Alternatives to adding tags to subtasks in GTD project tasks

[Master Scott]

Cameron,

I have been using GQueues for GTD for several months with mixed
(mostly positive though) success.

Recently I found your video tutorial for your method of implementing
GTD and found it to be better than my method in enough ways that I
just finished switching everything over to your system. So far it is
working great.

The only awkward (for me) place that I have found so far is your
method of adding tags to keep project tasks and their subtasks
together. I find the practice of adding the Quick Add syntax to the
end of each subtask to be less than fluid (I am a okay-at-best
typist). Plus, I find that I am constantly having to make up new tags
to go with each project, then not remembering the tags because they
are relatively short-lived (until the project is complete - sometimes
just a day or two) and never really committed to memory. Then I have
to go back every so often and purge my no-longer-used tags so they
don't get out of hand.

If I just omit this practice altogether, then I can't drag subtasks
individually to their appropriate context queues (e.g., @Office)
without permanently breaking its connection to the parent.

Do you (or anyone else) have an alternate way to handle this seemingly
minor (but crucial) GTD functionality?

I would love it if somehow when creating a subtask, it was
automatically tagged with the title (or a portion thereof) of the
parent task, or somehow else permanently linked to the parent. Perhaps
a way to prepend the subtask title with the first "x" number of words
(or characters) from the parent task title?

Thanks,
Scott

[Scott G.]

Yea I agree with this in the fact that subtasks sometimes seem very
separate from their parents. Not so much where subtasks seem separate
from their parent tasks but parents separate from their subtasks. With
subtasks you can click on the left of them to see the parent but there
is no easy way to see subtasks if only a parent is in a smart queue.

[Cameron (GQueues Team)]

Scott G - To see the subtasks that belong to a parent from a Smart Queue you can click the magnifying glass which takes you to the item overview.  Yes, it takes you out of the Smart Queues, which I realize is not ideal, but this is what is available right now.

-Cameron

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[Cameron (GQueues Team)]

Hi Scott,

Thanks for the feedback.  I see how tagging tasks for projects could be cumbersome in the situation you described.  

An alternative might be to flip everything around.  Keep your tasks and subtasks altogether in the same queue.  Then just tag them with contexts (@home, @office, etc....).  You could then create Smart Queues that pull together all items with these tags - an @home smart queue for instance.  This means you are tagging everything instead of dragging them to queues as in the video.  But the tags will stay fairly consistent making them easier to remember and you won't have to clean up your list of tags every few days.  

I'll continue to think about other approaches to, and what changes I could implement to make things easier.

-Cameron

[Scott G.]

Yea actually that is how I do it. I have tasks organized by their
general category (personal, finance, programming, etc) then I tag
things to get a different look at my task such as tagging based on how
long I expect the task to take or like you suggested where the task
would be completed (@home, @school, etc). But when I then go into
those smart queues and see a subtask or parent task I kind of lose my
bearings on the big picture of that task. However, I seem to have
forgotten about the magnifying glass feature. Thanks :) I think that
should be more than adequate.

One thing that would help greatly in these regards would be to make
keyboard shortcuts for viewing parent and subtasks. I quickly checked
and there didn't appear to be any but feel free to sneak those
shortcuts in there and correct me ;)

On Oct 5, 1:43 pm, "Cameron (GQueues Team)" <came...@gqueues.com>
wrote:

> Hi Scott,
>
> Thanks for the feedback.  I see how tagging tasks for projects could be
> cumbersome in the situation you described.
>
> An alternative might be to flip everything around.  Keep your tasks and
> subtasks altogether in the same queue.  Then just tag them with contexts
> (@home, @office, etc....).  You could then create Smart Queues that pull
> together all items with these tags - an @home smart queue for instance.
>  This means you are tagging everything instead of dragging them to queues as
> in the video.  But the tags will stay fairly consistent making them easier
> to remember and you won't have to clean up your list of tags every few days.
>
> I'll continue to think about other approaches to, and what changes I could
> implement to make things easier.
>
> -Cameron
>

> > gqueues+u...@googlegroups.com<gqueues%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>
> > .

[Eraldo]

Sounds like a great suggestion. :)

I also miss a shortcut for moving to a queue.

Just like it is the case in Gmail ('G'+'L' > go to label; or 'G'+'I' > go to inbox; etc).

I also plan on using contexts as tags instead of queues (e.g. "@computer" tag)

Greetings from Austria,

Eraldo