Hi: Andrei.
I am afraid of this request because it sounds like a small and simple thing but when you break it down into what would have to be developed there is potentially a huge amount of work involved. How would MLO know how long you spent on each task? At the end of a task that took a minute and a half, would you spend an additional half minute clicking entering 00:01:30 into a "time spent" field? Or would you look for "start task" and "end task" buttons and ask MLO to calculate the interval between them? What if you take a minute out for an unrelated phone call - would there have to be "pause" and "resume" buttons? What if you forget to click "start" and notice afterwards - will you need to go in and enter a start time and end time? Will MLO need to remember what time you started and ended the task, so you can calculate if you spent enough parenting time in the evenings and weekends? You will need a report that shows total time spent by group, right? For you, it looks like the totals would be based on "top level parent" but I'll bet other people would want it by category, or goal, or flag, or starred. Are totals enough or do you need subtotals? Do you want to enter your planed target for each group and get a report showing variance? Will you need pie charts? I'll bet you would like a radar chart (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_chart) so you could see the variance. An additional risk is that this will open the door to a raft of other, related requests. If you know the anticipated effort per task and you have a budget of how much effort you plan of each type (or group) then people will want to know whether they have enough time to finish the planned tasks of each type by their due dates, in other words are you overcommitted. If they are overcommitted they will want to know when they will really be able to finish each task so they can make promises with confidence. They will want to put a cost per hour for different types of effort and use it to make estimates (passed on planned effort) and invoices (based on actual effort). Microsoft project and other industrial strength project management tools do a superb job of all of this. Each one of them requires a huge purchase price, a powerful computer to run on, and a skilled administrator. I don't want to see MLO end up like that. In order to avoid going there by creeping bloat, you need to draw a firm and solid line and then not cross it. Tracking actual effort is on the wrong side of that line for me. Maybe I have the line in the wrong place. Maybe your request is really simple and easy. I would love to see you thing it through further, and describe it, not in terms of what it would let you do, but specifically what would have to change in MLO to make it happen. I would also like to hear whether you agree that there should be a boundary that MLO refuses to cross to prevent it from going industrial-strength and leaving the current users behind, and if so, where would you put that line? -Dwight From: mylifeorganized@googlegroups.com [mailto:mylifeorganized@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Andrei Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2012 6:43 AM To: mylifeorganized@googlegroups.com Subject: [MLO] time we spent on tasks + daily/weekly/monthly/annual reports. Dear friends, Feature request: ability to track the time we spent on tasks + create weekly/monthly/annual reports. My use case, is to track only the time for the Parent groups (main life directions/needs): Example of an MLO tree: * Kids ----- tasks * Communication ----- tasks * Work ----- tasks * Parents ----- tasks * Help others ----- tasks For example, i would like to spent 1 hour for playing with my Kids, 20 minutes of Communication with people, 4-6 hours for high productive Work, 20 minutes speaking/doing something for my Parents and so on. I don't plan to track the time i spent on subtasks (child of Work/Parents and so on). Then, to the end of the day, i would like to check how many hours i spent on this PARENT tasks (time i spent on main Life directions). The Weekly/monthly/annual reports will give an overview of the life flow. Does anyone think this feature will be good for integration into the MLO? Thank you BR Andrew -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mylifeorganized/-/8hvIeO4RRhwJ. To post to this group, send email to mylifeorganized@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 mylifeorganized@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.
