It is very annoying that all todo app developers seem think that events should not be treated as tasks.
I find it very annoying that I cannot schedule my day with my todo apps.

It is very surprising that none of the apps can do this simple task of scheduling. I find one online todo manager (https://getplan.co/ that does scheduling quite elegantly. Here is the screenshot of a typical work day broken down to chunks of tasks.

http://take.ms/lGlOT

I wish the offline applications like Things and Omnifocus can do help me plan my days like this.

Dellu wrote:

It is very annoying that all todo app developers seem think that events
should not be treated as tasks.
I find it very annoying that I cannot schedule my day with my todo apps.


It is very surprising that none of the apps can do this simple task of
scheduling. I find one online todo manager (https://getplan.co/ that
does scheduling quite elegantly. Here is the screenshot of a typical
work day broken down to chunks of tasks.

http://take.ms/lGlOT

Unless I am misunderstanding, isn't an event almost the same as a task with a date/time? I know that programs like Asana, Trello and Todoist allow you to assignt dates/times to tasks. And I know that Asana has a calendar view. Is this not what you are seeking?

--Ken

I wish the offline applications like Things and Omnifocus can do help me
plan my days like this.

Although it hasn't been updated in a while, Watership Planner (http://www.watership-planner.com may be exactly what you are looking for. Although I am a die-hard Mac user, I find WP so useful that I installed a Windows 10 VM (under Parallels) just so that I could use it on my MacBook.

JDED

Yes I prefer applications which treat all items the same so that a task is just an item with a priority and an event is just an item with a date/time alocated to it so the same item could have either one, both or niether.

There are apps out there that do it this way so you just avoid the apps that don't work the way you want them to.

Personally, I prefer a "separation of functions", that, say, OmniFocus allows, with dragging and dropping of tasks, into, say Fantastical. That way you can use a top-notch task manager alongside a top-notch calendar application.

The problem of calendar events is that you cannot check them off.

Assume you have planned a meeting from 1PM to 5PM.
Fortunately finished the meeting at 2PM. Now, you have 3 more hours to schedule and accomplish more tasks.

With the calendar event, you have to either change the Schedule or delete it; no way that you mark it "done", and log it so.
With the system like GetPlan (where Events are treated as true tasks), you can check the planned task off; and free the time slot for the next task.

This is also useful to review or evaluate the discrepancy between the plans and the actual executions because you can compare the planned time with the actual time the task was checked off (done).

Hugh wrote:

Personally, I prefer a "separation of functions", that, say, OmniFocus
allows, with dragging and dropping of tasks, into, say Fantastical. That
way you can use a top-notch task manager alongside a top-notch calendar
application.

Yes, I have tried your combo before. I had some issue that I don't remember now. I also tried the paper (PDF) template you suggested in one of the discussions in this forum. the paper template worked nice for couple of weeks, until I run out of the printed papers.

Questions about your current combo:

Can Fantastical feed back and modify the task in OF in cases you check the schedules in fantastical?
what happens with the schedule in Fantastical when you check the task done in OF?

Hi Dellu,

Even though it's slightly off topic, let me elaborate a bit on your request.

It looks to me you're looking for something that some people name 'Total Task Scheduling' (i.e. all tasks end up in a calendar whether they have a fixed time slot like an appointment or a meeting, or they have no fixed date, or maybe they just have a deadline). I've personally switched to this approach after trying a bunch of different methods (including GTD and variants).

I'm now using an automated task scheduling app that I love (https://www.skedpal.com/ it's not free but we're all CRIMPers right?), if you want to understand more about total task scheduling, I can recommend the website and the books of Francis Wade (http://scheduleu.org/ and the book 'Perfect Time based productivity' ISBN 1985030616).

I'm now using SkedPal, together with a kanban board (self-hosted open source tool: https://kanboard.org/ to do fine-grained prioritization and process my inbox.

Please note I'm not affiliated in any way (nor do I have any kind of relationship) with the people and companies mentioned in this post.

Cheers /jerome

Jerome G wrote:

Hi Dellu,

Even though it's slightly off topic, let me elaborate a bit on your
request.

It looks to me you're looking for something that some people name 'Total
Task Scheduling' (i.e. all tasks end up in a calendar whether they have
a fixed time slot like an appointment or a meeting, or they have no
fixed date, or maybe they just have a deadline). I've personally
switched to this approach after trying a bunch of different methods
(including GTD and variants).

I'm now using an automated task scheduling app that I love
(https://www.skedpal.com/ it's not free but we're all CRIMPers right?),
if you want to understand more about total task scheduling, I can
recommend the website and the books of Francis Wade
(http://scheduleu.org/ and the book 'Perfect Time based productivity'
ISBN 1985030616).

