Question: How can I show just 1 "Next Action" per Project? (And how can I additional Next Actions to this?)

[John Smith]

Hello

I wish to manage multiple Projects at once within on datafile.

It is possible to embed the concept of "a Project" into TDL, by which I mean:

Is it possible to set up a task (i.e. a row) that can be treated as Project in the GTD method sense that:

A) it contacts multiple Actions within it  

AND

B) a view can be set up that only shows the first (one) Action for each "Project" 

ALSO 

C) that there is a mechanism to show more than one Action per "Project" either

     i) globally (e.g. now only the first 3 tasks for all projects are visible ) OR 

     ii) individually (give the user the power to "force" additional individual Actions onto the "Next One Action for each Project" view

Many thanks

J

[simplenuity]

Hi John,

Please find my comments in between.

On Thursday, 25 August 2016 13:08:45 UTC+12, John Smith wrote:

Hello

I wish to manage multiple Projects at once within on datafile.

It is possible to embed the concept of "a Project" into TDL, by which I mean:

Is it possible to set up a task (i.e. a row) that can be treated as Project in the GTD method sense that:

A) it contacts multiple Actions within it  

Just create the multiple actions as subtasks. So a parent task always can be considered a project, even if you have multiple levels.
 

AND

B) a view can be set up that only shows the first (one) Action for each "Project" 

In the List view to can hide all project rows, so you'd only see tasks. With the column field path you still can see the project it belongs to :)

ALSO 

C) that there is a mechanism to show more than one Action per "Project" either

     i) globally (e.g. now only the first 3 tasks for all projects are visible ) OR 

     ii) individually (give the user the power to "force" additional individual Actions onto the "Next One Action for each Project" view

To see only one or a certain amount of tasks I would utilize the Priority or Tag or any other custom task attribute with the specific information and combine it with a filter.

Hope that helps :)
 

Many thanks

J

[John Smith]

No, sorry but that doesn't really cut it!

1. Is there any way to flag a parent task - somewhere within a hierarchy - as being a special kind of parent - that I am calling "Project" that has the following property:

2. Is there any way for these "Project" type of task, to automatically behave differently from a normal task that has children and just show 1 (or 2 or 3) Actions (i.e. sub-tasks) for each Project in some special "Next Actions" view.

i.e. If you complete one action, the next action with it's project automatically appears on that list.

3. If so, is there any way to individually flag additional tasks to appear on this view?

with thanks

J

[simplenuity]

Hey John,

Beside using the setting in List View to hide parent tasks, which meant in my case always being equivalent with a project I also classified it via Category as a project. For example to be able to obtain the GTD project list.

Part of your other requirements I'd approach as described before, however being aware of that this won't fulfill the "automatic" feature. Whether that is possible by scripting/ user defined tools is beyond my knowledge/experience.

For my quite stringent GTD implementation I was able to live without it. What makes me currently using a different tool for GTD is the lack of being able to work with my TDL files on my phone. Beside Freeplane, TDL still is my favorite tool for project management though :)

Best,
Ryan

[John Smith]

Hi Ryan

Can you tell me how to hide Parents in the list view?  That would be a start I suppose.

If it really cant do automatic Next Actions that will be extremely disappointing, particularly given the clever other stuff it can do. 

Yes, lack of smartphone visibility will be pain for sure.
Hmm... is there any way to do screen share via something like TeamViewer onto a smartphone?

[simplenuity]

Hi John,

go to Preferences (via menu: Tool -> Preferences) or via icon on toolbar:

-> User Interface -> Tasklist Atrributes

under "Other" last entry:
Always hide parent tasks in List View

You also might want to activate a few lines above:
Show parent tasks with a folder icon
That will give you some "automagic" when a task becomes a project by creating sub tasks :)

Screensharing/ remote acces is definitely possible. But that is not an option for me as I want it simple and robust. Having to rely on internet connection on my phone and having the computer always running is not ideal. I don't mind to perform a sync before I leave the office/house, but then I don't want to depend on network access.
Another option I was contemplating on is creating a user defined tool that will export the GTD context lists to easily readable format/files that get synced to the phone. Better than nothing but still only a one-way street.

Let us know how you go along...

Ryan

[Smith, John]

Thanks

I have yet to investigate exporting data... but I see there is a Save to EasyFTP I have no idea what that does but sounds hopeful, no?

