Feature Request: Easily convert different types of objects to each other and change associations.

PRO

ddelc 10/31/2015 02:27

Platform:All

One feature that would greatly enhance the usability of doit.im would be to allow the user to arbitrarily 'promote' Projects to Goals, Actions to projects, and subtasks to actions, as well as 'demote' these objects to the next step down.

Ideally, if there were 'child objects' associated with your target, such as subtasks on an action, these child tasks would either be promoted with the parent object (Parent is action, children are subtasks.... upon promotion, parent becomes project, children become actions), or would be demoted or else disassociated with the parent (parent is project, children are actions... upon demotion, parent is action, children are subtasks... upon further demotion, parent becomes subtask attached to a new action, children are now 'sibling subtasks' in the same 'new parent action').

I see you've already started this partially, at least on the web platform, by allowing users to promote an action to a project.

Are there any plans for this kind of fast and flexible 'one click' hierarchy to be put into place in the future? If so, can you give us some idea of what you have in mind?

Linjiani post on 10/31/2015 09:43#1

PRO

Hey there,
We would like to help you with the above questions.
However,I did not really understand your meaning.
Did your "promote"means turn one task into a project?
Could you give us some ideas and examples?
Wish you a nice day : )
ddelc post on 11/01/2015 01:59#2

PRO

Sure. I've had a bit more time to flush out the ideas after reviewing "Getting things done" again, so this is going to be a long post... brace yourself =)

Say, for example, you've put a task into your inbox. It's only a task because that's the doit's default; in GTD, it's just a typeless 'thing you need to process'.

Ideally, you should be able to turn anything in your inbox (or anywhere) into a goal, project, task, subtask, or reference note (more on that later) and associate with any other object of these 4 types once it's type has been defined.

In my ideal system, I'd be able to rightclick any one of these items, and have a context menu that comes up and says:

Set as>Goal
Project
Task
Subtask
Export as Reference to Evernote
Untyped

During processing, your program would automatically open the full 'editing' menu.

The above 'set as type' section would be available within, and the following new option(s) would be added (as appropriate):

For goals, the option would be 'associate projects' and 'associate tasks'
For projects and tasks, the options would be 'associate tasks' and 'associate parent goal'
For tasks, the options would be 'associate subtasks' and 'associate parent project'
For subtasks, the option would be 'associate parent task'
For References, the options would be 'associate with notebook' and 'associate with item(s)'.

Each of these options is somewhat self explanatory; items one 'level' lower (subtasks being the lowest level) than the item you are editing, that lack an association to an item of the 'level' you are working on are all listed, and you would be able to select from them.

In this ideal system, you would also be able to select from 'untyped' items that were just added to the inbox; associating them to a parent item would automatically set their type as appropriate. You would also be able to make parent and child items on the fly, similar to what you can do now.

No item would be able to leave the inbox without having a type set, an association to a higher level item (goals being the exception to the rule), and a deadline set (Today, tommorow, next, scheduled, someday) or else being completed within the inbox.

You would also be able to 'skip' items, adding them to the bottom of the stack as you process the next one.

So for example, say you have these items in your inbox:

-Stay alive
-Breathe in
-Get oxygen in your lungs
-Get carbon dioxide out of your lungs
-Breath out
-Don't starve
-Eat Food
-Cook food
-Buy ingredients
-Practice shuffleboard
-Email: World open shuffleboard cup to have 200 million dollar prize! (as implied, this is something you know you've gotten int your inbox by emailing it to your doit.im account).

Under my ideal system, you'd be able to say:

>"Stay alive" is pretty vague... this should be a goal.

Then once you set it as a goal, you'd be able to look at everything else in the inbox:

>Well, to stay alive I need to not starve, and I need to have proper air in my lungs, to start.

From here, you'd be able to set "Don't starve", "Get carbon dioxide out of your lungs" and "Get oxygen in your lungs" as projects associated with the goal "Stay Alive". While thinking about it, you'd realize:

>You know, it'd also probably be good to drink water

And, as normal, add a new project associated with the goal 'Stay Alive' called 'Keep Hydrated'.

From here, there would be 4 less items in your inbox, organized to better reflect their relation to one another.

The following list would remain:

-Breathe in
-Breath out
-Eat Food
-Cook food
-Buy ingredients
-Practice shuffleboard
-Email: World open shuffleboard cup to have 200 million dollar prize!

You'd go on to process it as normal, starting with 'Breathe in'.

>Well, I can't remember what kind of item it was, but I'm pretty sure there was an item that would work as the parent item to "Breathe in"..