I'm now using SkedPal, together with a kanban board (self-hosted open
source tool: https://kanboard.org/ to do fine-grained prioritization
and process my inbox.

Please note I'm not affiliated in any way (nor do I have any kind of
relationship) with the people and companies mentioned in this post.

Cheers /jerome

I have been using Skedpal, and I find it very effective and flexible with respect to scheduling tasks.

JDS wrote:

I have been using Skedpal, and I find it very effective and flexible
with respect to scheduling tasks.

Yes, I also heard about it. but, the pricing seems too high: 14$ per month is heck of a price.
are you paying 14$/month, or are there other ways around?

I was hopping if there is lower price for single users.
I just checked it: there is no.

the tool is perfect; but, the pricing is too high.

I find a good scheduling service:http://trevorai.com/ , and it is free.

still, the issue is we need to be online to use these apps
the Internet is productivity thief. I really want to go offline when i need to focus.

I just found an article mentioning that Carl Newport, one of my favorite authors on productivity, has considered Todolists as useless until they are scheduled on a time frame.


> To-do lists are evil. Schedule everything.
Assume you're going home at 5:30, then plan your day backwards.
Make a plan for the entire week.
Do very few things, but be awesome at them.
Do less shallow work — focus on the deep stuff.


https://boingboing.net/2015/01/09/to-do-lists-are-evil-schedule.html

Dellu wrote:

The problem of calendar events is that you cannot check them off.

This is a very low-tech solution, but if the software makes it easy, you could just add [X] in front of a completed item.

I used to do that with Google Calendar, but unfortunately the recent redesign eliminated the easy way of doing it (the old event pop-up where you could type directly into the event title field).

Dellu wrote:

Yes, I also heard about it. but, the pricing seems too high: 14$ per
month is heck of a price.
are you paying 14$/month, or are there other ways around?

There is a $9.95 per month option if you pay for a year. I found it unique enough that I went that route. I am now a firm beleiver that if I don't schedule tasks, they are much less likely to get done. I like the way that if you do not schedule a completed task, it reassigns another time automatically. It also integrates with Google Calendar seamlessly

Possible options for addressing this problem include such to do managers as Leadertask, DoogiePim, AgendaatOnce, EssentialPim pro.

Also consider Todoist with its (virtually instantaneous) Gcal sync, which enables you to mark tasks as completed and correspondingly either remove or gray them in Gcal.

Paul J. Miller wrote:

Yes I prefer applications which treat all items the same so that a task
is just an item with a priority and an event is just an item with a
date/time alocated to it so the same item could have either one, both or
niether.

There are apps out there that do it this way so you just avoid the apps
that don't work the way you want them to.

This is exactly how events / tasks are treated in IQ, in addition events have 3 "states" all-day, date-time (duration) and unscheduled, which have a date and a duration but no determined time (AFAIK, unique to IQ)

Pierre
IQ designer

LM7 wrote:

Also consider Todoist with its (virtually instantaneous) Gcal sync,
which enables you to mark tasks as completed and correspondingly either
remove or gray them in Gcal.

Thank you. this combo is promising. I am trying it.

Another possibility, which I forgot in my previous post: Hitask.

LM7 wrote:

Also consider Todoist with its (virtually instantaneous) Gcal sync,
which enables you to mark tasks as completed and correspondingly either
remove or gray them in Gcal.

The 2-way sync with GC is the only reason I (briefly) used Todoist. Other apps offer it but not in their free tier.

I ended up comfortably settling into using Google Calendar for 'hard' tasks that needed to be done at specific times, and everything else ended up unsynced to GC, living in task lists which might or might not have start/end dates. But if something has a definite start *time* I put it in Google Calendar. (And in order to clamorously remind me of calendar starts I'll often add an alert in Dueapp/iOS, which has a choice of repeatable, repeating alarms.)

Above & Beyond does this:http://www.1soft.com/

I agree with Hugh. I understand the desire to be able to schedule tasks in your day, but I don't think tasks and events should be treated as the same things. Events are usually locked in for the time and date they are scheduled, because they usually include other people who are relying on you to be where you're supposed to be. Tasks, on the other hand, need to be fluid because they often are dependent on other things happening first. Also it is nice to schedule time for a task, but it is easy to change that time if something else comes up. It is less easy, sometimes impossible, to change an event.

Hugh wrote:

Personally, I prefer a "separation of functions", that, say, OmniFocus
allows, with dragging and dropping of tasks, into, say Fantastical. That
way you can use a top-notch task manager alongside a top-notch calendar
application.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

I agree with Hugh. I understand the desire to be able to schedule tasks
in your day, but I don't think tasks and events should be treated as the
same things. Events are usually locked in for the time and date they are
scheduled, because they usually include other people who are relying on
you to be where you're supposed to be. Tasks, on the other hand, need to
be fluid because they often are dependent on other things happening
first. Also it is nice to schedule time for a task, but it is easy to
change that time if something else comes up. It is less easy, sometimes
impossible, to change an event.