Surely there has to be a way and have it visible on a smartphone...

J

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[simplenuity]

Hi John,

EasyFTP is for uploading your tdl file to an FTP server to make this file available to any device that has access to this server. So more some kind of file sharing solution.

In regard to phone I prefer one of many sync services available meanwhile, like NextCloud, Seafile, Dropbox, GoogleDrive... you name it.
There is actually an Android app available that handles the tdl file directly. Unfortunately the development has been put on hold for a very long time. Considering the pace Dan is developing and continuously improving TDL you might imagine that this Android app is not a real solution anymore.

Sure, there are many ways to export data from TDL. And if you're a XML guru then the sky is the limit.

Best,
Ryan

[Tony G]

Just responding to the initial questions...

John - it's great to see so many questions. Keep it up!

For structuring tasklists and projects, everyone does things differently. TDL doesn't prescribe how to do something. Dan has just provided us with a variety of tools to select to achieve whatever scenarios seem to fit.

On the wiki Getting Started page, and pages linked from there, I have examples of a few kinds of structures which might help in your scenario.

For my own parent tasks which represent projects for a given client, I remove the status, as top level Projects don't ever change status, they're a work in progress with sub-tasks changing status, or they're simply done and ready to archive. You can also set a specific icon or tag for a Project.

If you do any programming (any language or script, doesn't matter) or you know someone who does, you can achieve your other objectives with Actions per Project using a User-Defined Tool or a Plugin. For example, you can add a toolbar button that invokes a UDT to pass data to a waiting program - or it can simply read the .tdl XML file. That program gets the structures and flags the top 3 tasks for every top level parent, and it sets a tag like "actionable" on each of those, while unsetting all other similar tags. Then it sets a filter on the tag. You can also do this with a Transform using XSL which just displays the top N entries under a specific level.

So the answer is that all of this is possible, just not directly built-in. Rather than building in thousands of specific features, Dan has provided the tools which allow us to add our own features. The software is free so it's only reasonable that if we want something very specific that few others would use then we should take it on ourselves to use the tools available to do those things.

As to the specifics of how to do these thing, sure, it takes some education and time - or you can pay someone for Their time, that's the option with the FOSS model. People here will be happy to help you with specifics if you create a thread to discuss details of any specific effort.

HTH
T

[Brendan T]

Hi Tony,

I think this request came up previously and Dan mentioned that an adjustment to the find position may enable this.  I had a look at v7.1.B1 today using the Find window "position".

For the given list,

Project A

  Task 1

  Task 2

Project B

  Task 1

  Task 2

I think the desired output would be Task 1 in both projects being listed as the next action.  This is possible if you Find position 0.  However, when Project A, Task 1 is complete then the next action would be Task 2 from Project A which has a different position.  So, I guess the find options would need to be position=minimum(excluding completed tasks) to enable the next tasks to be displayed when a task has been completed in a project.

Brendan

[Tony G]

Brendan, I had a look at Find for Position as well - great minds think alike? ;)
If this is the approach then that field would need some changes. At the least, the ability to use "Starts With", "Includes", "Does not include", etc, like text fields so that we can check for the presence of one or more periods. Dan, when I was looking at that I was reminded that support for regex for all fields would be Awesome. What about a check on the Find dialog for "Show all find options" which when enabled would show all possible operators even if it didn't seem reasonable for a given field. And that would enable regex as well...

But given all that I'm wondering if we're looking at this incorrectly. We can create alternative structures wiith Reference Tasks so that we can organize how we're working on a project in a different way than the base organization. In the example with A1, A2, B1, B2, we can easily create a task called Working with reference subtasks B2 and then A1.

I just wrote the docs on Reference Tasks a couple weeks ago and I'm guessing most people don't even know they exist. Check it out and let's see if we can get a solution without code changes.

Regards,
T

[John Smith]

Hi 

I'm sorry but, as a newbie to TDL, this conversation is slightly beyond me (!)

Can anyone tell me if it is possible in TDL to generate a list of Next One Action for each Project?  

