Ever tried DropTask?

Ship69

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Hello

Have any of you folks tried DropTask?
It looks interesting as it seems to all multiple levels of stuff (Categories within Categories within Categories) plus includes various different ways of viewing tasks (circles Canvas, Kanban Workflow, List views).

Annoyingly the free version only allows one Project and the Workflow view is not permitted unless you pay for the Business version ($99/year).

J
 

TesTeq

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Have any of you folks tried DropTask?
It looks interesting as it seems to all multiple levels of stuff (Categories within Categories within Categories) plus includes various different ways of viewing tasks (circles Canvas, Kanban Workflow, List views).

Since @Oogiem convinced me that the flat, single level world is better I think "Categories within Categories within Categories" is a very bad idea.

Everything is on one "cabinet" except current active projects. I move projects in and out of Someday/Maybe frequently so things area always in flux. One of my steps in my weekly review is to move the no longer active files back into the cabinet and pull the ones for active projects into my "active projects" folder



I tend to file under largest category first followed by secondary. Here is an example from the sheep section of my electronic file cabinet.
View attachment 19

And here is one of the contents of one of those folders

View attachment 20

And here is another example that shows the lowest level

View attachment 21

Does that help?

I also have backlog that hasn't been categorized or filed yet

Like this batch that is currently living in action support for the project rename files and the action is Files to Rename Sheep Genetics
View attachment 22

Not sure if that helps or not but feel free to ask again. <G>
 

Ship69

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> Since @Oogiem convinced me that the flat, single level world is better I think
> "Categories within Categories within Categories" is a very bad idea.

OK, so from what I can see Oogiem is:
A) Using one folder (in her operating sytem?? folder system) for each of her projects.
B) Controlling which of her projects are live or not by physically moving these folders between higher level folders.(i.e. Presumably she has one folder for Live, another for Someday-Maybe, and possibly another Waiting etc

For this to work smoothly and avoid the necessity of going up and down the folders tree she burns the name of the Area of Responsibility (/Area of Life) into each project name. If you are controlling actionable status by physically moving stuff yes, I guess that does makes sense.

One down-side is of course that every single project needs to include the Area of Responsibility in the title.

But a greater down-side of using OS folders like this (if that is what she is doing) is that there is then presumably no way of doing more clever things such as:
- show the Next Action for each project
- allocating a Context to each of these actions
- creating a Tickler system by hiding (stuff e.g. projects) until certain dates
- flagging projects as "do today"
- manually change the sort order of projects to show relative priorities (important and/or urgent)

Also if you have to write the name of the Areas into even standalone tasks, surely this will become onerous. Either that or you can't see which standalone tasks are in which Areas.

Either way I like to have my larger Projects broken down into sub-projects. And also I like to sometimes have tasks sometimes broken down into sub-tasks, just so that I can see what is going on. And I'm not sure how that would be done with the above method of writing everything into one long flat, single-level world...

J
 
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Oogiem

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OK, so from what I can see Oogiem is:
A) Using one folder (in her operating sytem?? folder system) for each of her projects.
Generally true or for any category that gets too large to easily see the contents in a quick review.

B) Controlling which of her projects are live or not by physically moving these folders between higher level folders.(i.e. Presumably she has one folder for Live, another for Someday-Maybe, and possibly another Waiting etc
I have 2 higer level folders, File_Cabinet and Active_Projects. Everything fits into one of those 2 categories as I've decided that separating out waiting for or someday/maybe is not effective for me. So all waiting for projects and all someday/maybe projects data still lives in the File_Cabinet top level folder.

For this to work smoothly and avoid the necessity of going up and down the folders tree she burns the name of the Area of Responsibility (/Area of Life) into each project name. If you are controlling actionable status by physically moving stuff yes, I guess that does makes sense.

One down-side is of course that every single project needs to include the Area of Responsibility in the title.


Not at all I can't think of any folders where I have the AOFs embedded in the name. So that is not accurate.