The point of scheduling a task is to force yourself to accomplish the task in a fixed time range. This is a way of pushing yourself. It would be nice if you can understand tasks like you understand events; that they should be done at that specific time.
Once you have the schedule, you will learn to say "no" when distractions came by.

I would like to quote Cal again:

Assigning work to times reduces the urge to procrastinate. You are no longer deciding whether or not to work during a given period; the decision is already made.

Even studies support that scheduling helps with procrastination; mentioned https://www.bakadesuyo.com/2014/08/how-to-stop-being-lazy/

Dellu wrote:

Stephen Zeoli wrote:
I agree with Hugh. I understand the desire to be able to schedule tasks
>in your day, but I don't think tasks and events should be treated as
the
>same things. Events are usually locked in for the time and date they
are
>scheduled, because they usually include other people who are relying on
>you to be where you're supposed to be. Tasks, on the other hand, need
to
>be fluid because they often are dependent on other things happening
>first. Also it is nice to schedule time for a task, but it is easy to
>change that time if something else comes up. It is less easy, sometimes
>impossible, to change an event.

The point of scheduling a task is to force yourself to accomplish the
task in a fixed time range. This is a way of pushing yourself. It would
be nice if you can understand tasks like you understand events; that
they should be done at that specific time.
Once you have the schedule, you will learn to say "no" when distractions
came by.

I would like to quote Cal again:

>Assigning work to times reduces the urge to procrastinate. You are no
longer deciding whether or not to work during a given period; the
decision is already made.

Even studies support that scheduling helps with procrastination;
mentioned https://www.bakadesuyo.com/2014/08/how-to-stop-being-lazy/

I hope that Cal's approach works for you, but I suspect that his success might have less to do with his schedule and more with his personality, internal motivation and tenure (as it is hard to fire a tenured faculty for just saying "no"). I would also guess that the success of his system is dependent on the type of environment that one works in. I am constantly responding to unplanned requests from those above me in the form of meetings, emails and dropping by my desk. And the same goes for my "clients" who also email and call. It would be great to just say "No" to these people, but I am afraid that my reputation for customer service would greatly diminished to the point of my getting a bad reputation. That doesn't mean that setting time aside for tasks is a bad idea, but I have to agree with Stephen about the need for flexibility.

Regarding the idea of forcing myself to do things, it is just not a system that would work for me for any meaningful length of time. If this type of system works for you, then that is great. But I have always been guided by the idea of doing something right rather than within a fixed amount of time, even if I am doing the estimating. Granted, I will prioritize tasks that impact other people's schedules, but my work tasks are not always identical and some need a lot more time and attention than others. And the thought of "pushing myself" seems more stressful than useful. I know what I have to do, and I know when things have to get done, so planning out my week to the minute would not be useful as I would constantly be adjusting the schedule, and that can be a time vampire in its own right.

In the end, it is great that there are software packages that allow us to work as we desire. I hope that you are able to make one of the above programs meet your needs, and wish you success on adopting Cal's recommended work methods.

--Ken

Pagico allows you to do this, too. You can create "events" by giving notes specific dates/times, but you can also treat tasks as events because they're automatically booked into your calendar when you give them a date/time (they sync with Apple Calendar, too). The advantage of Pagico over a standard calendar is the excellent Timeline view - it's easy to shift tasks/events to new dates/times simply by dragging and dropping. I tend to treat tasks and events as different things, but if I wanted to, I could use tasks for both and simply use different colours (or tags, or whatever) to differentiate appointments from to-dos. The compatibility of Pagico with Apple Calendar is one of its major advantages, but it has its own Calendar view as well.

MadaboutDana wrote:

Pagico allows you to do this, too. You can create "events" by giving
notes specific dates/times, but you can also treat tasks as events
because they're automatically booked into your calendar when you give
them a date/time (they sync with Apple Calendar, too). The advantage of
Pagico over a standard calendar is the excellent Timeline view - it's
easy to shift tasks/events to new dates/times simply by dragging and
dropping. I tend to treat tasks and events as different things, but if I
wanted to, I could use tasks for both and simply use different colours
(or tags, or whatever) to differentiate appointments from to-dos. The
compatibility of Pagico with Apple Calendar is one of its major
advantages, but it has its own Calendar view as well.

I have totally overlooked Pagico. Pagico could be the ultimate solution given it also works with Windows and Android, and offline, it could solve all my problems.
Thank you for reminding me. I think this is going to be perfect.