Ideally it should be possible to incorporate standalone tasks too.

e.g. This data:

>>>

StandAloneTask X

StandAloneTask Y

Project A

   Task A.1

   Task A.2

   Task A.3

   Task A.4

Project B

   Task B.1

   Task B.2

   Task B.3

   Task B.4

StandAloneTask Z

>>>

Would result in this view like this:

>>>

StandAloneTask X

StandAloneTask Y

Task A.1

Task B.1

StandAloneTask Z

>>>

And when Task A.1 is completed the next Task in Project A then takes its place - i.e. 

>>>

StandAloneTask X

StandAloneTask Y

Task A.2

Task B.1

StandAloneTask Z

>>>

To explain this requirement - it is a central requirement of the GTD method to be able to generate a list of just your next ONE action per project.  This functionality is extremely useful as it allows the user to juggle/maintain momentum in multiple projects at once without being overwhelmed by too much stuff at once from the various projects.
Also in many projects some of these actions need to be done in sequence and so it makes no sense to have stuff that can not be done yet in your "do ASAP" list. 

With thanks

J

[simplenuity]

Hi John,

Unfortunately I can't give you the technical solution to your requirement. I only can give my 2 cents to the subject.

1. One of the concepts behind GTD is to identify the very next action on hand regarding a certain task that turns out to be a project in the GTD sense to make sure that on the todo/task/next action list there are only clearly defined pieces of work that can be done without further planning/thinking.

2. That does not necessarily mean that you're not "allowed" to identify more than one next action items for a project at the same time, specifically if they are not depending on each other, and put them onto your next action list.

3. To keep it simple, imagine your project is to replace your fridge and you would identify two very next actions. First, @home take the measurement of the space in the kitchen, and second @call sister to get contact details of her friend working at a store. Would you really want the @call task only show up when you've finished the @home task? Now let's have a look at tasks within the same context. Beside the context there is still to consider time, energy and priority. Would you really want to have - let's say - a 5min task of a certain project NOT show up on your @home list, as long as you haven't addressed - let's say - an 1h demanding, independent task of the very same project? I wouldn't.

That leaves me with the conclusion that the idea of seeing only one next action/task per project only would makes sense for depending tasks, and then only if there is a finish to start dependency!

How that translates into TDL code? Over to the coding gurus... :)

Ryan

[John Smith]

Hi Simplenuity 

Yes, I broadly agree. I definitely find that there are times when I want to be able to have more than one Action visible per Project - particularly when those actions are in different Contexts in any case.

However the points you make apply less when you have larger/more complex projects and it quickly becomes overwhelming to have every action on every project all visible at once.

Fwiw, what other GTD-friendly applications that I have used do is:

• Nirvana: Allows the user to quickly choose how many Next Actions they wish to see per project (a number between 1 and 9).
  (Personally I tend to have 3 Next Actions per project rather than just one Next Actions visible)
  
  
• Nirvana: Also allows the user to decide whether the entire project is In Series (one task visible at a time) or In Parallel (all tasks visible at once) on next actions list.
  
  
• GTDNext: Allows the user to flag up individual tasks as being "Forced Next". i.e. When you do your weekly/daily reviews you manually pick out which individual Actions you want to appear on your Next Actions list even if they are not technically next in order. This is slightly similar to using Stars, however I like to use Stars as a "do today" flag which I reset at the start of every review, whereas I use the "Forced Next" status to survive indefinitely.

Ideally I would like to be able to choose both how many next actions per project AND to do GTDNext does with a Forced Next... but either way finding some way to not clutter up my "Do ASAP" view with all the actions, and to just show my Next Actions from my larger projects is absolutely crucial to me.

J

On Friday, September 2, 2016 at 12:11:15 AM UTC+1, simplenuity wrote:

Hi John,

Unfortunately I can't give you the technical solution to your requirement. I only can give my 2 cents to the subject.

1. One of the concepts behind GTD is to identify the very next action on hand regarding a certain task that turns out to be a project in the GTD sense to make sure that on the todo/task/next action list there are only clearly defined pieces of work that can be done without further planning/thinking.

2. That does not necessarily mean that you're not "allowed" to identify more than one next action items for a project at the same time, specifically if they are not depending on each other, and put them onto your next action list.

3. To keep it simple, imagine your project is to replace your fridge and you would identify two very next actions. First, @home take the measurement of the space in the kitchen, and second @call sister to get contact details of her friend working at a store. Would you really want the @call task only show up when you've finished the @home task? Now let's have a look at tasks within the same context. Beside the context there is still to consider time, energy and priority. Would you really want to have - let's say - a 5min task of a certain project NOT show up on your @home list, as long as you haven't addressed - let's say - an 1h demanding, independent task of the very same project? I wouldn't.

