How well will Memento Database fulfill my requirements? (which are GTD based)

[John . Smith]

Hello

I am new here. To save me time, I wondering to what extent MementoDatabase will fulfill my requirements (see below).

I have been doing the GTD method for about 18 months, but so far I am massively disappointed with every GTD/task management system that I've seen so far and am becoming increasingly desperate!

Here are my requirements:

A) MUST HAVES:

Tech: Must work on web (or Windows10) - No, I do not have Apple!

Architecture:

1. Area of Life (==> ability to filter everything else by Area of life. Then new stuff is automatically added into that Area.)

2. Goals (that can be assigned to Projects)

3. Context-tags (must have MORE THAN ONE Context per Action [EDIT: OR have multiple Tags possible per Action]. )

4. List field (needs a dedicated database field. GTD-friendly list names: Inbox, Next(Do ASAP), Scheduled, Someday, Waiting... or similar).

5. Today Focus / stars (easy way to select what to do today, and this list MUST be manually sort-able)

Views:

6. Easy conversion between a Project and a standalone Task... and back.

7. a Next Action per project view (i.e. a view somewhere showing just 1 [2 or 3] actions per project)

Functionality:

8. VERY easy addition of Contexts/tags to stuff (e.gl parsing of task titles and/or using either hotkeys[??] to add Context-tags)

9. VERY easy moving either a task (or an entire project) between GTD Lists.

10. Ability to "bang tasks in" fast using just my keyboard.

11. Sophisticated use of colour (e.g. allocate a different colour to different Contexts-tags)

12. Lots of hotkeys

B) NICE TO HAVES:

Architecture:

13. Sub-projects (projects within projects, and sub-sub-projects ==> ideally have unlimited/nested layers of hierarchy)

14. Sub-tasks (tasks within tasks, and sub-sub-task ==> ideally have unlimited/nested layers of hierarchy)

15. Additional List(s) possible (e.g. add a "Soon" or "Later" list - not true GTD but v useful!)

16. a Start Date as well as actual Due Date (==> easy way of Scheduling thing for future)

16b. Ability for one Project to count towards more than one Goal

Views:

17. More than one Next Action per project is possible (e.g. using "Forced Next" or a view that shows 2 or 3 Next Actions)

18. "In-line editing" (==> very easy/ very fast editing of task/project titles themselves)

19. Ability to define all own colours v precisely, rather than being forced to use basic colour palette.

Functionality:

20. Multi-line selections (e.g. move 3 tasks at once into a project - VERY important - nearly a must have!)

21. User-defined hotkeys (e.g. for adding contexts)

22. When adding tasks, they inherit a) the current Area of Life b) any current Context/Tag selected

23. Recurring tasks (ability to make routine tasks reappear at specified intervals)

C) MINOR BONUSES:

Tech: Not critical but it would be nice to have an Android app. (And ability to work off-line.)

Also:

24. Estimated Time required field (==> useful for extracting tiddlers)

25. Estimated Energy required (==> useful when energy is low)

26. Serial or Parallel projects (this affects how tasks appear on Next Actions view)

27. Manual markup of title (Bold, highlight with background colour - useful to flag critical stuff which you dont want to start just yet)

To what extent will MementoDatabase fulfill the above?

All thoughts welcome!

J

[John . Smith]

To get clear, I am particularly keen to know whether Memento Database can product views filter to only show a limited number of Next Action(s) per Projects.

Many thanks

J

[Bill Crews]

You can do it in Memento, but if you want a close match to ALL those criteria, you'll end up having trouble here and there. You'd need to wrap your arms around Memento and learn it well and then get creative, though it is a robust product, so if you spend time learning, it will continue to deliver.

My guess is that you might end up with challenges in the following areas:
1) If tasks are entries in a library (types in a table), then you won't be able to reorder them by drag'n'drop, though you might be able to reorder them in another way.
2) Moving tasks between lists can be simple; just flip a Radio Button, and that can be editable in a list, but it's not drag'n'drop.

Bottom line, you can do most of it, especially if you know JavaScript and use radio buttons and checkboxes, editable in lists, heavily, along with sorting, filtering, and grouping. I suggest a task and project are the same thing, with a switch that essentially turns the rest of the project stuff on and off.

Trying to do something like GTD, I've had some success with using Trello for that, but it won't satisfy your Nice To Haves, either. If you want to roll up your sleeves, you could try either straight JavaScript Web pages or Drupal; I don't think Joomla would get you there.

