Calendar View - Load Balancing

[pottster]

The debate about a calendar view goes on!

I suspect that the level of disagreement about whether this is needed
or not means that it is unlikely to be implemented in the near future.
In the meantime, it may be that Andrey will be most open to small
changes which partly deliver what people want within existing
functionality.

An example of this is where a calendar view has been requested to help
balance daily workload. Take a look at this view.

http://www.mediafire.com/i/?252esf71qop7o62

With a tweak to include the total time for that day's tasks in the
grouping header and/or some sort of traffic light system (red/amber/
green) to give visual feedback on over/under a standard daily hourly
capacity, a "quick and dirty" assessment can easily be made.
Furthermore it would be a simple matter to balance the daily workload
by drag and drop between groups or right click on the due date.

[pottster]

Further to my last post, here are a couple of mock ups to show what I
had in mind...

http://www.mediafire.com/i/?d9p2dxhpb5me9uw

http://www.mediafire.com/i/?7izej6wb52smeda

[Greg.O]

I agree - I think most people's request for a calendar view in MLO
comes from the fact that without some sort of a graphical
representation of furutre workload it is currently nearly impossible
to realistically schedule new tasks (or reschedule existing ones). MLO
calculating and displaying the total time needed for all scheduled
tasks for any given day similar to the mockups provided by pottster
would probably satisfy many of those who've been campaigning for a
calendar view over the years.

The idea is not new (e.g. see my post from 2007
http://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized/browse_thread/thread/62a4adf208400087/acdd67dc6ccd6f95?lnk=gst&q=greg+osimowicz#acdd67dc6ccd6f95)
but for some reason has been fiercely opposed again and again...

Request for a calendar view is currently the top request in
uservoice.com so hopefully this time it will be given some
consideration.

Regards,
Greg Osimowicz

[Steve Wynn]

Hi,

I fiercely oppose a calendar because I don't see the benefit - I do think people assume it's going to make a big difference and I don't think it will. I also wonder what information you are trying to display that I can't define a view for at the moment. Also do you want a calendar or do you want a schedule?

I have seen calendar implementations in other similar products. Life Balance, Goalpro, GoalEnforcer - most of the time a calendar is just bloatware that is there because it's 'expected' to be there and not because it provides anything of significant value. Most people will already operate a calendar of some description, electronic or paper. They may even operate a schedule and a lot of the time these areas are covered by business requirements.

Below we mention it's impossible to 'schedule' new tasks. This is where I think we don't exactly know what we want. Task Scheduling, at least to my mind, is totally different to a calendar. A schedule is a 'plan' of what you are going to do. A calendar is something that displays events, important dates, anniversaries, milestones, review dates etc. So for example a project deadline would be added to a calendar. Time to work on the project would be added to a schedule. I know this may come across as nit-picking, but I think we have to be clear about the requirement because they are different.

There are very few 'task schedulers' available, Above&Beyond/TimeTo I think are the only ones that do it with any semblance of order. They achieve task scheduling by complex algorithms and things like marvel prioritization, they utilize something called 'Dynamic Scheduling'. They are built first and foremost around a schedule with everything being displayed on the schedule. But even though I like Above&Beyond, Dynamic Scheduling doesn't work to my mind and I don't particularly think task scheduling as a whole works.

To me it's getting into tricky territory and as with the other products I kind of think it might be a bit of a lemon. But those other products do have attributes that I think are worthwhile. The pie chart in Life Balance showing overall balance in specific top level areas. The motivational/review report produced by Goalpro that prompts you to go over things. The gantt view produced by GoalEnforcer.

Overall I think some sort of timeline/report/graph/view of workload/balance would be better and more fitting to MLO.

All the best

Steve

>Regards,
>Greg Osimowicz

>--
>You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group.
>To post to this group, send email to
>mylifeo...@googlegroups.com.
>To unsubscribe from this group, send email to mylifeorganized
>+unsub...@googlegroups.com.
>For more options, visit this group at
>http://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized?hl=en.

