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Search results for "Posted by saskia.x"
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saskia.x |
If you set start dates on these tasks to be the same as the due dates, then the task will be hidden until it becomes due (assuming you have future tasks hidden). This is what I do with all of my repeating tasks, the only time it doesn't work is when I reschedule a task that I haven't managed to do on time and forget to alter the start date!
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saskia.x |
I second the idea of using goals for this kind of thing.
Short term goals for me are basically like projects (in the traditional sense rather than the GTD sense) that I intend to complete within a year or two (although some are much more short term than that), so for instance I've had a short term goal recently to rearrange the downstairs living areas of the house, which has had a number of sub-projects (more like GTD projects) like putting up shelves, rearranging a specific area, etc. Long term goals are used in a similar but not identical way, many are specific projects I intend to complete in the next 2-5 years, but they're often a bit more "vague" than my short term goals as they tend to represent what you could call "visions" rather than specific projects as such. Lifetime goals are my overall aims in life to which everything else contributes, the kind of "what do I want to know that I've done when I look back on my life before I die?" type of things. The only disadvantage with using goals for this is that I still feel the goals feature is a little underdeveloped and imperfect. With lots of goals it can get unwieldy, and there are a lot of things you can't do with goals that you can do with tasks. You can't, for instance, assign a due date or priority to a goal. Personally I've come up with a workaround which involves prefacing the short term goals with exclamation marks - 3 for high priority goals, 1 for low priority. This means they get sorted in order of priority in the list of goals, which is useful for keeping me focused on the most important goals. I have at various points in the past wanted multiple levels of subtasks too, but when I started using the goals this way it all fell together and I haven't really had much need for further levels. I don't use folders the way you do, though, for me these are more akin to GTD "areas of focus" - just a handy way of grouping tasks related to each area of my life, e.g. "family", "household", "work" etc. I've found them totally unsuited to organising projects as once you've got more than a handful of projects they get seriously unwieldy! Plus there's no way of organising folders, no way of indicating the timescale on which the projects are meant to be completed, etc. |
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saskia.x |
Posted Jul 07, 2011 in: Everledo - Evernotes in Toodledo
Score: 0
Would love to see this working well in Chrome - Evernote & Toodledo are two of the most important tools I use for organising my life so it'd be great to have more integration between them!
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saskia.x |
Posted Jul 07, 2011 in: Any progress with task dependenses and automatic Next Action?
Score: 0
This feature really would make Toodledo an absolutely killer task manager - imagine all of the power & flexibility of Toodledo combined with the efficiency of automating the process of marking items as the Next Action! Years ago I used My Life Organised, and this was the one feature I really, really missed when I switched to Toodledo. I still haven't come up with an adequate way of managing tasks with multiple sequential steps, and it takes a lot of work to keep things I can't yet do out of my todo list.
I don't plan on leaving Toodledo any time in the foreseeable future (I still think it's the best task manager out there!), but there are just a few features like this one that could become an incentive to look elsewhere if a competitor comes up with a really great product that includes things like task dependencies. |
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saskia.x |
I too use due dates as targets, so I've come up with a workaround which can simplify rolling over tasks if it's something you have to do regularly. Essentially I've created a saved search which displays all overdue tasks that fit certain criteria, which I regularly review & then use multi-edit to roll all tasks over at once (after rescheduling, editing &/or reprioritising as necessary - sometimes you see that there are tasks that are more urgent and shouldn't be rolled over, whereas others need rescheduling further in the future if it becomes clear that the number of tasks being rolled over is greater than you can realistically achieve).
