Hi Dwight, thanks for answering.
You're right, the terms "scheduled" and "feasible" describe the
difference in usage I have in mind, and yes, it also applies to the due
date, not only to the start date.
I also agree that the "feasible" approach is more in line with GTD, and
the "scheduled" approach more for strict project management where people
like to draw Gantt charts etc.
My problem is that I want to somehow have the best of both worlds, and
catch myself using the start date with different meanings. In
consequence, it makes matters worse since the dates lose a definite
meaning and don't help anymore in sifting through my task list.
So it's very important to define for yourself what your task properties
exactly mean, *and always stick to that meaning* if you want to enter
your tasks properly and then create meaningful views on them. I'm just
trying to find out what that meaning should be for me.
Another problem is that while you can of course choose your own meaning
for some properties, the software also makes tacit assumptions about
what they *should* mean and supports that meaning in several ways. In
this respect there *is* often a "right" meaning, namely the meaning that
the software author had in mind. If you start using it in other ways,
you start fighting against the software and cannot fully exploit its
features.
For instance, when I want to give the start date the meaning "first
feasible date", then setting it to today or leaving it empty would mean
exactly the same: "it's already feasible and can be started today".
However, the view "start next 7 days" shows only the tasks where I enter
a start date of today. Also, the computed score treats tasks with start
date of today and without start date differently (same for due dates).
So that goes counter to the usage as feasible dates, and it's something
I'm always struggling with in MLO.
-- Chris
Am 18.03.2015 um 03:35 schrieb Dwight Arthur:
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
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