[John Cesta]

I created my own task manager. I also used all of them to no avail. My only problem now is to know where to stop. I continue adding and modifying and ....as I learn more about memento. Like Bill said. In order for someone here to help you they would almost need to write the app.

I would suggest too to get started learning memento and asking questions as you go along.

I love memento. Now that it has a cloud and PC version.

J

[John Cesta]

[Amundsf]

I'm using Memento for a lot of stuff, but for task managing I'm using Todoist. Have you tried that one?

[Lisbeth Salander]

I think Memento is very good app for GTD.

The features that should be developed are recurrences of calendars events and synchro with Google Calendar.

Any way GTD is not about the app. It is about systematic weekly based review of things to do, delegated, and to throw away.

[John . Smith]

Hello

I should perhaps explain that including my "Someday-maybe" task, I have 400+ tasks on my system. I have spent many months on MLO trying but failing to get it to behave correctly for GTD. Ultimately it doesn't have a suitable architecture for GTD and the take-home lesson is that for larger volumes of data workarounds never really work, as you end up with all manner of unanticipated/unwanted clutter. 

Meanwhile since starting this thread, I have now had an extended play with ToDoList (TDL) from AbstractSpoon.

Although it feels clunky with a very dated interface, it is remarkably powerful.

Nonetheless it turns out that despite some new attempts (still in Beta testing) that it still can't do Next [n] Actions per project, (nor forced next actions) and this is pretty much a deal breaker for me.

Also although you can save views, it turns out that it tends to take loads of clicks to edit them - probably another deal breaker.

I am not a coder and there are definite limits to how far I want to take all this.

To save me time, if possible it would be nice to have a hierarchy of tasks. At the choice of the user, certain of any 'parent' tasks (which contain child tasks) need to be able to be allocated as 'Projects'. And I need to generate Views that show the Next [n] Actions per "project".

Also is it easy (i.e. with very few clicks or keyboard actions) to change the filtering (based on other fields such as Area_of_Responsibility, Context and "action status") of any such saved views?

cheers

J

[John Cesta]

I've used them all todist, informant, google, toodledo, go ahead you name it.

To me there's nothing like making your own. You'd be surprised at what you think you need vs what you can use if you can design it yourself.

Once you get it the way you want and realize upon using it for a few weeks you decide that's not exactly what you use you can change it with memento.

You can fine tune it. Sure you may give up some stuff, some of the important requirements you thought were important. But with being able to get it exactly the way you want you realize you have something valuable.

And with the cloud feature, being able to capture files and images and PDFS and all attachments you have it all.

That's all I have for now.

[Adi Kwok]

please advise how to make

project - task - child task - child2 - child3 - result - remarks - next

memento database is still the best. yet i dont know how to use it.

[John C]

Time. Study. Lean.

[John C]

Sometimes just by putting in the time and testing and seeing results and searching the forum your answer will soon appear. During this time you will learn other things about memento you need as well.

I find the journey even though it's time consuming is time we'll spent.

I don't really know what you want and it's terribly complex to go back and forth trying to discern your requirements since they are from the very beginning.

Try one of the task libraries and pick it apart to learn from it or even use it.

[John C]

Here's a little sample of a field I have in memento. It does my GTD. Just to show you what can be done...

var days = field('DAYS TILL DUE')
if (field('Job-status') == 'DeathClaim') 'DeathClaim'
else if (field('Job-status')=='INBOX') 'Inbox and File'
else if (field('TODAYS ACTIONS')) '!!! TODAYS ACTIONS !!! '
else if (field('Job-status') == 'D - PROSPECT') 'PROSPECT'
else if (field('context') == '@Shopping') 'Shopping'
else if (days < 0 && days >= -5) '0 - 5 DAYS PAST DUE - REVIEW'
else if (days < -5) '00 - OVER 5 DAYS PAST DUE'
else if (field('Due') && days == 0) '1 - TODAY'
else if (days == 1) '2 - TOMORROW'
else if (days >= 1 && days <= 7) '3 - THIS WEEK'
else if (days >= 8 && days <= 14) '4 - TWO WEEKS'
else if (days >= 15 && days <= 21 ) '5 - THREE WEEKS'
else if (days >= 22 && days <= 30) '6 - FOUR WEEKS'
else 'REVIEW AND FILE'

[John C]

On Wednesday, December 26, 2018 at 9:24:50 PM UTC-5, John C wrote:
> Time. Study. Lean.

Here's a Pic of my task screen