My saved search has become a bit complicated over time but it can be as simple or complex as you need it to be - the most important thing for me was that I should avoid accidentally rolling over tasks that have a fixed due date. This was made easier by the fact that I use the priority field to indicate how essential it is that a task is done on the specified date, so "3" tasks are all those with "real" due dates & are excluded from this search (0 means the due date is just a vague guideline, 1 means I would like to have done it by that date, and 2 means I really want to have done it by that date). I also exclude all yearly repeating tasks as these tend to be tasks where the date matters, like buying birthday presents or whatever. If you don't already have a way to indicate whether the due date is a "real" due date rather than a target it's worth considering how you could implement this, perhaps by using the star, or a tag. I also sometimes use the trick posted by Toodledo of making the task an optional repeating task - this obviously works well for tasks that actually are repeating but optional, but it also works for one-off tasks you know you'll probably have to roll over multiple times. The only drawback to using them for one-off tasks is that you have to remember to set the repeat back to "none" before completing the task otherwise you'll end up with another copy of the task when you complete it, but if you think you will remember to do this it might work for you. Typing "today" as the due date won't make it roll over, it will just set today's date as the due date, but it's worth remembering as a quick way to set dates. @Toodledo: maybe it would be helpful to add yet another option to the due date types (i.e. "due by", "optionally on" etc), called something like "ideally on" which would automatically roll the task over to the next day if it wasn't completed. The only downside to this is that is wouldn't be good for chronic procrastinators!! |
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saskia.x |
Posted May 10, 2011 in: Sharing, Searching and Goal improvements
Score: 0
I haven't logged into the main site in a few weeks (been ridiculously busy with a major project where everything else just had to wait!!) so I only just noticed these changes.
Just wanted to say thank you very much for the changes to the goals page, they were exactly what I've wanted for a long time! Makes the goals page a much more useful feature for making sure I'm on track to meeting most of my goals! Little things like being able to jump directly to the tasks in each goal from the goals page make using Toodledo so much more efficient :) |
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saskia.x |
I would be very interested in such a function, or perhaps just an easy way to move individual tasks between the two. I much prefer Toodledo for organising all of my tasks, projects, goals etc, but I find Google tasks handy for noting particularly important or urgent tasks - things I want to have "in my face"! I have Google Tasks displayed alongside my Google calendar; I also have the Toodledo widget there but I find the way that Google Tasks is fully integrated with the calendar much more useful & I like its simplicity. If I have a particular task that REALLY needs to get done asap, or that I intend to do on a specific date, I can have it appear directly in my calendar (as though it were an appointment) by merely setting a due date; I can also add tasks to the calendar in exactly the same way I'd add an event - by clicking on that day on the calendar (I don't even have to decide before I've clicked the date whether it's going to be a task or an appointment). The Google Tasks widget sits there like a little post-it note on the side of my calendar, keeping me constantly reminded of the key tasks I need to do, and makes it really easy to add new tasks. At the moment I tend to either type things into Google Tasks manually, or sometimes I copy & paste between Toodledo & Google Tasks, but this is a bit tedious to do and loses associated information like the note & due date.
I think Toodledo is the best task managing app out there, but Google Tasks is very different kind of tool. Personally, I don't think it would be at all suited to managing large volumes of tasks (it's just too simple, and to make it more complicated would spoil some of the things that are good about it), and it doesn't really provide much scope for deeper levels of organisation. Toodledo has a very powerful set of features, that allow a high degree of flexibility & organisation - perfect for managing a large &/or complex set of tasks. I think of Toodledo as my "master list" and planning tool, whereas Google Tasks is more of a daily todo list, like you might scrawl on a post-it note or scrap of paper. The very fact that it is merely a "simple checkist" is the reason I want to use it - when I'm just trying to get important stuff done, I don't want the distraction of dealing with my entire task list and all of the options for fiddling with it that Toodledo provides! Obviously it would be great if Toodledo had a straightforward means of displaying a distraction-free daily todo list that I could display prominently alongside my calendar and on my phone home screen (which I can currently do with an Android app that syncs with my Google Tasks), but I can see the merit of not overcomplicating Toodledo with features that are adequately provided by other services that it could sync with. On the issue of whether Google Tasks allows syncing, I do know that Android apps can do this - I have a calendar & task app called "Jorte" that syncs with my Google Tasks (another reason it would be handy to be able to sync Toodledo with them!). So presumably it is theoretically possible to sync third party services with it, it's just a question of whether this exists in a way that is usable by Toodledo. Personally, my ideal syncing function between the two would be to only import tasks from Toodledo that match certain criteria; for instance only those tasks which are marked "next action" or that have a particular tag. I don't really need any complicated mapping between the two, it would be fine if all my Toodledo tasks were just imported into one list and I could just manually reorganise them (information about the task that needs to be stored in order to sync correctly back to Toodledo could perhaps just be contained in the note field if there wasn't any other way to handle it). This message was edited Mar 30, 2011. |
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saskia.x |
Not yet, I'm afraid. And when I say "not yet", I mean that something like a bit like this has been requested by users for a while, so there's a reasonable chance something along these lines could be implemented at some point. I wouldn't want to say with any certainty what the likelihood of that is, though - it might never happen.
