Hi, Chris. At one time I felt that MLO should be enhanced to offer both schedule dates and feasible dates. However, discussions on this forum convinced me that the average user (and even worse, the average newbie out looking for a task manager) is quite unlikely to quickly grasp what this even means, or how to use it, or why, and it will become a bothersome complexity. At this point my favorite solution would be to offer user defined fields (UDF), that could be a text, a number, a date, a true/false value, or an item picked from a list of possible values. If this were available, I would use MLO's start and due dates as scheduled dates, and I would create UDF for feasible dates. I personally use feasible dates most of the time, the reason they would be UDF would be that any integration with calendar utilities would likely use the built-in dates and should probably use schedule dates.
I understand your point about fighting against the software. However on this issue I believe that the designers of MLO did not follow your advice to pick one meaning and stick with it. Yes, "start next 7 days" makes more sense with schedule dates, but "active by context" (one of my most-used views) makes more sense with feasible dates. But these are views, and I am free to ignore views like "start next 7 days" or tweak them to meet my needs (by making a view, for example, for tasks that are active now or will become active in the next seven days). Computed score isn't really like that. I don't think that there's any way to make "start date does not exist" prioritize the same as "start date is past or today". That's one of several reasons why I don't use computed score. -Dwight -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Christoph Zwerschke Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 2015 9:00 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [MLO] Usage of the start date field 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 -- 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/550976DE.8000501%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. 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