Enhancement requests and observations

[Aus]

I've been using FocusPad on and off for quite some time now. I've
finally decided to use CalenGoo for my calendar and FocusPad for my
tasks. I was using Pocket Informant and its GTD setup but I found I
was taking more time to specify my tasks than it would take to
actually do them!

I like to keep my information in as few places as possible, so I'm
using FocusPad to keep all my project related information. I have a
task in my main task pad 'p - project1' which tells me I need to work
on project1. When I feel that I need to work on this project, I go to
the 'p - project1' pad which lists all of the tasks required for this
project.

There are a few enhancements which would make this easier:
1) Having an 'Edit' button on a pad which allows tasks to be moved
within the pad (and deleted) - like on 'Pads'
2) Direct linking from the 'p - project1' task to the 'p - project1'
pad.
3) Allowing a code for the project and its 'next task' to be copied
from the project pad to the task pad when the previous task for the
project is completed. This would only work if (1) was implemented and
the tasks were in order.

Some other observations:
1) 'Pads' doesn't work like a pad; would it be possible to be able to
swipe left/right to move through 'Pads' rather than scrolling? I find
I'm always swiping and getting the delete button!
2) I've started using the 'Schedule Action' functionality but I've not
been able to determine exactly when the scheduled action is
undertaken. Is it supposed to happen when Focuspad is opened for the
first time on that day?

Cheers,

Austin.


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[Tony Mann]

Hi Austin.

Thanks for all of your feedback. I am on the road so I don't have time to properly respond to your message. I will do so later this week. In the meantime, I can answer one of your questions: the scheduled action should take place when you open FocusPad the scheduled day.

..tony..

[Aus]

Hi Tony,

Thanks for your reply. I've been trying to figure out when the
scheduled actions are 'actioned'. They're not actioned immediately on
opening on that day, rather it happens at some other point during the
day.

I'm in the UK and I'm assuming that it's somehow been tied to a
different time zone?

Cheers,

Austin.

[Tony Mann]

Austin,

All of the dates are stored in UTC format, which is essentially Greenwich Mean Time. So in theory if you open the app after midnight in the UK, the scheduled actions should fire. Did you schedule the actions in the iPhone app or the web app? And when the action failed to fire, was that in the iPhone app or the web app?

..tony..

[Austin Mitchell]

Tony,

Scheduled and failed in the iPhone app.

Cheers,

Austin.

[Tony Mann]

Hi Austin,

Below are some replies to your feature requests.

I like to keep my information in as few places as possible, so I'm
using FocusPad to keep all my project related information.  I have a
task in my main task pad 'p - project1' which tells me I need to work
on project1.  When I feel that I need to work on this project, I go to
the 'p - project1' pad which lists all of the tasks required for this
project.

Have you considered adding the tasks directly to the project entry as notes? To do this, you would edit the entry, add a return after the entry, and then add your tasks. This might be unacceptable since you cannot track these tasks easily, but I wanted to mention  it.

 

There are a few enhancements which would make this easier:
1) Having an 'Edit' button on a pad which allows tasks to be moved
within the pad (and deleted) - like on 'Pads'

I understand why you want to re-order your tasks. But there are a few reasons why I don't want to add this feature right now:

1. On the iPhone, it would be tricky to move a task between pages. Might be easier to implement in an iPad version.
2. I like the simplicity of chronologically ordered tasks. This is one of the ways that FocusPad is a bit "opinionated". In your situation, where your tasks are part of a stepwise approach to completing a project, this model does not work as well, so I will have to think about this. 

2) Direct linking from the 'p - project1' task to the 'p - project1'
pad.
3) Allowing a code for the project and its 'next task' to be copied
from the project pad to the task pad when the previous task for the
project is completed.  This would only work if (1) was implemented and
the tasks were in order.

It sounds like what you really want is a way to decompose any tasks into sub-tasks, so you can drill down on them. That is, instead of adding a textual note, you can attach a list of sub-tasks. Interestingly enough, I had a to-do list website where you could create a hierarchy of projects and tasks as deep as you wanted. The idea is that you would start with a project, and then drill down and down until you finally came up with clearly actionable items. These actionable items would then show up in a separate Next Actions list. It did not work as well as I thought, as there was too much information hiding. In the end I decided a linear, scannable list, even though not as robust, was a better solution. But I still have not given up on the idea. Let me think about how I could incorporate sub-tasks without complicating the UI. But note that even if I did add this feature, it would not be for a while, since I have other features, like Search and dated pages, that are more pressing.

