Managing projects with Tudumo

[einstein]

Hello everyone,

I'm in the process of setting my own GTD tools, and I found out Tudomo
very useful for that. Having one centralized list that you can easily
filter is really simplifying the whole process!

However, I have difficulties with "project" management. I did start
to use headers to define projects, but I also use headers for major
life areas (e.g. I have a "Personal" header, a "University" header, a
"Family" header). As I add more and more projects (I'm a busy guy :-)
it becomes more and more confusing.

I was wondering if adding subheaders was an option that was considered
at short term. It would allow to manage projects more easily, and
would still be in line with David Allen tips to manage projects (i.e.
tools that allows project breakdown in subprojects and in tasks).

In the meantime, I use my own subheaders (PROJECTS | Project name >
Subprojet name > Subproject name) but it's harder to sort/filter.

Thanks for this wonderful software by the way!

Eric Provost
Team leader - Analysis & Strategy
www.alogient.com

[Richard Watson]

Hi Eric,

It's a good question. The app leans towards doing actions instead of
structuring them, but some definitely want a bit more structure in
there!

How many life areas do you have? Do you think you could use tags for them?

The benefits are that you don't force all actions under a project to
be linked to one life area, and you can select the life-area tag e.g.
"Personal" and quickly get all personal actions across your projects.
If 80% of your actions are under "Work", then don't tag those - only
tag the exceptions. You can filter fairly nicely with the tags, e.g.
using alt, shift and ctrl to perform NOT, AND and OR selections on
tags - so "show me everything except items tagged @Home".

Regards,
Richard

[einstein]

Richard,

I did review my action list, and I think it might effectively work
with tags if I rework some of them.

I guess I'll have to get used to tags! :-)

But I really think adding some minimal structure would be a nice
addition to Tudumo!

Keep up good work!

Eric

[Phil]

Hi,

I seem to share similar issues with Eric. I'm trying to practice GTD
and have been using Tudumo for a while to primarily capture my next
actions arising at home. For this it has worked really well (with
simple lists of tasks). Resently, wanting to get more control over my
personal projects (of which I have many), I'm now struggling to get
the optimum setup.

Initially, I tried creating headings for each project. This results in
many projects, each with a small number of tasks in each, including a
next action. When filtering (especially next actions), I get way too
many headings for the tasks therein, making it less than ideal.

I've now moved to tagging tasks for each project as well as the GTD
context. This seems to help, but I end up with may tags....


Do you have any views as to how best to manage a large number of
projects like this?

Also, are there any planned enhancements that I may find useful?

Many thanks,

Phil.

> > >www.alogient.com- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Richard Watson]

Hi Phil,

What works best for me is to combine headings and tags. I'll use
headings for major projects and tags for parts of projects (e.g.
heading 'Tudumo' and tag 'website'). This may not work for you if you
have very many of each.

How many projects do you have? Are some dormant or are you doing all
of them now?

Regards,
Richard

[Phil]

Hi Richard,

Thanks for the quick reply.

In my personal stuff, I have 20-30 active projects (some personal,
some work around the house and some relating to Scouts). Each has a
small set of tasks that I can define now (say 5-6 per project), 1 or 2
of which should be done next. I use the status (Next Action, Action,
Hold) to represent the task states as needed.

At work I use outlook for my GTD repository and have about the same
number of active projects, but with many more tasks in each. Outlook
is good as a calendar and tickler system, but is really poor at
managing tasks and projects. ……
My GTD utopia is to get a single tool to hold work and personal stuff.
As I **really** like Tudumo, I’m striving to find a workable
configuration.

Last night I restructured my data into a smaller number of headings
(Chores, Scouts, Home Projects etc + Someday/Maybe for inactive
projects) and have used task naming convention and Tags to identify
project tasks. This seems to work quite well, but this has generated a
lot of tags – making the tag filter list a bit unwieldy in most
filters I use. If I start adding the work set to this, it will become
very cluttered.

Any other tips would be useful!

Regards,

Phil.

> >> > >www.alogient.com-Hide quoted text -
>
> >> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

[Richard Watson]

I would probably go for headings as projects and use tags for context.
If you then un-check the "show empty headings", when you select a
tag/context it'll hide unrelated actions and headings. You've
mentioned three main areas (personal, home, scouts) so using them as
tags and clicking one of those will hide 2/3rds of your headings &
tasks. If you need a differentiator you can add other tags, e.g.
garage, financial, weekend, birthday, campout. One trick is to use
shift, ctrl and alt to select combinations of tags, so click '@home',
shift-click 'financial', will show you all actions that have both
tags.

Is this too close to what you used before, but that didn't work?

Regards,
Richard