Hi, Paul. I have an issue with the way you are using the concept of "due" but I will try to give you a straight answer before lecturing you on philosophies of date management.
Let's suppose it is the first week of February 2016 (chosen so that Monday will fall on the first of the month). You have a recurring project "process order" which falls due every Friday, with the next occurence on 5 Feb 16, with a lead time of four days, so that the start date is 1 Feb 16. The project has four subtasks with due dates 1 Feb 16, 4 Feb 16, 4 Feb 16 and 5 Feb 16. This isn't necessary but to tighten up the plan a but I wouls make the following changes to the project itemj: - turn on "complete subtasks in order" - in the advanced options popup from the task recurrence window, check "reset all subtasks to uncompleted" and "automatically recurr when all subtasks are complete" and "do not create a completed copy". OK, now, you go through the week completing tasks as scheduled. On Friday 5 Feb after you have distributed the order you check the distribution task as complete and the project immediately cycles. The four subtasks now have due dates of 8 Feb, 11 Feb, 11 Feb and 12 Feb respectively. I believe that the above is what you are trying to do. My problems with it are: All that the due date really does is to turn the task red. This is not a reminder to attend to the task, it's an alarm that it is now too late for you to get it done on time. Also, it the first task runs over to Tuesday then the last few tasks due Thursday should be actually due Friday. You could manually edit the dates but then you have to remember to manually revert them afterwards. And it's this kind of frequent fiddling with dates that allows mistakes that end up with one of the tasks scheduled weirdly, like two weeks ago or a month in the future. This goes to the issue of scheduling versus planning. Many people focus on scheduling their work, picking out a date on which each task is to be completed. Sometimes, especially for people like you who are making committments to customers, this approach is essential. For many other people who are just trying to be productive, I believe that scheduling slows you down. People almost always create overly optimistic schedules and have to reschedule. Missing the schedule contributes to a demotivating atmosphere, and the time spent continually adjusting the schedule is time which could otherwise be spent completing tasks. The "Getting Things Done" methodology of David Allen presents an alternative approach. (If you are not familiar with it, I highly recommend his book). Start date is when you plan to start the task for a scheduler, but in GTD it is the earliest date on which it would be possible to do the task. Due date is not when you plan to finish but rather is the date after which the task becomes impossible or meaningless. Between the start date and the due date. the task is active and we use other characteristics like context, importance etc to pick which of the active tasks to work on next. Under this approach, the overall project would still start 1 Feb and be due 5 Feb. The first subtask would have a start date of 1 Feb and a due date of 2 Feb. The last subtask would have a due date of 5 Feb. The second subtask would have a delayed dependency on the first subtask with a three day delay. You would check the Active Actions view to see what tasks are ready to be executed. On Monday the first subtask will appear on the list. If you complete it on Monday the second task will appear on Thursday, if you complete it on Tuesday the second task will appear Friday. If anything turns red then you have aproblem that you will have to work on fixing. If you want to use MLO in scheduling mode you should try setting it up as described at the top of this post. But you should consider using MLO in GTD mode instead. -Dwight On Saturday, October 24, 2015 at 8:34:54 AM UTC-4, Paul Cahoon wrote: > > I am currently evaluating MLO and so far am totally impressed. It is > definitely more powerful than my current task management solution and I am > really looking forward to being able to solve several problems in my > current system. > One thing I was not looking for but that will drastically simplify my > daily task list is dependencies. I like the idea of certain tasks being > hidden until the tasks that have to be completed first are done. This is > especially true when tasks are not completed on time. My question is this, > I have tasks that need to recur every week, month, etc. Here is an example: > > Place Order: Due Monday > Pickup Order from Office: Due 3 days after Order Placed (normally on > Thursday but if order was completed late then it would be Friday) > Sort Order: Due after order is picked up > Distribute Order: Due after order sorted (no later than Friday) > > I saw a suggestion to use a parent task and make these sub-tasks and this > looks really good except for using the parent due date for the sub-tasks. > I really want to have Place Order due on Monday, Pickup Order due on > Thursday, etc. I hope I have explained this clearly enough to get some > ideas, suggestions. > -- 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]. 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