 

Some other observations:
1) 'Pads' doesn't work like a pad; would it be possible to be able to
swipe left/right to move through 'Pads' rather than scrolling?  I find
I'm always swiping and getting the delete button!

This is an interesting idea, but it might actually be more confusing for users, since the Pads view behaves differently than the "paged" view. On the other hand, one change I will strongly consider is disabling the swipe-to-delete, since one rarely deletes a pad, and pads can be deleted by going to edit mode and hitting the "-" button.

..tony..

[Mark H]

I've seen this too and I'm also in the UK. I'm also still seeing the
problem of actions firing more than once. I'm wondering if the two
problems are related? e.g. iPhone action fires at different time to
web action, resulting in two fires?

Mark

[Mark H]

Whilst I appreciate all of Austin's points, I do feel that FocusPad
does one job and does it well - namely AutoFocus - and I'd hate to see
it become over-complex.

Personally, I sketch out my next actions for projects in something
else and use FocusPad for collecting all those things that come in
that aren't part of planned projects and for deciding which projects
to work on when. This is very similar to a paper system where I'd go
down my "today" list doing all the odds and ends and also being
reminded to work on specific projects. And I'd go to the specific
project folder for each project in order to work on it.

I've tried MANY complex applications that try to catch all actions for
all projects in one tool and they invariably fail (for me) in that I
get swamped with a forest of tasks and can no longer see the trees. It
might sound nice to collect all the tasks into FocusPad but then you'd
still want to go elsewhere for the information you need to complete
the task. So ... for my project lists I'm currently using Evernote and
the new iPhone app Egretlist. The nice thing about this is that I can
make all kinds of notes, clip information etc. right into my project
and see the tasks "in context" with the information.

Dunno if any of this helps?

Bottom line. I like FocusPad because it does one thing - AutoFocus -
and does it simply and well. I can incorporate this into quite a
complex situation where I am managing multiple projects and responding
to daily requests. But if you want a more complex application that
tries to do everything in one place then maybe AutoFocus is not the
answer? Try OmniFocus or Things.

On Apr 26, 5:10 pm, Tony Mann <thephatm...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Austin,
>
> Below are some replies to your feature requests.
>
> I like to keep my information in as few places as possible, so I'm
>
> > using FocusPad to keep all my project related information.  I have a
> > task in my main task pad 'p - project1' which tells me I need to work
> > on project1.  When I feel that I need to work on this project, I go to
> > the 'p - project1' pad which lists all of the tasks required for this
> > project.
>
> Have you considered adding the tasks directly to the project entry as notes?
> To do this, you would edit the entry, add a return after the entry, and then
> add your tasks. This might be unacceptable since you cannot track these
> tasks easily, but I wanted to mention  it.
>
> > There are a few enhancements which would make this easier:
> > 1) Having an 'Edit' button on a pad which allows tasks to be moved
> > within the pad (and deleted) - like on 'Pads'
>
> I understand why you want to re-order your tasks. But there are a few
> reasons why I don't want to add this feature right now:
>

>    1. On the iPhone, it would be tricky to move a task between pages. Might

>    be easier to implement in an iPad version.

>    2. I like the simplicity of chronologically ordered tasks. This is one of

[Tony Mann]

I believe I have found the "delayed firing" problem. If you use the Tomorrow/Week/Month buttons when you schedule the action, the time is incorrectly stored along with the date. This adversely affects the date calculations. Specifically, if you schedule the action at 10am, it will not fire until 10am on the scheduled date. I will fix this in a bug fix release soon.

For the duplicate problem, I can see it happening if you go to the web site first and then later the iPhone. The problem is that the tickler fires before the iPhone has synced up with the web and discovered that the tickler has already fired. This is another bug I need to fix. However, I believe Mark has seen duplicates even when not going to the web first, and I cannot yet figure out how that can occur.

..tony..