That leaves me with the conclusion that the idea of seeing only one next action/task per project only would makes sense for depending tasks, and then only if there is a finish to start dependency!

How that translates into TDL code? Vver to the coding gurus... :)

[Ryan]

Hi John,

Thanks for sharing all this experience with these applications I know, but never used.

I completely agree that it's not desirable for big projects to have all next action items being populated to the next action lists. In these cases I tend to separate the actual project planning from my GTD system and usually use the weekly review for transition of new next action items to the list. Exceptions apply of course for fast paced projects etc.

As much as I enjoy the flexibility and huge feature set of TDL also for my GTD system, after a long time of resistance I actually bite the bullet only recently to move my GTD system out of TDL for the sole reason of not being able to utilize it easily on my phone, i.e. being dependent on the computer. It's very good news that the Android app developer is active again.
So I'll re-evaluate in due time :)

I highly would appreciate if you kept us in the loop how your setup of TDL is going. :)

Ryan

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[Tony G]

Stepping away from the GTD-specific application, it seems this is really a request to flag/sort specific tasks under specific conditions. As I said in the other thread which seems to be on this same topic, try using Tags or Categories and then filtering.
HTH
T

[John Smith]

To get clear, using Tags and/or Categories and then filtering is completely different functionality from what we are discussing in this thread. Here we were looking for an automatic feed whereby each time you tick items an item off within any given project the next one(s) appears automatically. 

Going and finding the next task and flagging it manually can of course be done with flags & tag etc but it's extra work... every time.

J

[Tony G]

Thanks for the clarification.
So when you complete #123 you want to set focus to #456?
I'm trying to keep this in TDL terms so that we a solution can be proposed within TDL. If we use GTD terms theres a potential mismatch of concepts as well as function.
T

[John Smith]

This idea is that if you a major project with lots of sub-tasks but you don't want your to-do list to be overwhelmed by just that project that you would only see say the first [n] tasks within that project.

Personally I like to see about 3 next tasks within each project.

e.g. suppose that you have a project: Spring Clean house

And that it had sub-tasks within it of say:

- Call to order industrial carpet cleaner

- Do washing up

- Clean bathroom

- Pick up carpet cleaner

- Hoover stair carpets

- Clean Kitchen cupboards

- Clean sitting room 

- Clear garage

So the idea is that with the appropriate filtering one would only see the project name plus the first 3 items in the list.

- Spring Clean house

      - Call to order industrial carpet cleaner

      - Do washing up

      - Clean bathroom

Cheers

J

[Tony G]

In summary, no, that's not built-in. But it's possible to create that functionality with a UDT.
Only Dan can speak to how this may or may not be included in a future release.
There are a ton of requests (from me too) asking for some field (standard or custom) to be able to trigger some action. One carefully placed enhancement in this area might solve a lot of one-off requests for custom functionality. However, Dan has also said that he did not plan to add this sort of automation into the software.
So until all that plays out, we already have the ability to do all of this via User-Defined-Tools. Not using that built-in functionality is a choice.

HTH
T

[John Smith]

Oh dear. That's a deal-breaker for me.   :^(

As a passing thought I am wondering if there would be any appetite for users to start paying Dan at least *something* and whether that would help accelerate developments.

I mean my time is worth money to me. And by far the biggest cost in getting up to speed with something like ToDoList is the cost of my own time. I don't know how many users there are of of ToDoList but supposing basic TLD was kept very powerful but a few of the more advanced features were locked into a upgrade for say $10 or $20... Would that not help?

J

[Tony G]

Seems to me a ton of the existing features in TDL are advanced, and free. If these features were offered for a premium price this offering would not be what it is.
What I'm seeing is that you really want someone else to do this, even though you can do it on your own. And you're willing to pay $10-20, so long as other people contribute to a pool so you can get a feature than no one else has ever asked for.

C'mon man. You don't have any highschool kids around you that you can bribe with pizza to do this?

