Hello
I've been thinking more deeply about task management. It seems to be that from a data architecture point of view there are the following types of relevant data:
A) Project name - i.e. The desired outcome - the purpose of any task
B) Tasks (Actions) - i.e. their short titles (many per project)
C) List - i.e. What list each task and/or project is on (Active/Someday/Waiting)
D) "Ordering of tasks being done" information including:
- importance / urgency / dependencies / RELATIVE importance & urgency / Timing commitments
E) Subject area type information - potentially a tree hierarchy. (e.g. starting with Area of Life)
And each of these types of data needs to be held in a separate database field in the software.
It occurs to me that I personally keep conflating D) - the subject area for a project with A) it's desired outcome.
Part of the reason why I do this is that I thing very 'visually' i.e. I think better in shapes.
And if I can see and recognize a nice hierarchy, I immediately get a good handle of the project I'm working on.
But really A) and D) are completely different concepts ! And so they should be stored separately.
It also occurs to me that a 2D "mind map" would a brilliant way of representing the subject areas of a project. But how many decent task manager tools include 'mind mapping'?
So I had a look at Mindjet's Mind Manager which has a superb (if horribly expensive) mind mapping tool. It also has some sort of dependency built in. But sadly it didn't seem to have any way of doing Next Actions per project. Nor can it do "forced" Next Actions (one of GTDNext's best features, imho). And making lists of starred items seemed clunky. I couldn't find a good way to move tasks between lists. And I couldn't work out how to putting things into the future (Tickler list). All of means that it ran out of steam when you have hundreds of task at once.
So what I am looking for is a system that at the push of a button give you:
- Task level (i.e. all the normal GTD list management views - Active/Someday/Waiting etc)
- a mind map view
- a dependency/project management view (useful for larger projects)
- a calendar view (showing your tickler list)
Does such a thing exist?
thanks
J
PS. And why not throw in a timer to allow you to report (to management and/or clients) on how much time you are spending doing what.
I've been thinking more deeply about task management. It seems to be that from a data architecture point of view there are the following types of relevant data:
A) Project name - i.e. The desired outcome - the purpose of any task
B) Tasks (Actions) - i.e. their short titles (many per project)
C) List - i.e. What list each task and/or project is on (Active/Someday/Waiting)
D) "Ordering of tasks being done" information including:
- importance / urgency / dependencies / RELATIVE importance & urgency / Timing commitments
E) Subject area type information - potentially a tree hierarchy. (e.g. starting with Area of Life)
And each of these types of data needs to be held in a separate database field in the software.
It occurs to me that I personally keep conflating D) - the subject area for a project with A) it's desired outcome.
Part of the reason why I do this is that I thing very 'visually' i.e. I think better in shapes.
And if I can see and recognize a nice hierarchy, I immediately get a good handle of the project I'm working on.
But really A) and D) are completely different concepts ! And so they should be stored separately.
It also occurs to me that a 2D "mind map" would a brilliant way of representing the subject areas of a project. But how many decent task manager tools include 'mind mapping'?
So I had a look at Mindjet's Mind Manager which has a superb (if horribly expensive) mind mapping tool. It also has some sort of dependency built in. But sadly it didn't seem to have any way of doing Next Actions per project. Nor can it do "forced" Next Actions (one of GTDNext's best features, imho). And making lists of starred items seemed clunky. I couldn't find a good way to move tasks between lists. And I couldn't work out how to putting things into the future (Tickler list). All of means that it ran out of steam when you have hundreds of task at once.
So what I am looking for is a system that at the push of a button give you:
- Task level (i.e. all the normal GTD list management views - Active/Someday/Waiting etc)
- a mind map view
- a dependency/project management view (useful for larger projects)
- a calendar view (showing your tickler list)
Does such a thing exist?
thanks
J
PS. And why not throw in a timer to allow you to report (to management and/or clients) on how much time you are spending doing what.