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Calendar / step-by-step / process oriented tools for project and task management
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Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Jan 9, 2013 at 09:03 PM
In other threads, tools like Trello, Flow.io and TeuxDeux have been mentioned. I recently found another one which looks quite interesting, http://www.sandglaz.com/
It’s quite flexible, and an important advantage for me is that one can log in via a Google account, a convenience I find increasingly important.
Posted by dan7000
Jan 9, 2013 at 11:23 PM
Check out http://www.taskk.it - it uses an actual calendar instead of just a grid. Also has some features missing from sandglaz like file attachments and email-in tasks. Still a bit unpolished but getting there.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Jan 10, 2013 at 10:20 PM
Dan, many thanks for the heads up on Taskk. It’s quite impressive, like an online version of Watership Planner or Time To. In the past I’ve kept my distance from those tools that are supposed to tell you what to do, but Taskk seems very flexible. After the initial setup, it reminds me a bit of the Agenda At Once concept (which itself hasn’t been updated much in recent years).
Posted by Hugh
Jan 11, 2013 at 04:02 PM
Yes, thanks for the heads up. I’ve signed up for a Taskk trial. So far I can’t see how to input “hard landscape” diary commitments, but perhaps that will come. It is a work-in-progress.
I once tried Time to, and also another similar programme that’s a plug-in for Outlook, but whose name I’ve forgotten. In theory, working one’s way through a task schedule that has been optimised by computer may sound like a terrific idea - not so very far from achieving the “mind like water” state that GTD aspires to - but in practice I found it wasn’t quite like that. Apart from dealing with the complexity of interfaces that need to cope with all kinds of eventuality, I found myself fiddling with the assumptions so that the task list almost always ended up looking like what I’d have scheduled anyway.
Maybe that was just me. In any case Taskk seems to have cracked the complexity issue, but possibly at the cost of being over-simple, at least so far.
Posted by dan7000
Jan 11, 2013 at 07:21 PM
I’m a long-time fan of tools like TimeTo and Taskk. I used TaskLine, the Outlook plugin, for years. As others have mentioned, having a tool to schedule your tasks for you is something that will not work for most people, but it works for me. I don’t religiously follow the schedule it plans for me, but the important thing that it gives me is that I can tell if I can actually accomplish all my upcoming tasks before their deadlines. In my job, this is often not the case and I need to call somebody and slip a deadline - or I need to work late for 3 nights or there’s no way I will finish in time—so it’s great to know ahead of time if that will happen. Also, the tool ideally puts things in the right order so that I don’t find myself working on something due next week at the expense of finishing something due tomorrow. Without these tools, I find that happening more.
Taskline did all this perfectly. But now that I have so many devices, I need something that lets me check tasks and add tasks via the cloud. Taskk is the best bet so far. As someone on the thread mentioned, one thing it is missing is actual appointments. You can deal with an appointment in two ways: 1. create a task with a “force date” setting, for the duration of the appointment. At least this will block off that amount of time on that day. 2. Just shorten the number of work hours for each day to account for appointments. I do the latter, because I still keep appointments in outlook, and I don’t want them entered in 2 systems.
For those trying it out: Taskk is still quite buggy. I’ve been using it exclusively since they added deadlines at my insistence at the end of October. They are amazingly responsive - I email regularly with the developers and they fix bugs I find within hours. The fact that I find fairly serious bugs a couple times a week means that I wouldn’t recommend it for someone not willing to put in some effort. But I’m sticking with it because I think they have a really fantastic vision, they’re working hard, and I expect it will pay off with a tool I can’t live without.