But a greater down-side of using OS folders like this (if that is what she is doing) is that there is then presumably no way of doing more clever things such as:
- show the Next Action for each project
- allocating a Context to each of these actions
- creating a Tickler system by hiding (stuff e.g. projects) until certain dates
- flagging projects as "do today"
- manually change the sort order of projects to show relative priorities (important and/or urgent)
I do all of that within my list management system which is separate from my reference/someday maybe/project support material. In Omnifocus I have my next actions clearly defined, I can see each next action for each project because I have created a custom color style that highlights that for me, and I can set up a tickler system for project or actions as required by setting start dates.So everything you mention is done within my list management system not within y reference system.

I can flag items as urgent if really necessary but in my world that is the exception not the rule. All things that need to be done today are in my calendar.

I can change the sort order easily by dragging project up or down my list of projects. Right now my sort order is determined by the position within the following top level folders in Omnifocus: Revolution Evolution, Active Projects, Miscellaneous (for one off actions), Errands (for things not doable at the farm), Recurring Projects Monthly, Recurring Projects Jan-Mar, Recurring Projects Apr-Jun, Recurring Projects Jul-Sep, Recurring Projects Oct-Dec, Someday/Maybe Projects (a holding area for S/M I expect to get to this season), Checklists. That is the sum total of my top level folders in Omnifocus.

Also if you have to write the name of the Areas into even standalone tasks, surely this will become onerous. Either that or you can't see which standalone tasks are in which Areas.
I don't care which standalone tasks are in which areas. And I don't add it to any of my tasks. It is irrelevant data from my POV. So no, I don't add the area into my tasks.

Either way I like to have my larger Projects broken down into sub-projects. And also I like to sometimes have tasks sometimes broken down into sub-tasks, just so that I can see what is going on. And I'm not sure how that would be done with the above method of writing everything into one long flat, single-level world...
I don't use subprojects except in rare circumstances. I never use subtasks, that is an oxymoron to me. A task is that, a task or not, if it can be broken down then it's really 2 or more tasks. So for my way of thinking flat works better.[/QUOTE]
 
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TesTeq

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I don't use subprojects except in rare circumstances. I never use subtasks, that is an oxymoron to me. A task is that, a task or not, if it can be broken down then it's really 2 or more tasks. So for my way of thinking flat works better.
Yes, GTD is flat. Maybe you can group some Projects and call them subProjects of the greater entity, but certainly there's no room for subNextActions (there are no "tasks" in GTD).
GTD said:
The "next action" is the next physical, visible activity that needs to be engaged in, in order to move the current reality of this thing toward completion.
If the "next action" is a step you can devide it into TWO SMALLER STEPS but none of these smaller steps is a "substep". They are just smaller steps taken in sequence.
 

Ship69

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One problem I have always had with GTD is the definition of "Project". In GTD theory, if something cant be done in a single step it becomes "a Project". That's fine as far as it goes, but that is an utterly different concept from some activity that is going to last months. And to call them the same thing is plain stupid.

Another problem I have with "Projects" is that we are encouraged to describe them in term of desired outcome. e.g. Suppose I am organising a party. So if I write "Summer party is successfully completed" or "Summer party was a success" or "Everyone loved the Summer Party" as the project title, my brain goes: "Great! Nothing for me to do!" - which is of course a disaster.

So I prefer (heresy I know) but to have a project title that includes a verb e.g. "Organise summer party", which means I need to actually do something.
Or possibly just "SUMMER PARTY". I tend to put project titles into CAPS, so my brain can see it's a project before I start to read.

When I see a standalone list of individual actions without heirarchy visible (i.e. without the Project title), they can be hard to read without seeing the project name.
e.g. The individual action might be "Draw up list of recruits" or "Choose theme" or "Design invite", but without "party" being visible, it's not instantly obvious what the action is about - particularly if I have written the action a few weeks ago.