Although I think if it were implemented, it might be based on the idea of tasks with subtasks rather than folders; so you'd have a parent task as the "project" and each subtask automatically becomes the "Next Action" as the previous one is completed. For those of us who use Folders to represent larger areas of our lives than simple projects (although that depends on your definition of project - I define it roughly like in GTD) the system you describe wouldn't be much use. I realise having this operating on a task/subtask level wouldn't be much use to non-premium users (who don't have subtasks), but then that's kind of the point of the "freemium" model - the users who pay get all the "power features"! If you want this feature, submit a feature request (via "contact us" under "help & news"). All feature requests are logged by the developers and those that are heavily requested are more likely to be implemented (although there's no guarantee - after all, it's ultimately up to the developers what direction Toodledo goes in!). |
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saskia.x |
Hello, I just tried out your interface and I really like it! Obviously it needs a bit of work before it could replace the main site but it is a very good start. One thing that would make it more useable in its current state would be if we could click on a link in each task to take us to that task on the main site - that way, any features you haven't yet included in your version would be easy for us to access.
I especially like how easy it is to add new tasks, and the way that you have used a single box as the means of both adding tasks and typing the commands to access/filter the task list. I think this kind of thing is exactly what Toodledo needs; if several people all create alternative interfaces it gives users more options so everyone can find one more suited to their needs, rather than us all nagging Toodledo's developers to create the mythical "perfect interface" that would suit everyone! |
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saskia.x |
Posted Jul 15, 2010 in: Change Multiple Items at once
Score: 0
I have a saved search set up for this very purpose; I have it set up so that it doesn't show tasks that I might not want to reschedule like yearly repeating tasks (because these are often date-critical, e.g. birthdays/anniversaries). I quickly skim through it to ensure there is nothing in there that shouldn't be rescheduled for some reason, or that I've completed but not checked off, then reschedule them all in one go using multi-edit.
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saskia.x |
Posted Jul 15, 2010 in: Dynamic/virtual folders? Or some idea how to use context?
Score: 0
I'm not familiar with the way RTM do it, but it sounds a bit like saved searches in Toodledo.
