,
It may not be for you, but I created what I call "A GTD Setup" in Toodledo. Not sure if this would help or not. https://www.toodledo.com/forums/5/2660/-1/proximos-gtd-setup.html#newest |
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Linden |
Hey stu,
My interim solution for task dependency is to prefix each subtask in a project with the number of it's step in the sequence. That way it's easy to pick the next step out of the list of other subtasks and mark as your next step. I don't know how this will work on the iPhone, since I haven't got one. I don't imagine it would be much more of an effort than through the website, though. Hope this helps for now! |
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IceHeartX |
Posted by stu:
Any ideas when ordering tasks, and multi-edit capabilities will appear in Toodledo, and the iPhone app? I'm listening to the GTD book and a key emphasis that David Allen makes is to make it as effortless as possible. For example, if you have to walk across the room to file something you will be inclined to create a stack, and the stack will grow to the point where it becomes daunting to go file it and then it doesn't happen. David advocates having the files within arms reach so you can file it in seconds. Likewise I see the same thing happening with my lists in toodledo. Since there isn't a super easy way to order them, they are growing and are starting to become daunting. I reviewed my list with my wife this morning, and a full half of the list wasn't actionable at the moment. What's more, the reason things were not actionable was not evident in the list. I did have some tasks saying that they were waiting, but waiting on what? And many tasks were waiting on other tasks to be completed. I've found that the tag can be useful there. when I mark something as waiting, delegated, on hold, etc, i put in a tag for either the person who's holding it or any task it is waiting on. you can do it on the iphone easily enough and it makes searching easy - any search for one brings up both items as long as you use consistent naming. tag makes for a handy cross reference field, if you can spare it. |
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