Doing "one subtask per month"
Hello,
I've started using LB and created my outline. I'm very happy with it, great tool!
Aside from "normal" one-time projects, and simple routine tasks (like "clean the car every two weeks"), I have several projects of this type:
They contain some subtasks each. Say, one of those projects is "meet old faraway friends" which contains one subtask per person; another project is "visit restaurant" with all good restaurants in my area. And other projects like that. I want to complete one of its subtasks in some time interval. Say, I want to schedule one candlelight restaurant visit per month, and one visit to a faraway friend per 3 months, and LB should make sure that I don't forget any of those friends or restaurants, without setting me on a tight schedule.
I have set the projects to "Routinely", and the subtasks to "Once". Is this the correct way? All the uncompleted subtasks are now shown with the "routinely" flag (Palm version, they are listed in red on the todo list), and they seem not be ordered so that, say, the restaurant I visited last is at the bottom. This is not quite what I want... this way, I have a lot of tasks in the todo list which are all highlighted as "overdue".
I'm sure I am doing something wrong here. How do you setup things like that?
Thanks!
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my 2 cents' worth
I haven't tried to do this (set up a project branch with the Routinely attribute "rotating" through a list of attributes) so there's probably a better (more specifically applicable) method from a technical POV. But here's a "higher level" recommendation (strictly IMHO of course):
Keep things simple!
Life Balance is a great tool to remind you of important things, but the Outline's a fairly limited tool, so if you put in too much "stuff", it gets in the way of your ability to periodically review the "big picture". IOW try not to overpopulate your forest with too many unnecessary trees.
I would recommend keeping the DETAILS on standing "projects" like this, along with other "reference" type information in a separate tool that allows for easier filtering/searching etc of very large text-based data sets. I personally use Evernote for this (and many other things) and highly recommend it.
That way you would not create a multi-branch "project" for these examples, just list them as single task reminders "go to a nice restaurant" and "follow up with old friends", perhaps listing the last one in the list in the note if your memory's that bad. Then you'd check your (outside LB) list to choose which place/friend.
The idea is to start from the beginning with a work flow that will allow you to be able to efficiently manage your LB Outline after it's grown to hundreds of branches over the years - and it will!
If you choose to ignore the above advice, then I'd recommend investigating setting "routinely" in combination with "complete sub-tasks in order", or perhaps taking advantage of the fact that sub-tasks hide their parents - make the "before" person/restaurant hide the "next" one until it's checked off.
Hope this helps.