Thanks for the explanation, Pottster. I can see how this would work for you. I think you are much better able than - to predict how many productive hours you will have next Friday. I guess that I am what you called "at the mercy of someone else's task list" though it's more that I am at the mercy of other people's frequent but unscheduled medical crises. Anyhow, in order to track the case that you do a lot of things that you hadn't planned, wouldn't you need to be tracking actual time spent, something that I believe is still a release or two away in the MLO roadmap?
I'm planning to create a *NOT* calendar view item in UserVoice and vote for it, on the basis that there's no evidence yet of any consensus on what needs to be built and that once the development resources engage on this functionality they will be committed to huge efforts to mollify the people who will believe that the wrong functionality was implemented. -Dwight Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T -----Original Message----- From: pottster <kenwarren...@gmail.com> Sender: mylifeorganized@googlegroups.com Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2011 14:16:30 To: <mylifeorganized@googlegroups.com> Reply-To: mylifeorganized@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: [MLO] Re: *not* calendar view Thanks for the thoughtful comments Dwight. Some responses in no particular order... It's no big deal if a task rolls over to the following day. Only if it's the same task(s) every time because then there may be a procrastination issue. Also, if a significant number of tasks roll over each day then the issues could be inaccurate assessments of the time tasks take or of the time available to do them. Both of which are separate problems which need addressing. If the daily workload is accurately assessed then there should be no unproductive re-scheduling only a valuable review of priorities. Just because you date a task doesn't mean you're considering urgency above importance. Just the opposite in fact. By dating an important task and giving yourself a deadline you are giving an equal weight to a deadline, maybe an arbitrary one, applied by someone else. David Allen (and many others) actually believe that one of the most important parts of GTD is the weekly review. My approach would be to date tasks a week ahead as part of a review and fine tune daily. It's important to remember though that it's just a plan and plans are made to be broken. This is the concept so many people have trouble with. A plan is just a prediction when you have nothing better to go on. It has no value in and of itself. It just helps to introduce some order into random chaos, a means to an end and not an end in itself. If you remember that then planning is never pointless. I do laugh when I hear people arguing so vehemently against dated to do lists. Just think about it. The moment you act on a task you're dating it - giving it a date of today. So what the debate is really about is planning horizons about whether you are deciding to do something now, in 5 minutes, 5 hours or 5 days. Sure, the further out you go the less accurate and less rewarding it gets but it depends on what you're doing and what the effort/reward ratio is on looking ahead. There is no definitive answer to that one. Regarding tasks taking more than a day to complete; this is not GTD. A key tenet of GTD is reducing tasks to what David Allen calls "widget cranking". This means a meaningful reduction of an activity both in time taken and resources required to point where a task is very clearly defined and can be done quickly and easily. If a task is taking more than a day then it hasn't been broken down enough. Even if it's a simple enough task but takes a long time it can still be broken down into identical phases. There is no human activity I'm aware of that can't be broken down into simple steps. There may be a lot of steps for some activities but that's accumulation not complexity. The view I'm proposing could have a number of functions: - Balancing workload across days Clarifying priorities Giving visibility to others of your workload Allowing commitments to be made on dates (to yourself and others) Enabling "batching" of tasks on certain days Re-negotiating deadlines Identifying if you are at the mercy of other people's task lists (if you do a lot but none of it on your daily plan) Consequences of a "day out" etc etc This is just my take on a calendar view in my world. That's my point. Others will disagree strongly and it's hard to reach consensus because it is a feature that is so dependent on very individual approaches to workload and therefore very subjective. It would be difficult to have a single calendar view that everyone would be happy with, or even the majority. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group. To post to this group, send email to mylifeorgani...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to mylifeorganized+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://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 mylifeorgani...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to mylifeorganized+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized?hl=en.
