ForumsSearch
Search results for "Posted by saskia.x"
| Author | Message |
|---|---|
|
saskia.x |
Posted May 20, 2010 in: Subtask with due date not appearing on date due
Score: 0
This has caught me out on several occasions too, and I've been using Toodledo for ages!
|
|
saskia.x |
As brandmarked says, the logical solution to this problem is the Someday/Maybe list (assuming you're using "classic" GTD). You review your tasks/projects, decide which are a priority to you at the moment, then add all the others to Someday/Maybe. As long as you regularly review this list you can keep your active tasks aligned with your current priorities.
Taking your example of "peaceful, livable, welcoming home", perhaps you want a finished kitchen really badly, but can wait a while for the bathroom to be redone, so you'd have "finish kitchen remodel" on your list and shift the bathroom jobs to SDM. And maybe you want your daughter to have a nice, organised room where she can play happily but you can put up with your own room being less than perfect, so put "decorate bedroom" on SDM & "organize daughters room" on your active list. Keep reviewing the list and these tasks won't slip through the net (unless you eventually decide that they aren't important to you). I have to admit, though, that I don't do this myself any more, but that's because I have found that I'm not well suited to a classic GTD system... mostly because I'm not good enough at doing proper weekly reviews!! But also because my life doesn't lend itself well to organising by contexts. So I have had to incorporate good old fashioned priority ranking into my system to impose some order on it, and I use this instead of Someday/Maybe most of the time (I still have an SDM list but it's more just ideas for the future which I know I can't do much about right now). Although my system is inspired by GTD, I deviate quite a lot from the canonical version; e.g I set due dates for tasks which don't actually have a due date, but then use the priority to indicate how seriously to take this due date (so tasks with real due dates are priority 3, and I add a star if the task is particularly important). This means I can schedule tasks sometime in the future so they don't distract me from my current tasks, in much the same way as the SDM list, but without me having to rely on regularly reviewing the SDM list as the tasks will just pop up at the date I've set for them. I do try to review my lists as often as possible to keep them current, but this way I don't have to rely on myself to do that :) However, if you don't have too much trouble keeping up with proper regular reviews, and are generally happy with the classic GTD structure then I think the SDM list is definitely the way to solve your problem. Basically, whichever way you do it, you need to enforce some priorities! One of the biggest lessons I've learnt from the time I've spent learning about productivity techniques is that you can't do everything, and it's up to you to decide what you're going to prioritise and which things can wait. It seems that many problems people have with organising their tasks stem from an inability to decide which tasks are currently the most important to them. I think it just stems from a kind of idealism - we don't really want to face the fact that we have limitations and can't actually do everything! You can't possibly do all of those tasks you've put down under "peaceful, livable, welcoming home" in the next few weeks, can you? So decide what you can realistically achieve in the short term and put the rest to one side until you have time to do them, or until you decide that they have become more important or urgent. This message was edited May 20, 2010. |
|
saskia.x |
Posted by Levi Wallach:
can you or can't you do a link to an individual note? You can't do a link to an individual note in Evernote just yet, but I know it is a feature that has been requested repeatedly and that Evernote have said it is in development. My "links" don't actually do anything, they are just fake wiki-style links. I find the square brackets are a useful way to denote a "link" visually and consistently. You need to copy & paste the text between the brackets into EN's search field, although I've written a little AutoHotkey script so that I can select text and press a combination of keys to have it sent to Evernote. Unfortunately this was written for EN 3.1 and I haven't had time to update it for the new version yet. I'm hoping that Evernote hurry up and implement note links so I don't need to bother! Toodledo are one step ahead on this and do have links to individual tasks, so I do use task links sometimes in Evernote when I want to refer back to something in Toodledo. |
|
saskia.x |
It would be nice if the hotlist were more customisable, but saved searches serve fairly well for most purposes apart from when you want to view this search off the main website (e.g. iphone app, emailed hotlist etc). So I think giving us the ability to access saved searches via all of the other interfaces would solve this problem for most people.