You'd be able to select 'set parent item', you'd find a list of every typed item (excluding subtasks), select 'Get oxygen in your lungs', and upon associating the two, "Breathe in" would automatically be a subtask.

With your memory refreshed, you'd move on to process the item "Breath out".

>Well, since that last similar task was a subtask, this is clearly a subtask, too.

From within the processing section, you'd be able to set "Breath out" as a subtask. Once there, you'd select 'associated parent task', and would find a list of all task-type items, much more limited compared to the list you saw in the previous example. In here, you'd quickly find "Get carbon dioxide out of your lungs", and associate it with "Breathe Out".

Your inbox would now contain:

-Eat Food
-Cook food
-Buy ingredients
-Practice shuffleboard
-Email: World open shuffleboard cup to have 200 million dollar prize!

The first 3 would be easily integrated into the following hierarchy using similar steps to the above to integrate them with existing typed items:

Goal: Stay alive.
-Project: Don't starve.
--Task: Cook food
---Subtask: Buy ingredients
--Task: Eat Food

From here, you'd have 2 more items to process in your inbox:

-Practice shuffleboard
-Email: World open shuffleboard cup to have 200 million dollar prize!

These would be trickier to integrate into a full hierarchy due to having a limited data set, but because of the fast and flexible system in place, it would be easy to get them associated with the proper hierarchy of items.

When processing "Practice shuffleboard", you would choose 'Set as task'. Once that was done, you would choose 'associate with parent project'. The parent project currently does not exist, so you would create one from the selection menu by selecting "create new project", typing in the project name "Become the best at shuffleboard!".

With "Practice shuffleboard" now set as a type, with a parent item selected, your inbox would now look like this:

-Become the best at shuffleboard!
-Email: World open shuffleboard cup to have 200 million dollar prize!

Processing "Become the best at shuffleboard" would occur as normal, adding new tasks such as "Learn what shuffleboard is", and "Find a place to practice shuffleboard". However, it would be mandatory to set a parent goal to get this out of the inbox. Since there is no parent goal having to do with shuffleboard, you'd be able to make a new one as outlined above: "Win the 2015 World Open Shuffleboard Cup!"

Since this is a goal, and is the highest 'level' of item possible, it would not remain in the inbox, unlike the project that was just defined; it is now typed, and does not require a parent item.

Your inbox would now be:

-Email: World open shuffleboard cup to have 200 million dollar prize!

When processing this item, you would select 'Set as Reference.', then 'associate notebook' to select the evernote notebook this note would be part of. From there you could optionally select 'associate item(s)', and select the Goal "Win the 2015 World Open Shuffleboard Cup!" to associate the evernote entry that will be created with the referenced goal.

From here, doit.im would create a note in your selected notebook with the title of the item (Email: World open shuffleboard cup to have 200 million dollar prize! ) as the note's name, and the content of the item (in this case, the body of the email you sent to your doit.im account) as the note's content, and automatically associate it with the items you referenced above.

Items converted to evernote references would have to be, at minimum, associated with a notebook to leave the inbox. Once associated with a notebook, they would be removed from the inbox, and doit.im; they'e on evernote, they don't need to be here.

This post has become so long that I've actually noticed I've forgotten a few things in my examples:

No item would be able to leave the inbox without having a type set, an association to a higher level item (goals being the exception to the rule), >>>and a deadline set (Today, tommorow, next, scheduled, someday) or else being completed within the inbox.<<<

... So let's just pretend that in all of my examples, some kind of deadline (even 'someday') was set on each of the items discussed =).

While this is... quite a long and specific suggestion as to how doit.im should work, it does fill alot of gaps the current version has:

If you have related items in the inbox, it is currently impossible to associate them on-the-fly; your best option is the workflow-disrupting 'delete and recreate' method.

If you have to downgrade an item (say, this project should just be a task., or this project is so vague it should be a goal...), you face the same problem.

If you have reference items in your inbox (as you will if you're following GTD), there is no efficient way of getting them into your library (evernote in this case).... it's pretty much "copy/paste everything into evernote and delete the task".

I believe making the changes I've suggested, however gradually, would enhance the usability of this program significantly.

Are there any similar plans to make items flexible and re assignable already in place? If not, would whoever is in charge of deciding future features be interested in implementing something like this?
Linjiani post on 11/02/2015 02:37#3

PRO

Wow, that's really a good idea.
However, the Inbox exists because you need to clean your head and your mind.
So if you divide it into so many parts, it also means you will be bounded, right?
By now,we have not planned to make items flexible, but the suggestion you mentioned to turn Inbox to the other subjects, it has been under our plan.
Thanks again for your suggestion.You are a kind man。