The To Do List

Life Balance provides a dynamically ordered To Do List driven by the importance of your goals, your desired allocation of time and effort, and feedback from what you get done each day. Life Balance sorts the list so that highest priority tasks are at the top, and it filters the list so that you only see the tasks that you can complete at the current time and location.

The order of tasks in the To Do List is primarily based on how important the tasks are, not when they are scheduled on your calendar. This helps you stay focused on long term goals that are important to you rather than responding to less important short term tasks. The Life Balance method of consistently keeping the most important tasks at the top of your list can help you overcome the common obstacles of distraction and procrastination, although you may initially find it surprising if you are used to other time management systems.

Updating your To Do List

Life Balance computes the overall priority of items in your To Do List based on a large number of factors, including the passage of time. For this reason, you may need to update your To Do List every so often even if nothing else has actively changed. If you make active changes, such as changing the importance of particular tasks and projects, changing the schedules and lead times assigned to tasks, and checking off tasks on your To Do List, you will also want to Update.

In the Palm edition of Life Balance the update function is always manual because the update process can take several seconds or more depending on the size of your outline. When you are ready to recompute the priorities in your To Do List, tap on the Update button.

Note: Changes to places and the filters at the top of the To Do List take effect immediately. You do not need to update your To Do List when you change these settings.

When you update your To Do List, Life Balance will also see if it’s time to put any repeating tasks back on your To Do List. When Life Balance reschedules a repeating task it automatically unchecks the task. You will receive additional credit for completing the task each time you check it off.

Tip: If you find that a completed task reappears on your To Do List every time you update, it’s probably because the lead time for the task is too long. For a daily task, you probably want a lead time of just a few hours.

What appears on the To Do List

To view your entire To Do List, choose “All places” from the popup menu at the top of the To Do List, and make sure that the All/Open toggle box is set to “All”. If you have changed your Outline, or it has been awhile since you updated your To Do List, then tap the Update button to recompute the priorities in your To Do List.

The To Do List only displays the currently active tasks from your outline. Even when you display your entire To Do List, there are certain tasks that will not be displayed:

• Completed tasks
• Tasks or projects whose importance has been set to “none”
• Projects with subtasks, unless all of the subtasks have been completed
• Tasks scheduled more than two lead times in the future (see Lead Time for more information about lead time)

Many long term projects have an open-ended nature, where you may not know all the steps necessary to complete the project when you begin. For example, to remodel a kitchen you might need to learn some things as you go along about kitchen design and the ways that a contractor will work on your house. Life Balance, unlike most formal project planning tools, has a simple mechanism to remind you to think about what comes next for the project. When you complete all the currently active subtasks for a project, the project itself will appear on your To Do List for evaluation. You can take this opportunity to brainstorm for ideas on what might further the project, decide what needs to be done next, and add more tasks. Once the project is done, having the project appear on your To Do List again gives you an opportunity to receive credit for completing the project.

Filtering the To Do List by Place and Time

Looking at your entire To Do List can sometimes be distracting, because many of the tasks on the list might need to happen somewhere else, or at a different time. It’s often helpful to focus on just the tasks that you can complete here and now. Life Balance provides two ways of filtering your To Do List: by your current location (place), and by when places are open and closed (hours).

To see a list of items that can be done in a specific place, choose that place from the Place popup menu at the top of the To Do List. If the location you have selected includes other places, then tasks from those places will also be included. For instance, if you have business at the bank, and the local mall includes a bank, when you select the local mall using the Places button, your banking errands will be shown along with other shopping and mall tasks.

Tasks that are assigned to the special place “Anywhere” will appear on all of your To Do Lists regardless of which place is selected. For example, you might have a task like “Read a book” assigned to Anywhere so that it will show up on all of your To Do Lists. If you would like to see a To Do List containing just tasks that can be done anywhere, you can select “Anywhere” from the popup menu just like any other place.

Note: Included places are not recursive. If the mall includes a bank, and the bank includes a phone, your telephone tasks will not appear on your To Do List for the mall. If you want your telephone tasks to appear on your mall To Do List, then you must include telephone directly in the included places list for the mall. See Included Places for details.

If you have assigned hours to the places in Life Balance, then you can choose to only display tasks for places that are currently open. For example, you can tell Life Balance that the post office is closed on Sunday, and the To Do List will hide tasks like “Buy stamps” until the post office opens the next day.

To only show tasks for places that are currently open, tap the All/Open toggle at the top of the To Do List so that it says “Open”. To display tasks regardless of whether places are open or closed, choose “All”.

Checking off Completed Tasks

To check off a completed task, simply tap in the box beside it. The next time you update your To Do List, the task will be removed from the list.

When you check off a task, credit for completing that task will be awarded in the Actual pie chart in the Balance section, and the task will be listed in the accomplishments under the pie charts.The amount of credit is proportional to the setting of the effort slider for that task at the time it is checked off. Credit is cumulative, although it gradually fades over time. For repeating tasks, you get additional credit each time you complete the task. For more information, see Balancing Your Efforts.

Tip: If you want to skip one instance of a routinely task:

1. Before checking it off, set the effort to None.
2. Check off the task.
3. Immediately (before hitting update and while you still have it visible in the To Do List) reset the effort to the correct value.

If you accidentally check off a task, you can tap again to uncheck it. Life Balance will remove the credit from your actual pie chart and remove the task from your list of accomplishments. Note that when Life Balance automatically unchecks a repeating task, you do not lose any credit from your pie chart.

Whether or not they are visible in the To Do List, completed tasks will remain in the Outline and are available for editing, duplicating, rescheduling and unchecking until you delete or purge them.