So sometimes will have "PARTY -" at the start of the name of each action.
e.g.
"PARTY - Draw up list of recruits"
"PARTY - Choose theme"
"PARTY - Design invite"
etc.


Oogiem, I am on Windows not Mac so I can't use Omnifocus, but my question is: How do you move your stuff between different 'actionable statuses' lists?

I dont really like using folders to control action status because although that would get the 'status' of stuff to inherit, I have so many items on my system, and one ends up doing loads and load of scrolling just to move stuff from one 'status' to another.

My current tool of choice is MLO, but it has no field for List, and if Flags to define status, the problem is that when you add actions to a project, they do not inherit the flag status of their parent and need to be flagged manually with the correct 'status' to make them show up in the correct list.

I also keep trying GTDNext (which has recently had a nice facelift) but it only allows you to have five statuses
i.e. Inbox, Active, Scheduled, Waiting, Someday.... and I find that irritating because I want different levels of Someday-Maybe.
Most other tools are either too slow & clunky or don't allow heirarchies at all (which I find deeply problematic TesTeq's comments about GTD being flat not withstanding).

I have tried using a Kanban style thing like Trello, but I miss being able to have multi-level projects.
 

TesTeq

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One problem I have always had with GTD is the definition of "Project". In GTD theory, if something cant be done in a single step it becomes "a Project". That's fine as far as it goes, but that is an utterly different concept from some activity that is going to last months. And to call them the same thing is plain stupid.
You say that one cannot simultaneously call:
A) a multi-step process;
B) a multi-month process;
"a Project".
You call it stupid. Plain stupid.
Let's assume that "a Project" is a multi-step process. How long can it last to be "not stupid"? One day? One week? Two weeks? A month? Two months? Let's be specific.
For me "a Project" is a multi-step process. Period. It usually lasts weeks, sometimes months but some of the @Oogiem's Projects last many years.
 

Oogiem

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One problem I have always had with GTD is the definition of "Project". In GTD theory, if something cant be done in a single step it becomes "a Project". That's fine as far as it goes, but that is an utterly different concept from some activity that is going to last months. And to call them the same thing is plain stupid.
Why?

I have tons of projects or even actions that take months.

Another problem I have with "Projects" is that we are encouraged to describe them in term of desired outcome. e.g. Suppose I am organising a party. So if I write "Summer party is successfully completed" or "Summer party was a success" or "Everyone loved the Summer Party" as the project title, my brain goes: "Great! Nothing for me to do!" - which is of course a disaster.

I don't always or even usually write them as successful outcomes. I've tried but that doesn't work particularly well for me either.


my question is: How do you move your stuff between different 'actionable statuses' lists?

Not sure I understand the question. Once a quarter I will move entire projects out into DEVONThink if I know that due to the nature of the project, I can't do anything about it for the next season (3 months). Usually in practice it means I won't get those projects back into Omnifocus until the next year. I just select the project and all the actions and copy/paste into the proper Someday/Maybe note in DT.

Within DEVONThink I do have a bunch of different ways I store my someday/maybe items, some are flat lists by AOF, some are several notes of I'd made progress on that project and don't want to lose my place, some are to be referred to by some timeframe although I've been getting rid of those as it doesn't'w rok for me to look at them that way.

I also keep trying GTDNext (which has recently had a nice facelift) but it only allows you to have five statuses
i.e. Inbox, Active, Scheduled, Waiting, Someday.... and I find that irritating because I want different levels of Someday-Maybe.

In Omnifocus projects are either active, on hold, completed or dropped. Selecting that status is one mouse click on a button to change it or a drop down selector if I want to do it that way.

I don't keep my someday/maybe projects in OF though, in fact I try not to have very many on-hold projects actually in my OF system. I'll occasionally put some on hold but more likely I'll just put them to start later. That way I can see them easily if I want to and can start them sooner if I need to. All my recurring projects are in there and they are often inactive because their dates to start haven't come yet.
 
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