Hi, Chris. This is one of those situations where different answers suit different people, and no answer is "right". I would refer to your two alternatives as the "scheduled" date versus the "feasible" date. The flip side is how the due date is used: is it the date on which you are planning to finish, or is it the date after which the task is no longer feasible?
Feasible dates are more in line with GTD thinking. I want to spend more time getting things done and less time maintaining my queue of things to do. Feasible dates allow me to filter my to-do lists to exclude items that are not feasible right now. Then I can use other stuff like contexts, importance etc to narrow my list down to the things I need to do now. I can also set up a view to show tasks that are approaching their due date. The advantage is that the feasible dates do not often change so this approach requires minimal maintenance effort. Some people need to schedule their work. If you are dealing with issues like "will I be able to make this deliverable by the promised date" or "have I overcommitted my resources for a particulat period of time" then you need schedule dates. Once you have schedule dates, you can try to show your work on a calendar, assign level of effort for particular tasks, and total up effort for particular dates. This all tends to work best if your lowest level tasks are each small enough so that no task spans over two days. Sometimes this leads to tasks like "paint walls first day" and "paint walls second day". If it's important to you to manage promised deliverable dates and overcommitted resources then you may need to use scheduled dates. But you should recognize that choosing scheduled dates means you will spend that much more of your limited time updating and tweaking your plans. -Dwight -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Christoph Zwerschke Sent: Tuesday, March 17, 2015 5:38 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [MLO] Usage of the start date field Hi all, I'm always wondering about the best or "right" way to make use of the "start date" field. What should it really mean? Should it signify (1) "I intend to start working on this task at that date"? Or rather (2) "This is the first possible date when it starts making sense to even think about that task"? With meaning (1) it's more like a "scheduled date", it marks tasks that I really decided to work on. With meaning (2) it's still undecided if and when I want to work on it. It's then just a filter for tasks which are currently irrelevant. Which kind of field usage would make more sense - for task managers in general, and for MLO in particular? How do you use the field? -- Chris -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/55089ED1.40706%40online.de. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/003001d06124%2437864e10%24a692ea30%24%40dwightarthur.us. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