[Richard Collings]

I think it would be really useful to look at what other products do and to
discuss which features work and which one's don't.

It is a pity that User Voice doesn't appear to support the uploading of
images (Note: if we have a choice, I would favour Get Satisfaction which
does allow this sort of thing0.

In the meantime, can I suggest that people post links to pages which
illustrate workload management features which they like (or which they think
don't work)

Richard

Hi,

All the best

Steve

>Regards,
>Greg Osimowicz

mylifeorganiz...@googlegroups.com.

[Richard Collings]

This is a good step in the right direction. In an ideal world I would like
the time units be configurable as I use Pomodoro's (30 minutes long) as my
unit of time recording

-----Original Message-----
From: mylifeo...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:mylifeo...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of pottster
Sent: 11 September 2010 1:22 AM
To: MyLifeOrganized
Subject: [MLO] Re: Calendar View - Load Balancing

http://www.mediafire.com/i/?d9p2dxhpb5me9uw

http://www.mediafire.com/i/?7izej6wb52smeda

--

[pottster]

The calendar issue is obviously close to people's hearts!

I can fully sympathize with Richard's requirements but I'm probably
with Steve
in suggesting that the needed MLO functionality is more about
scheduling rather
than diary/calendar management. Talking of the latter, if you use
Outlook I think
that there is really good functionality in there that people don't use
(know
about?). I'm a great believer in employing the right tools for the
job.

Have a look at these screenshots as an example.

http://www.mediafire.com/i/?qryqphlm17zlm5s
http://www.mediafire.com/i/?e9isble16i7mned
http://www.mediafire.com/i/?ijx2crq7xqock0x

This is a side by side view of one day for two separate calendars. The
calendars
can be merged with one or the other prominent. The view can also be
weekly if
required.

The calendar on the left is for appointments which are usually events,
fixed in
time, involving more than just yourself and often at a particular
location.

The calendar on the right contains time slots allocated for personal
work which
can be more flexible and usually involve just yourself. The latest
consensus on
personal productivity suggests these type of "appointments" with
yourself can
be very effective in not allowing your schedule to be railroaded by
other people
and other people's priorities. If you are on a team calendar this
would show as
non-available time.

These views in Outlook make it easy to block out time in amongst hard
landscape
appointments for personal time. These blocks could then be broken
down
further, into small tasks, by tools such as MLO. In addition, there
could be
another calendar to show actual v planned activity for the day for
review/billing
purposes (where did the day go?).

As a self-employed consultant, Richard's day may be more in his own
control
and be more a dilemma of workload balancing. However, use of a
separate
calendar in Outlook (or similar) for individual tasks, if they warrant
it and are
long enough in duration, could easily be handled by drag and drop of
blocks of
time representing the task and/or pomodoro units in this intuitive
interface. It's
simplistic but it is also easy. Capacity planning/scheduling (which is
essentially
what we're talking about) is a VERY complex subject - I know, I spent
many years
in Manufacturing. Trying to look for an automated solution is
something which
has taxed better brains than most for many years without a solution.
Keep it
simple ;-)

[Richard Collings]

Just to be clear - its scheduling that I want too but just something that
shows my workload (what I have planned for each day, how much time each task
is going to take and the total workload for the day) and allows me to adjust
it manually. I don't want automatic scheduling.

[phil reaston]

That's only going to work if all your tasks are less than a day long. If you have tasks (like I do) that may span several days it won't work - you'll see all the time on one day I think. And before you say I need to break the tasks down smaller I'm not sure I want to do that - for instance "clean out garage" - I don't want to specify all the individual tasks for this, I just go into the garage and get on with it. I may even want to do as much as I feel like one day and then leave the rest for subsequent days. Some of my programming tasks are like this too - "clean up comments in code" - maybe I just do a little each day as a breather from the hard work - I'd need a way to put that in the schedule as "just do part of it".

I actually agree with the "No Calendar" group for reasons that have been stated by others, but mostly because I see any task manager as an aid to seeing what  have to do, what's getting late etc rather than telling me what to do each day.