Personally I don't yet have a phone that is capable of accessing Toodledo so that hasn't been a problem for me (although I'm about to get an Android phone so it may be soon!), but I would like to be able to set up an automatic email of my customised "hotlist" as you can with the built-in hotlist. So if saved searches could be emailed automatically, or queried via email, that would be great. Of course, they could do something entirely different which would accomplish a similar thing. One idea that just came to me was that the hotlist could actually be a pre-set saved search, where the default settings are the same as the current hotlist, but where these can easily be modified by the user at any time (possibly with an option somewhere to revert to the default hotlist settings if you decide you preferred that). If this were treated in exactly the same way as a saved search you could swap between different searches for your hotlist easily if you wanted to test out new settings. It would essentially be a case of designating a particular search as your "hotlist" (possibly simply by calling it "hotlist") and this would then be accessible in all of the ways that the hotlist is currently available. This would mean there was only one set of changes to make on the main website, and all of the other clients could be left as-is, with the new hotlist simply feeding into them in exactly the same way that the current hotlist does. OK, I realise when I say "only 1 set of changes to make" we're probably not talking about changing two lines of code or something, but it's probably less work to make the hotlist be defined by a saved search than it would be to add saved searches to everything or make the current hotlist modifiable. |
|
saskia.x |
I keep a lot of task/project "support material" in Evernote, kind of like a virtual filing cabinet. I currently add a pretend "link" into the notes field (e.g. "EN[note link]") which I copy into the search field in Evernote to take me to the relevant notes for that task. If I only have one specific note which I want to refer to then I use the note title (or part of the note title) as the "link text", but sometimes I'll use a tag name, or a search term that will bring up a selection of relevant notes. Once Evernote bring in proper note links this will all be a lot easier, but I'd love to see tighter integration between Evernote & Toodledo so that I don't have to keep switching between the two for this to work.
It would also be good if it were easier to create tasks from Evernote notes. Currently I do this by emailing a note from Evernote, copying the note title into the body as a "pretend link" and using the Toodledo email syntax in the note title. This isn't an ideal way of doing it, but it serves my purposes if I've got evernote open but not Toodledo (if I've got both open it's usually just easier to manually copy the note title into a new task in Toodle). Another way I use them both together is to email tasks from Toodle into EN, which is useful if the task contains info that I may want to be able to search in EN (e.g. notes that I may want for future reference, or tasks relating to projects I expect to search for in EN and will want a link back to the relevant task). Any way to make any or all of these processes easier would be great! I think the Nozbe implementation is an interesting way of integrating tasks & Evernote, and would probably be a good place to start for inspiration (although there's no reason the Toodledo implementation would need to be the same). I think Toodledo could probably get away with charging a little bit for this service, since, as someone else pointed out above, there is a potential for this to conflict with their "ProPlus" subscription. Alternatively this could be made available only to Pro users as it would probably convert some free users to paying subscribers since Evernote is a very popular service. |
|
saskia.x |
Posted by cj:
I too really would like the capability to clear tags ... I love the new tag window ... but for me, I would like to quickly tag or untag individual tags but simply clicking on the tag link in that window (toggle on or off). Right now, if I have a list of 5 tags, separated by commas (perhaps 1 is a mistake) then it is a real PAIN to select and delete the one tag I don't want. If this were just about correcting mistakes in the tag list I would not say anything. it is more about being able to quickly add or remove tags at will. It is indeed a pain. In the grander scheme of things, of course it seems trivial I can live with it, just like I live with migraines. But managing that tag window is a relatively high inconvenience - (now worse because the popup window can disappear in the process of switching from mouse to keybd). Being patient and hoping that one minor, incremental fix will turn this feature from an annoyance into a huge productivity boost. I can definitely see the point of this one, since it is more fiddly to delete a single tag (particularly given the fact that the tag box is a set width so tags are often off the edge if you have several). At the moment, clicking on the same tag twice gives you multiple identical tags, which seems a bit odd. Toggling would make a lot more sense. |
|
saskia.x |
Posted May 07, 2010 in: Adding Folders/Contexts/Goal on-the-fly
Score: 0
Is there any chance you'll add a similar feature for existing tasks? Sometimes when I'm reviewing my task list I'd like to be able to assign some of the tasks to a new goal, which I still won't be able to do at the moment.
