Enhancement requests

[empire_builder]

OpenLoopz seems like it has great potential; I really like the
paradigm of showing "only what you need to know" on the main screen.
However, with a few enhancements it could really be my go-to app.

As I describe these enhancements, keep in mind that I typically have
over 100 tasks in my GTD system at any given time. Thus, I need ways
to make it easy to manage large numbers of tasks.

(1) Suppose I have 20 events in the "At work" (geo) context, 4 are
phone calls, 5 are web pages I have to check out, 3 are programming
tasks, 2 are meetings I have to set up, etc. OL will show the "At
work" context on the main page, but the tasks within that context
aren't organized in any way. The other contexts won't be shown unless
I pin them. But suppose I have 12 phone calls I have to make; I don't
want to pin the "Phone" context to the main page because then I'd see
8 calls that aren't appropriate for my current location.

Suppose that in addition to showing the current geo context (in this
case, "At work"), you also showed the (nonempty) intersection of each
context with the current geo context. So even though my "Phone"
context might contain 12 calls, the main page would show "Phone"
containing 4 (the ones that are also in the "At work" context). I
could of course always see all of my calls by drilling down into
"Review Actions" > "Contexts" > "Phone".

I think a similar thing ought to be done for the time-based contexts.
If I have certain things I can only do during business hours (9-5 M-F)
like running errands or calling local businesses, etc., then I want to
see the intersection of my "Errands" and "Phone" contexts with my
"Business Hours" context during business hours. It doesn't do me any
good to see the personal calls I want to make to my friends when I get
home, nor does it do me any good to see errands that I can only run on
the weekend, etc. But I also don't want to have to comb through the
list of "Business Hours" tasks while I'm out running errands, trying
to figure out which are errands and which are something else.

(2) Priorities. A simple low/medium/high scheme would be great, or
low/medium/high/urgent. Color-coded of course; I shouldn't have to
open a task to see what its priority it. And all of the lists should
sort by priority except perhaps for scheduled tasks. Or there should
be a menu item that lets you flip between sort by (decreasing)
priority vs. sort by (increasing) date. If I have 20 phone calls to
make but I only have time to make two, I shouldn't have to scan the
entire list of 20 every time I open that context to figure out which
two to make! I believe that GTD encourages the reasonable use of
priorites.

(3) I'd like to have a category on the main screen called "Due
Today". GTD purists may scoff as this is not a context, but it fits
the "tickler file" paradigm in GTD nicely. I should be able to see
everything I need to know today all in one place; I shouldn't have to
drill down into "Review Actions" > "Scheduled". Bonus extra credit:
also have a "Due Tomorrow" and/or a "Due This Week" category. Double
bonus extra credit: allow people to turn this feature on/off via a
pref setting so that it doesn't start a religious war.

Whew! Sounds like a lot, but with the exception of #2 it doesn't
really involve any changes to the UI. If OL had these enhancements
(and the web sync, of course), it would be INDISPENSIBLE to any GTD
enthusiast.

Discuss... go!

Dave

[Paul Drummond]

Firstly let me say that we will definitely be adding 3 - it was something we wanted for launch but ran out of time.   

While we digest the implications of feature 1, let me ask you a  question about feature 2!

Personally, one of the main messages I took away from reading GTD was that priorities are discouraged - would you agree with that? 

In the past, when I have used tools that provide priority levels, I found myself spending a lot of time setting up priorities but not a lot of time actually benefiting from them!

Regards,
Paul.

[empire_builder]

I don't have my copy of "The David"'s book handy, but I thought that
using priorities to choose between tasks in the same context is okay.
Using priorities as a global ordering seems to be discouraged.
Priorities can be updated during your weekly review. Maybe I'm
imagining this?

I hate tools that don't provide priorities, because then I have to
scan my entire list, every time I look at it. (Remember my base
assumption, which is that I have 100+ actionable items.) If the tool
provides them and people don't want to use them, that's easy. But if
the tool doesn't provide them it's very hard to simulate them. I
thought about creating contexts with names like "High", "Medium",
"Low" but since there'd be no way to sort based on those it's not
really helpful.

