Suggestion: A numeric value for importance and difficulty?
I realize that the sliders for task importance and difficulty are meant to represent a subjective judgment about how I feel about the task, but it would be nice to have a numeric value, too. Sometimes, I want to have tasks exactly equal in importance or difficulty, but each of the labels "essential", "rather", "average", etc seems to encompass a range of slider settings. It's very hard to know when two different tasks are really set to the same value. If numeric values seem wrong, how about tic marks on the sliders? Maybe even a "snap to" feature so that you really know when two tasks are set the same?
Precise vs. Useful
Dear BardUser,
I suggest that you work with the software a while, and read the documentation to get a feel for how things interact.
I remember when I first suggested the design of Life Balance to Stuart, he was very upset about the idea that the values for importance were "squishy" in this way.
We nearly had a knock down drag out design meeting over this. Finally I growled at him, "It doesn't have to be PRECISE. IT HAS TO BE USEFUL!" Then in a classic lightbulb moment, he got it, and the software development proceeded.
The importance slider value is only one variable among many, and it is better not to get too hung up on it. Small variations in the slider values are not a big deal. Many values determine the order in the to do list for each of your tasks. They are not that easy to calculate (and certainly not easy to do in your head), change often with changing circumstances, as time flies and deadlines approach, and tasks are interdependent.
Give yourself sometime to learn more about the software, relax about numerical input, read up on the task details, and you may find that you have an "Aha!" moment too!
I hope that is helpful, or at least amusing. :-)
Wishing you all the best as you get started with Life Balance.
--Catherine--*
Precise vs. Useful
Catherine,
I have read the documentation. Several versions of it. I have had the iPhone version of your app since it came out and before that, the Palm version.
I was requesting this because it has seemed to me that things used to migrate to the top of my task list better in the old palm version of your app. You will probably say that I am imagining it. Maybe. However, it has seemed like I have had to upgrade and downgrade the importance of certain tasks more on the iPhone version to get things towards the top and I never did that on the Palm. Maybe I am using it more completely than I used to and the Palm version didn't have to deal with as many complexities. Maybe it's that I'm using more weekly repeating events? Does your algorithm attach less importance to them because each time they repeat, they become newer than all the non-repeating stuff? I don't remember what the docs said about that.
And, yes, I do use "places", but that is only somewhat useful for me. I mostly want to see the whole list at once.
Thank you for your reply.
BTW, my user name is my first initial and my last name.
Bill
Perhaps your patterns have changed...
Yes. Perhaps your patterns have changed. None of us are static unchanging creatures, after all!
The deep underlying calculation guts of Life Balance are the same on all platforms, though there are many differences in how one would work with the software, which could also influence your patterns, and there are also slight variations in Operating System calculations on which we depend. These usually do not influence the order of the to do list very much, but can sometimes shift a task's position depending on how the task details are set.
Thanks again for insights and suggestions,
Enjoy the weekend!
--Catherine--*