I actually do almost everything via saved searches rather than the standard views now. The standard views are fine, but saved searches can be set up however you want them to create a set of completely customised lists, which can be incredibly powerful. I have: - 3 customised "hotlists" (based on much more complex criteria than the standard hotlist; I have 3 because I wanted different levels of "focus" - one with only the most critical tasks on, for when I really need to focus on the seriously urgent/important tasks and not get distracted, one which produces a longer "hotlist", and one in between the two) - a list of tasks that need processing further (kind of an inbox) - a list of overdue tasks that might need to be rescheduled (this excludes the really high priority tasks, as I use priority as a measure of how seriously I should take the due date - unless they are priority 3 they can usually be rescheduled; it also excludes tasks that repeat yearly as I don't want to accidentally reschedule something like a reminder to buy a birthday present as it will repeat on the wrong date next year) - a list of tasks relating to my review process - an ever changing set of other searches relating to things like my current major projects (for those things that are more complicated than can be dealt with my just using the folders, goals or tasks with subtasks) & experiments I'm trying out with organising my tasks Sometimes I just use saved searches for things that could just as easily be done using one of the standard views, mainly because search is my default view so it's easier to stay there rather than constantly switching between views. So, using your example, you could save a search for all tasks for "project x" and another for internet tasks and you could switch between them instantly without having to click through the views menu then onto the correct tab. The added bonus in this is that you can take advantage of the search features to create a more customised list than you would have in the standard views, so, for instance, you could show only internet tasks with the status "next action" and a priority above 2, or whatever. I've been using Toodledo for quite a long time now so my saved searches have evolved over time - I started out with only a fairly simple customised hotlist and a few project-related searches, but have constantly refined my use of Toodledo and my searches have grown almost organically! |
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saskia.x |
Posted Jun 09, 2010 in: New action button and moving note icons
Score: 0
Posted by Boxin:
Posted by johannes.mueller: Good that it is more obvious now. But i would prefer to have a simple interface. Can you offer a option in the account settings to have the popup menu again? Yes, in my case, I prefer the auto-hidden menu too. I have to concur. I prefer to have as little visual clutter on the screen as possible and I found the "hover over checkbox" functionality perfectly usable. However, I can see how it might not be obvious to new users and that there might problems with using such features on certain hardware. So I think the new "action button" is fine as a default setting but it would be nice for those of us who preferred the old behaviour to have an option in the settings to bring it back. |
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saskia.x |
Posted May 20, 2010 in: Custom settings to Repeating a task
Score: 0
I don't think this is currently possible. I just tested it and found that the repeat just reset itself to "none", which has never happened to me with any standard repeat interval.
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saskia.x |
Posted May 20, 2010 in: Search in task and note at the same time
Score: 0
Posted by pkjr:
This reply from Toodledo is very generic and this is they way he replies to most of the 'new feature' request topics.. Yes, but at least it's a response that lets us know it is somewhere on the horizon, even if we have no idea how soon it might be implemented! Luckily Toodledo is constantly improving with new features or enhancements to existing features all the time (there's rarely much more than a week between new developments; they are also hiring new staff so we may be able to look forward to an even faster pace) so I have some faith that when they say "it's on the todo list" there is a good chance that we'll see it in the not-too-distant future. I'm not massively keen on "canned responses" either, but on the other hand I'd rather they were busy working on Toodledo rather than carefully crafting individual & novel responses to every feature request! |
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saskia.x |
Posted May 20, 2010 in: Feature: Simple Gannt Chart??
Score: 0
I'm so pleased to hear this is definitely on the todo list! I understand that most features more common to serious project-planning software are probably overkill for a personal task manager, but I do find Gantt charts massively helpful for visualising tasks and helping me plan my time better.
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saskia.x |
Posted May 20, 2010 in: Please vote on this feature (Saved Views Update)
Score: 0
Yeah, it would be great if sorting & filtering settings were saved with saved searches (actually, not just for saved searches, it would be fab if all tabs in all views remembered their sort/filter settings).
It would also be nice if we could rearrange the order of saved search tabs (although I get around this by prefacing the titles of my most used searches with "!" which sorts them to the front of the list, or you could number them or something). As for renaming, you do know you can just click "modify this search", re-run the search, then give it a new name? This will create a duplicate, though, rather than just renaming it, but it's not too much trouble to delete the old search. It's not like you need to rename a search every day, so a couple of extra clicks once in a while isn't a massive problem. I'm not quite sure I understand tweak number 4, as there is already a link to saved searches at the top of the page. It would, however, be nice to be able to mark certain tabs (both saved searches & tabs in other views) as "favourites" and have a link for easy access to just those tabs. This message was edited May 20, 2010. |
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saskia.x |
Posted May 20, 2010 in: Subfolders... C'mon people! Add this feature!!
