Hi Jorgen. Read all your post. Quite good. Thank you. I would only point out one of your important hints.
I wish MLO becomes a perfect planning tool. This can only achieved by placing task timeslots on a visual calendar like Google, where today most people already places their appointments. There you can find free times, realize if the planning is really consistent, and eventually drag & drop something on different times/dates. This is the top for me. So I wish to have a full, direct, two ways sync integration with Google Calendar. This would also give a easy way to share tasks with other people, even with those using MLO: Google calendar would act, for the calendarized tasks, as a bridge. Wonderful! Il giorno domenica 25 settembre 2016 12:43:00 UTC+2, Jorgen Bodde ha scritto: > > > Since a lot of emails have been going around about the practical use of > MLO, it's shortcomings and what should be really nice to be added, I > thought I would offer my daily struggles, and ideas for improvements as > well, which I hope will be picked up by the devs and at least talked about > or filed for future improvements in their (hidden, invisible or > non-existent) bug-tracker .. (long read ahead) > > What do I miss? > > - a decent daily planner > I do not mean just show, or share to google calendar. Just a simple view > of a dayplanner where MLO presents the day (partially already present in > "Today" view), the tasks for that day as input (from start date), and maybe > block off slots in that planner by taking input from google calendar (as > busy hours), and a way to drag the tasks to empty slots in that area. The > advantage is that if my agenda shows me an hour free in the morning, I know > I cannot do lengthy tasks so I will take two or three short tasks and drag > them in that slot. The forgotten and never used "Time Required" field in > MLO can be used to estimate the time needed. The planner has a single thin > line showing the current time over the day (like outlook calendar has), > allows to freely drag tasks, where all other tasks below it, will be > readjusted if they don't fit in the time slots (e.g. due to occupied times > acquired from google calendar). > > Right now I use the "starred" propery to just select a few tasks for the > day, but it lacks structure or insight how long something takes, or when to > do them the best. Adding these tasks to my google calendar every day with > "share" is just too cumbersome, as it needs to be a guide for the day. I > use Clockwork Tomato for dividing every hour in about 2 pomodoro's allowing > me to throttle or timebox my work, estimate and keep track of my energy in > between high intensity tasks like programming (never do these for longer > than four pomodoro's or you're mentally drained) > > - Timer / Pomodoro Ticker > While being on the subject, if MLO would have an integrated way of > starting a countdown timer for a task, and log time or time iterations on > it, it would fit perfect in the pomodoro technique. Simply select a task > from a view, and start the countdown timer (25 minutes default). For > timeboxing tasks or activities, and taking frequent breaks, this is really > a good technique > > - Mass update! > If I want to set the start date, a context, delete a property from > multiple tasks, delete multiple tasks, I need to do that for every task! It > would be nice to select a few tasks, see the properties view, and whatever > I change, changes for all of them. If I add a context, the context gets > added to all, if I delete one, it gets deleted from all. It is so common in > every list based app on android. Long press, select all or multiple, do > something. > > - Do not allow checking off items that have children > How often I did not accidentally check off a project or parent item, > because I wanted to collapse it to see it's children? Countless. Simply > prevent completing a parent when the children are not complete, or ASK. > > - Better clipboard / share control > "Share to ... google calendar". Ok. Useful. "Share to .. any app" will > always provide a dump of all of the task as multi line text (title, start > date, comment). It might be a nice option if I can select what to share. > For example, by lack of the pomodoro timer I would be happy if I can share > just the title of the task, to the clipboard. I will set the task(s) in > Clockwork Tomato, and that will be my day. I can use the pomodoro timer to > actually work on things, and keep MLO as my managed database of items. > > - Flexible import or export / Backup > Sorry I still find this sorely needed. if MLO wants to keep all tasks for > itself, it needs to be self contained and be a swiss army knife for all > that is todo management (like i mentioned above). Exporting a selection, > view, or all to a predefined format (JSON, todo.txt format, csv) and export > it to dropbox, or simply a file, will make me feel more at ease that if > something stops working, MLO stops working, or something crashes which > makes me lose all my tasks that I at least have a backup of the last tasks. > > - Use of hashtags in comments to relate otherwise unrelated tasks > Tasks are now structured by tree, but they have no inter-relations other > than context, or a time to do them. It might be nice if flags (like iOS, or > free field hashtags) can group related tasks that are living in separate > branches. For example, something might be weakly related to something else, > by clicking on the hashtag, I see all the tasks sharing it, and I can > select either seeing the tree (up to the highest common ancestor or > project) or just a flat list of these items. An example might be linking to > a reference of gifts for my daughter for certain events like #birtday or > #xmas where the hashtag #xmas shows the sub-items in the list "Gifts" and > not all. One would say, contexts can do that, but between projects, it > might even link documentation, future issues to other issues from a > bugtracker, ticket or some other administrative reference. > > Now to end on a positive note. I tried a lot of apps, MLO beats them all > with feature completeness, but like any other app, MLO is also not > complete. Here are some apps I tried with strong and weak points: > > SimpleTask (based on todo.txt specification) > ====================== > Strong: > * Share/sync todo.txt through dropbox > * Multi select/modify! > * Input file is editable by either a text editor or in the app (great for > backup, or overhaul) > * todo.txt is a spec that all apps can adhere to > * Free form text, good filtering > * Other apps using the same todo.txt file can interact with the database > (e.g. ClockWork Tomato) > Weak: > * No structure other than tags or project references > * No sorting or manual ordering > * No reminders > * No planner > * No comments > * No review > > TickTick > ====================== > Strong: > * Web interface next to app > * Hashtaks to relate tasks > * Lists/Sublists > Weak: > * No real projects > * No project progress > * Hard to manage items > * Lack of reviewing / planning > > My Effectiveness > ====================== > Weak: > * Too involved > * Too steep learning curve > > .. And some others (more of the same). > > MLO costed a lot of money, which in my eyes raises expectations of an app > that gets frequent updates or has devs at least listen to it's customerbase > (or receive input or be transparent by use of a bugtracker). But this group > seems to be just about firing blanks in the dark without any MLO > representative present being the voice of MLO. The matter is complicated > because there are three types of customers here that benefit from three > different code bases, making it harder to maintain them all, and raises a > lot of unhappyness amongst them, such as: > > - Windows users using the app miss a lot of features (on both sides) > - IOS users miss features from Android > - Android misses features from IOS > - Slow development on all fronts due to the different code bases, leading > to "are we abandoned?" remarks > > I hope to see a new release soon, but it might help to just post regular > progress to the users, a projected release date for what platform, features > that are in the pipeline, and by gawd, use a subreddit or a regular forum > instead of google groups it feels like the users are stuck communicating in > 2002 by email or an outdated web-page, while the rest of the world, devs > and customers communicate in a way more open bi-directional manner in 2016. > > I work every day in an agile team, communication to customers is key, > small release cycles are key, not using sprints is unthinkable. It manages > the customer's expectations, gives regular updates, and allows for quick > changes if needed. I have no insight in how big the company that makes MLO > is, how many devs there are, or how their project(s) are managed, but > internal management is only part of it. > > My two cents. > - A (still happy) MLO user.. > -- 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 mylifeorganized+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to mylifeorganized@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/97df1b6a-b4ab-409d-8680-3cd3a49b49fa%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