Maybe you think my base assumption needs to be re-examined: Maybe 100
tasks is too many? But that is counter to GTD thinking -- GTD
encourages you to get *everything* down in your system, no matter how
trivial, so that your mind can be clear. And I usually have no
trouble thinking of 100 things I need to get done eventually (the joys
of home ownership!). I'm sure there are people who have 200, 300, or
more tasks in their list. Trying to manage lists of this size without
priorities seems unmanageable to me.

Dave

[empire_builder]

I cite Merlin Mann to back up my priority claims:

http://www.43folders.com/2006/10/01/priorities-vacuum

Merlin explains that in GTD, priority is just one of several criteria
for choosing what to do next -- not THE criterion (which would be
counter to GTD-style thinking). As I said in my last message, I agree
that trying to globally prioritize your tasks is a bad idea.

Todd Mundt talks about priorities as being not part of pure GTD
(http://toddmundt.com/blog/2008/09/01/gtd-priorities-and-fake-due-
dates/), but then admits that he often finds himself assigning "fake
due dates" to tasks to compensate for this. If want to be dogmatic
about GTD, then you shouldn't have due dates on your actions -- hard
deadlines belong on your calendar. So let's try not to be too
dogmatic and leave things open to reasonable interpretation. :-)

Dave

[Paul Drummond]

Dave, you have succeeded in changing my mind on this! 

You hit the nail on the head when you state that it's better to provide priorities as an optional feature rather than not have it at all - then everyone wins.  Therefore, we will add priorities to OpenLoopz for 1.3.

Moving on to your enhancement 1 - here it is again:

2009/10/2 empire_builder <davidb...@gmail.com>

 

(1) Suppose I have 20 events in the "At work" (geo) context, 4 are
phone calls, 5 are web pages I have to check out, 3 are programming
tasks, 2 are meetings I have to set up, etc.  OL will show the "At
work" context on the main page, but the tasks within that context
aren't organized in any way.  The other contexts won't be shown unless
I pin them.  But suppose I have 12 phone calls I have to make; I don't
want to pin the "Phone" context to the main page because then I'd see
8 calls that aren't appropriate for my current location.

Suppose that in addition to showing the current geo context (in this
case, "At work"), you also showed the (nonempty) intersection of each
context with the current geo context.  So even though my "Phone"
context might contain 12 calls, the main page would show "Phone"
containing 4 (the ones that are also in the "At work" context).  I
could of course always see all of my calls by drilling down into
"Review Actions" > "Contexts" > "Phone".

 

Okay, let's drill into this with a more specific example.  Say we have 3 actions, 2 of them are in the 'At Work' geo context and one of those is also in in the 'Phone Calls' context:

* Finish Progress Report - 'At Work' context.

* Call Bob - 'At work' and 'Phone Calls' context.

* Do the Ironing - 'At Home' context.

When you are at work OpenLoopz will show the following:

> At Work

Finish Progress Report
Call Bob

The phone call action is displayed but not as a phone call.  It's displayed because it's an 'At Work' context.

I think what you want to see is this;

> At Work

Finish Progress Report

> Phone Calls

Call Bob

Am I right?

Paul.

[David Wagner]

You are almost right -- I think that "Call Bob" should appear in both contexts.  That changes the behavior the least from current behavior (if I had the Phone context pinned then it would appear in both lists).  This would be so, so, so cool.  And useful!

By the way, I think this same kind of smart categorization should be done with time-based contexts.  Geo contexts are whizzy but the GPS drains battery power.  Also, the geo contexts are useless in the web interface (unless you've got a GPS unit built into your laptop!).  Geo contexts would be more useful to me if I could select and geo context and say "I'm HERE now until I tell you otherwise."

    Dave

[David Wagner]

On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 9:19 AM, David Wagner <davidb...@gmail.com> wrote:

Geo contexts would be more useful to me if I could select and geo context and say "I'm HERE now until I tell you otherwise."
   

Whoops!  "select and geo context" -> "select ANY geo context".  :-)