It would be fab in multi-edit too! |
|
saskia.x |
Posted May 07, 2010 in: Adding Folders/Contexts/Goal on-the-fly
Score: 0
Thankyou!!! Both of these are really useful improvements. I've been hoping for "on-the-fly" folder/context/goal creation for ages, and I hadn't even realised I wanted the warning when completing a parent task until now but I think it's a great idea :)
|
|
saskia.x |
Posted May 04, 2010 in: Parents-SubTasks : Search Criteria
Score: 0
Ooh, that would be a great addition to the search function! I can see all kinds of uses for being able to query the parameters of the parent task. I make heavy use of searches too (my main view is my customised "hotlist"-style search) and things like being able to show subtasks whose parent task is high priority, for instance, would be really handy.
|
|
saskia.x |
Posted May 04, 2010 in: am I crazy to consider using TD as my calendar?
Score: 0
It depends whether you use some of the extra features available in Google Calendar; for instance, I have a number of shared calendars with various people so I would miss those. Also, I just like having a nice, visual, colour coded calendar that I can glance at to see my commitments, and I find the built-in Toodledo one is just a bit too minimal for me. Google calendar is well supported for syncing with various services too.
But if you don't particularly need those features, then I don't see why not! |
|
saskia.x |
Posted May 04, 2010 in: Daily reoccurring for 14 days - Can't figure out!
Score: 0
If I need an end date for a repeating task, I just create a task to remind me to cancel the repeating task. A nice way to make this even easier is to paste the "permanent link" to the repeating task (available when you hover over the task's checkbox) into the reminder's note field, then you don't have to hunt around for the task you want to cancel.
|
|
saskia.x |
@Qrystal: I used to avoid due dates for tasks that don't have a "real" due date, but found that I wanted to be able to include some measure of when I wanted to do tasks rather than relying on priority alone (I also found that repeating tasks messed up my lists as they had to have due dates; now you can use the start date field so that's not such a problem anymore).
After a lot of trial & error I came up with a system that involves using the priority field to indicate how important the due date is (3=real due date, 2=want to do by that date, 1=would be nice to do by that date), and the star to give the more important things a little extra "bump" up the list. Using this system, and sorting by importance, I get a very nicely sorted task list that reflects my real priorities. |
|
saskia.x |
Posted Mar 14, 2010 in: SMART Goals and this great tool
Score: 0
I don't use the SMART criteria rigidly, but I do try to keep it in mind as a framework when writing/reviewing my tasks & goals.
Personally I find it more helpful in writing tasks than goals; I find my goals more motivating if I phrase them in a way that feels unique to me rather than worrying whether they are "SMART"! I generally try to write goals as though I'm describing the state I am aiming for in the timeframe specified by the type of goal (short/long term, lifelong), and I try to keep them short & sweet. The main thing I think about when writing goals is what exactly it is that I want & why. On the other hand, tasks work much better when they are actionable, have a time frame, are specific etc, so that I don't need to do much further thinking when it comes to acting on them. I would like to see a few improvements to goals in Toodledo, though. No matter how carefully I set my goals, I still find that many of my tasks contribute to more than one goal, so it would be nice if we could select multiple goals (either in the tasks themselves or in "contributes to" in the lower level goals). I also find the goal chains pretty much useless as you can't just view all of the goal chains in one go; I really don't see why I should have to go through clicking individually on each one to view them all at once. And goals can get unwieldy when you have lots of them, so it would be good to be able to view my tasks by goal in a more orderly way, say for instance with a separate tab for each type of goal (short term/long term/lifelong) or at least ordering the goals in the way I have sorted them on the goals page rather than alphabetically. |
|
saskia.x |
It depends what you mean by "a list of things that need to be done today", Joe. Apart from anything else, I would say that something that needs to be done today would have a due date for today, otherwise it's just something that you want to do today. It is isn't clear from your question whether you are talking about manually creating a daily task list, or whether you mean that you want Toodledo to suggest what to do that day.