Try this - Fast, Free, Built-in - with the example you provided earlier:

Project: Spring Clean house

--- Call to order industrial carpet cleaner

--- Do washing up

--- Clean bathroom
--- Do Later

------ Pick up carpet cleaner

------ Hoover stair carpets

------ Clean Kitchen cupboards

------ Clean sitting room 

------ Clear garage

With that you can simply toggle the Do Later task to close the node so that it doesn't show undesired tasks. Use that same task name for all such containers.

Want to see only three?
Go to Find Tasks and create a filter:
-- Path does not include Do Later
-- Title does not equal Do Later
Give the filter a name like Priorities.
Then click Apply as Filter.

Now you can toggle to/from that filter from the main screen. You simply won't see anything you don't want to see.
When you complete tasks, flag them as Complete and update your filter to not show completed tasks. Deactivate the filter, move up the next task that you want to process, then reactivate the filter.

I think that's everything you want, just not automatically resetting to the next priority.
As I said, that can be done too with a UDT.

HTH
T
(Happy to accept a PayPal donation for a pizza, beer, or coffee with the Mrs..)  ;)

[Smith, John]

Hi Tony 

Thanks for the reply. When I have more time I shall have a proper look at your suggestions. Cheers.
 

My suggestion about paying at least SOMETHING is based on the following:

- 1. I have already spent well over 20 hours experimenting with TDL.  Even if I valued my time at just $10/hour that would be $200.  In the end, although I found it extremely powerful, there are several aspects of the UI that are pretty "clunky" even after one has worked how to jump through the hoops. So an extra $10 is actually chicken feed. In any meaningful pragmatic/business sense that sort of sum is irrelevant to me.

- 2. Out of a sense of fair play, I think it would be nice to give something back to the author.

- 3. If enough of us chipped in enough to helped the developer move stuff along substantially that would be even better.

- 4. My task management software is where I will spend countless hours of my life. Forget $10... if the interface could be tweaked to be slicker easier to use that would save me over 2 or 3 years potentially hundreds of $s. 

- 5. I know the whole ethos around here is for the thing to be free, and I don't want to mess with that unduly.

What I am suggesting is that the most advanced 5% of features be set to be something you pay for. As time goes on and more features get added, maybe only the newest features would be those that you pay for. OR it might just be that if you pay you get to avoid some minor inconvenience (such as a slightly annoying message every 2 weeks - or whatever it is that TextPad does)  

The general idea is that only the more advanced users would actually need to pay. And some of us would cheerfully pay at least SOMETHING out of a pure sense of fair play towards the developer.

As things stand, I found it just slightly too many clicks (and just slightly too counter-intuitive/hard to learn as well) to be worth me dedicating myself fully to it. A task management application is primarily supposed to be saving us time, not soaking it up - fun as it certainly can be.

I have tried effectively ALL the leading task management application and every single one of them has driven me NUTS!   I don't have much money to burn but even so I would cheerfully spend $50 to say up to $200 for an absolutely superb task management system. Sadly such a thing has yet to be written and cannot be found at ANY price.

J

 

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[John Smith]

I'm just popping it to see if there has been any progress on getting the ability to show only [n] tasks per project?

Ideally I would like [n] to be 3.   i.e. For each project that has lots of tasks within it, only the next 3 are shown.  But [n]  = 1  would be a good start.

Most decent task management applications allow something similar. And the lack of such a thing is a deal-breaker for me personally.

J

[.dan.g.]

>> And the lack of such a thing is a deal-breaker for me personally.

Then you'll need to look elsewhere John :)

[Smith, John]

OK well you're the boss!

But out of interest why did this get abandoned? I find it hard to imagine that such a think would inconvenience other users in any significant way. Was it just too difficult technically? Or are the other users around here not interested in having such a function (that to be fair is fairly widespread in other task management systems and many users elsewhere do find useful)

J

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[.dan.g.]

Hi John

ToDoList is not a GTD app, it is a generalised task manager. 

Hence I have always avoided hard-wiring any specific methodology into the core app. And I see no reason to change this.

The 'Next Action' functionality could be feasibly be written as another Task view plugin, but to aggregate all the projects into one view is outside the scope of both the plugin model and the core app.

I will write a more detailed top-level post about this for everyone's future reference.

Rgds

Dan

[John Smith]

I've been away for about 9 months. Did anything ever come of this suggestion?

J

[.dan.g.]

Welcome back John.

Not yet...