Score: 2
Personally I don't see how subfolders are particularly essential if you're a Pro user (with subtasks), but then again we all have our own ways of organising our tasks and perhaps some people want extra complex hierarchical systems, or maybe they just really don't like the idea of using something like goals to accomplish this. As far as I'm concerned, Toodledo already has many, many layers which can be used as a heirarchy (3 levels of nested goals, folders, tasks/subtasks, plus the added layers of tags & contexts), and for sub-sub tasks you can always use a checklist in the notes or something. I use short term goals for larger-scale projects which have many "sub-projects", which works very well for me. Are there any drop-down fields (e.g. context/goal) that you don't use much at the moment? If so, you can use that field as a kind of "subfolder" - if you sort by that field, the tasks will all be grouped under collapsible headings that mimic "subfolders" pretty well. This is a bit like how I use short-term goals.
I know people think of things like this as "workarounds" but in this case I just don't think that's really true; the only reason it's a workaround is that it's YOU who has to create it rather than the developer. If you can get the tasks to display on the screen as though they were in subfolders, then to all intents & purposes they are in subfolders! Computer-based organisational systems are all about illusions anyway; your "files" on you computer aren't really in folders, they just appear that way because the computer creates that illusion. Same with Toodledo. The trouble is with arguments like "Add the subfolders and let the users make the decision" is that there are many, many features that would be lovely to have, and Toodledo have to prioritise these somehow. Probably in terms of how easy they are to develop, how many people have requested them, whether you can already accomplish the same thing with creative use of existing features, their overall long-term plans for the app, etc. If they add one feature, another will get pushed down the list a bit. So it's a case of "do enough users want subfolders badly enough, and is this realistic in terms of the other work that needs to be done?" and if there are too many other more popular feature requests then there just aren't the resources to add subfolders right now. Posted by marphod: Well, yes. If I were employed, 15$ would be cheap. I think it depends what your priorities are, and whether you actually want/need the Pro features. I first took out my paid subscription as a single mother and student living on state benefits, and I didn't think it was too much considering what I was getting. It works out at about £10, and I would easily spend more than that on a night out, or on transport for a couple of weeks, or a book for university, so £10 for a year's use of a tool that helps me to make more of my life seems good value! That £10 has contributed more to my life overall than most other things I spend £10 on. |
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saskia.x |
Posted May 20, 2010 in: Multiple Todo Lists, or just Folders?
Score: 0
One thing I forgot to say was that, if you do view your tasks by folder, context, whatever, any task you create whilst in a particular "list" will automatically be assigned to that list (i.e. the appropriate field will be pre-filled with the name of the current list). This makes the "separate list" illusion quite easy to maintain.
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saskia.x |
Posted May 20, 2010 in: Multiple Todo Lists, or just Folders?
Score: 0
It depends what you mean by "just one todo list". Yes, each account is basically comprised of one long list of tasks, but you don't ever actually have to view the entire list at once if you don't want to. So yes, if you want your list to appear as multiple lists, you just use the various fields (e.g. folder, context etc) to assign your tasks to certain lists and view the tasks that way (you can set the default view to, say, folders, if that's how you prefer to conceptualise your lists. The default view is set via "account settings").
Are you using Getting Things Done? I think a lot of GTDers use folders as "lists", but there are many, many different ways you can do it. Don't forget, there's not just folders that can provide this "illusion" of multiple lists, part of the power that comes from using an app like Toodledo is the flexibility in how you can view your tasks (so you can have the same tasks in several different sets of lists which you view as required). My default view is a saved search that works a bit like the default Hotlist (but is more tailored to my own preferences), but I also frequently view by folder, context, goal, due date, priority, tag, & other saved searches, depending on what I'm trying to accomplish. Actually, saved searches are an incredibly powerful way to create very tailored "lists" that show you exactly the tasks you want to see for a particular purpose. Experiment a bit to find the setup that suits you! You'd be surprised just how many ways Toodledo can be used. You can bend it to your will to reflect whatever setup you prefer, pretty much. |
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saskia.x |
I have quite a lot of tasks, lots of goals, and a fair few folders & contexts, and I don't see this slowness in either Chrome or Firefox. I also have far too many Firefox extensions and usually too many tabs open (and all this on a computer that could probably do with an upgrade), but despite this Toodledo is just as fast as it's always been for me! So I don't think this is a universal problem, nor is it apparently an inevitable consequence of having a large database.
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