snapping sliders (feature request)
Hi.
Hope my question hasn't been asked before. I couldn't find any answers in the forum, only in the knowledgebase a statement of the fact.
Shouldn't the slider for importance be connected to a numeric (percentage) or better shouldn't it snap into only so many stops as there are descriptions in the band? Or best, I could choose for snapping or stepless adjustment. Same goes for the effort slider.
Why? The slider for importance allows for stepless setting but the descriptions are with steps - thus I can set the slider to 'rather' in one task and to 'rather' in another, but the two could be different as one is at the lowest part of the 'rather'-band and the other at the highest.
So I can't see where I am setting the slider and whether task 1 is higher than task 2.
This feature requests of course concerns all versions of LB.
Thanks.
Slider values are continuous, not stepped...
The slider values are continuous, not stepped. The text descriptions are not the "allowed" values. They are there simply for reference, unlike most to do apps or paper planners.
Best -
--Catherine--*
Hey bonjo!
I had the same problem, my current solution is for the Palm version: using the five-way navigator, I select the (in my case) effort field, click it once with the middle button, then I can use the five-way to the right or left to increase or decrease notches - for effort each notch in this way is worth 3%, so I can be consistent in my setting. For importance I think there are more notches but the idea is the same.
Now, on the desktop version, you can click before or after the point the slider is on (instead of dragging it), and it will move in notches too, by quarters I think.
@be.szpilman Thanks. Good
@be.szpilman
Thanks. Good tips!
@Catherine (cewhite)
I understand the fact, but wouldn't it be more useful if the slider values WAS stepped?
Nope...
Nope...
Continuous values allow Life Balance to fine tune the to do list. If you use stepped values, or try to "be consistent" you actually reduce your accuracy in the calculations over all.
You will be way better off if you roll with it, and go by feel. Just drag the slider for EACH task relative to its parent task, and try to forget about all other tasks as you do it.
:-)
Best wishes,
--Catherine--*
Hey bonjo, I'm glad you
Hey bonjo, I'm glad you enjoyed the tips. Thought I'd just clarify how is it that I use my effort and importance sliders as to be consistent.
First of all, I love to trust my intuition for choosing what to do on any given time, but I don't trust it as much for defining importance and effort. I think these judgments are too subjective and we often issue them based on our mood or our level of attention. What I'm saying is that in the morning I might set a given importance for an item, but were it at the end of day my setting could be totally different.
My core motivation is to SHIFT this intuition from defining importance and effort for each task, to defining actions all of similar effort. This ties in to principles of Getting Things Done, which says that you should always get your commitments down to the 'next actions', and that things such as effort, energy required, importance/priority should all be part of your action decision, your intuition at the time you choose what to do, not at the time that you DEFINE what to do. David Allen says that "Priorities function only at the conscious level." and I've come to deeply appreciate and understand that piece of advice. So, for me, pondering effort and importance for every action and project equals micro-management and lends itself to procrastination.
My solution, as you may realize by now, is to have the exact SAME importance AND effort for every single project and next action I have. Crazy, you say, huh ?! Do I not take advantage of neither importance nor effort at all, then ? Of course I do!
For importance I've taken an old LB master (Bob aka Ratz)'s advice a bit further, so where he says "set importance for every item except the Top Level Items (Goals) at 100% until you know what you're doing", I say do that even when you know what you're doing! My Visions (TLI's) each have a different importance based on my current long-term focus, but anything below those is set in stone to 100% - it's amazingly relieving never to have to tweak those again! And I know I'm not subject to my volatile human judgment. Importance for me is decided while I'm scanning my list everyday, while LifeBalance gives me hints as to what matches my current foci and commitments better (top of the list).
On the effort side, I've set that every next action done equals 3% of credit. When I do follow up next actions that weren't written at my list, instead of writing them just to check them off, I pump up the one first next action for an additional 3% for every 'unwritten' action I did, then check it off.
And then I have many, many habits and other minor routine tasks (which I call simply 'tasks'), and these have, for instance, 3% effort when they're daily, 12% effort when they're weekly, 48% when monthly, and so on up to 100% for yearly+ big time tasks (it gets quite logarithmic from monthly). So I use the whole spectrum on both sliders, just not in a usual way. And this effort configuration means I never have to fiddle with effort sliders either, because every item created in my outline defaults to 3% effort (which is used by the majority of items), and whenever it's a habit I only have to tweak it once and that's it.
Ended up being quite a prose, but here's hoping it can be of some use.
be.szpilman, thank you for
be.szpilman, thank you for the insight, I'm getting the knack of it :-)