Just my 2c. Back to cleaning the garage :-)


Phil Reaston
(702) 358-4080

[Neal]

Are you Mark Forster in disguise?

Not sure if you have read anything on Mark Forster's Autofocus technique, but Autofocus is custom made for how you like to work...

[phil reaston]

No, I'm, not a shill for Mark Forster :-) I do have one of his books somewhere and I did try out the system you suggest. Trouble is it only handles some of what I do. I still have contexts, someday items, items to do on a certain day etc etc.

I was just pointing out that the whole schedule idea may work for a very fixed set of circumstances, but could soon go astray. I liked your comment about next actions not fitting in. It strikes me that contexts would work well either unless you told the scheduler what context you'd be in at what time.


Phil Reaston
(702) 358-4080

[Richard Collings]

I agree that there is no easy solution and I would also like to have a mechanism which showed the workload implications of tasks that run over multiple days – partly to support people who work in the way that you do and partly because I would also find it useful – particularly when looking at my work beyond the next few days.

 

However what is driving my desire to extend MLO in some way is the fact that, if I look at my working life, my main problem (which far outweighs everything else) is my inability to plan and execute my work in a way which stops me a) overloading myself and b) leaving stuff to the last minute.   And I am clear that a significant part of that problem arises from my inability to ‘visualise’ my upcoming work.

 

And given that all these tasks are already in MLO,  it would be very valuable to me if it could be extended in some way to provide this visualisation so as to help me with this problem.

 

What I find puzzling is that nobody on the ‘anti calendar’ side of the debate has proposed an alternative non-MLO mechanism to helping with this planning issue so my conclusion is that either they are able to do it ‘in their head’ or that there workloads are sufficiently light that it is not a problem.    

 

What is also interesting is that all the methodologies (GTD,  Autofocus, Do It Today, etc) appear to be primarily concerned with techniques to solve ‘what should I do next’ problem and have very little to say about the ‘Can I get it done by next Friday’ problem.    The Pomodoro Technique offers some ideas in this area (but even here it is limited).     So if anybody has any suggestions for useful sources of ideas in this area ,  I would be very interested.

 

Richard

[pottster]

For you guys that are SO interested in a calendar view for task
management there is an interesting download on Giveaway of the Day. It
combines a hierarchical task manager with a calendar. If you are not
familiar with the GOTD website you only have today (Mon 11th Oct) to
download it for free. It's free for non-commercial use only.

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/leadertask-personal-organizer-6-9-6/

Even if it's not a "keeper" it might put some flesh on the bones in
the debate about what an MLO calendar might look like. I think this
lack of clarity about exactly what people want is part of the problem
at the moment. Personally, I would still be happy with just a view
like those in my original posts. There are far more important
developments needed however IMHO. For me, it's not so much about being
against a calendar, but more about what other good stuff we'd have to
wait for (see Andrey's recent roadmap for details).

On Sep 16, 9:40 am, "Richard Collings" <r...@rcollings.co.uk> wrote:
> I agree that there is no easy solution and I would also like to have a
> mechanism which showed the workload implications of tasks that run over

> multiple days - partly to support people who work in the way that you do and
> partly because I would also find it useful - particularly when looking at my

> http://www.mediafire.com/i/?qryqphlm17zlm5shttp://www.mediafire.com/i/?e9isble16i7mnedhttp://www.mediafire.com/i/?ijx2crq7xqock0x

> <mailto:mylifeorganized%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com> .

> > For more options, visit this group
> athttp://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized?hl=en.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "MyLifeOrganized" group.
> To post to this group, send email to mylifeo...@googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> mylifeorganiz...@googlegroups.com

> <mailto:mylifeorganized%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com> .

> For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized?hl=en.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "MyLifeOrganized" group.
> To post to this group, send email to mylifeo...@googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> mylifeorganiz...@googlegroups.com

> <mailto:mylifeorganized%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com> .

[Richard Collings]

Thanks for the link.