If you just want to be able to go through your tasks yourself, manually pick out what you want to do that day, and just get on and do those tasks without being distracted by the rest of the list, you can use the star or something, as PeterW suggests. Personally if I want to focus on blasting through a list of things I've chosen to do that day, I prefer to get them out of Toodledo altogether as I know I'll probably start fiddling with my task list otherwise! But then I'm a distractable person... If you want Toodledo to filter/sort the tasks so that it generates a list of tasks to do each day, you'll need to think a bit about how you'd prefer to organise your tasks. I struggled over this for a long time but I have ended up with a system that works pretty well for me. I originally tried to avoid using due dates for tasks that didn't have a genuine due date (a la David Allen's Getting Things Done) but I find that I end up with a really overwhelming task list that way. My life is just far too complicated. So now I use the priority field to indicate how much it matters that I do the task by its "due date". 3 means I have to do the task by that date, and 1 means it'd be kind of nice to do it by that date but it's not a big deal if I don't. I also use the star for tasks that are slightly more important, so 3* represents a deadline that I can't miss, and 2* is a task that I really want to do by a particular date but don't really need to. If I sort my tasks by importance this produces a nicely ordered list with the things I need to do that day at the top. I can also use tools like the scheduler or a saved search to give me a shorter or more customised list so that I can focus in on the tasks that are the best use of my time right now. You can use the scheduler pretty effectively to get a list of tasks for the day provided your task list is well organised. I realise I've probably made my system sound much more complicated than it actually is! Toodledo has a lot of flexibility, so with some experimenting you should be able to come up with a way of using it that suits the way you work. There are a lot of different setups discussed on these forums, so if you want some ideas you can probably find a few here! |
|
saskia.x |
Posted Mar 12, 2010 in: "add a new sub-task" doesn't use defined defaults
Score: 0
Posted by sause:
I'd like to have a feature on checklists. For daily things, like morning rituals, I set recurring for daily. But there are many checklists that I do at random times. Say going for a bike ride. I'd like to go through the list, checking that I've done each... then next time I go to the check list, everything is unchecked and ready to do again. Perhaps an "uncheck" all button. I haven't wanted to make it daily if that would add a bunch of items to my daily to do list. I just use "repeat with parent" for this, and check off the parent when I've completed the checklist. If you don't want the task to have a due date you can always leave it blank & use the start date field. That way you can set the repeat to daily if you like and it won't get in the way of more urgent tasks. |
|
saskia.x |
Posted Mar 12, 2010 in: subtasks only go down one level?
Score: 0
Qrystal, I really like your system for using square brackets in simple subtask lists in your notes. I sometimes feel the need to break down tasks further into a simple checklist, but I don't really do it in any systematic way at the moment.
|
|
saskia.x |
I regularly do this, as I have a rather hectic life & am not the most naturally organised & focussed person, so I end up missing the due date for a lot of tasks. I have a saved search called "reschedule?" that searches for all overdue tasks that fit certain criteria.
One important thing to consider, if you haven't already done this, is to ensure you don't reschedule some important repeating task with a fixed deadline (like a birthday), or an important task that you've already missed but still have the chance to catch up on (if you just reschedule this to the same date as everything else there's more chance you'll lose it amongst the other tasks). There are ways you can exclude things like these from your search, although the exact details partly depend on how you have organised your tasks. At minimum, it's probably worth adding "repeat is not yearly" to your search so you don't reschedule an annual fixed date task like a birthday. And before doing a bulk reschedule it's probably a good idea to glance at your high priority tasks and reschedule some of those individually so there's less risk of them getting lost amongst the other tasks. |
|
saskia.x |
Oh, and thank you very much for the new tag cloud feature, Toodledo!! I'll be able to make much better use of tags now. And if you implement autocomplete then tags will be almost perfect! :)
|
|
saskia.x |
Posted by Colin:
I would love the ability to easily clear all tags. If there were a little "X" at the right of the text box that you could click on to clear the box's contents, that would be perfect. That would make it a lot easier to switch from one tag to another. Couldn't you just use Ctrl+A & delete? Or if you tend to use your mouse more, triple click in the field & then delete. It seems a bit unnecessary to clutter up the interface any more than necessary for something that can be achieved so easily already. |
|
saskia.x |
Posted Jan 12, 2010 in: T-Mobile G1 / Google Phone Integration
Score: 0
I'm about to get an HTC Hero and could really do with a decent app for Toodledo on there.
Could you consider working with the developer of one of the existing apps (TooDo or Toodledroid) rather than developing an app yourself? That way you build on the existing work they have done, they get the benefit of your expertise on Toodledo, and you don't have to go to the trouble of developing one yourself. There's also the Gears option; perhaps if you could make the slim website work with Gears on Android we wouldn't need a native app so much. |