Choosing a Set of Useful Places

You do not necessarily need to create a place for every specific action. It may be tempting to create a place called “Shoe store” for the task “Buy new sneakers,” but it may be simpler and more useful to assign this task to a place called “Shopping” or “Downtown” which can be used more generally.

Here are some kinds of places to consider adding to your Place repertoire.

Tasks that can be done in multiple places

Some tasks can be completed in more than one place, and so you want them to show up on more than one To Do List. For example, there may be an ATM machine near work and another one in the mall, and you want the task “Deposit paycheck” to appear on lists for both places.

In this case, create a place named “ATM” and then include it in your places for both the mall and work. Any tasks that you assign to the place ATM will show up on your To Do List when you select either “Mall” or “Work” at the top of your To Do List.

Places with restricted hours

Some tasks can only be done at a particular time, because that is the only time that a particular store or office is open. For instance, a bank may have restricted hours for accessing a safe-deposit box.

To help you remember when the bank is open, create a special place for the bank and fill in the appropriate hours in the Place Details window. Then include the place “Bank” in one or more of your basic places. When you are viewing a To Do List for one of these basic places, your banking tasks will only appear when the bank is open.

Geographic Places

The simplest way to look at Places is to think of a Place as a very specific geographic location. You can have very small places (my kitchen; my sailboat; the car) or larger scale places (Tahiti, France, Brussels, Chicago, sales meeting).

The geographic places that are likely to be of most use to you are locations where tasks from other locations become irrelevant. For instance, if you are traveling to Orlando on business, the tasks from home will not be relevant. Filtering the to do list to concentrate on tasks for Orlando, will help you concentrate on the list of tasks that are appropriate for the business trip.

Situations

Places can be geographic, but they can just as easily be used in other situations. For example, you might have a place called “First thing in the morning” where you assign early morning tasks, or a place called “Insomnia”, which you consult for advice about hot milk, chamomile tea and soothing literature.

Situations can be very creative and personal. Anything that it would be useful for you to sort by in your Life Balance to do list could potentially make a good Place. However, it is usually a good idea to start out with simple list of places that you can elaborate on later.

If you have Life Balance Mobile Edition so that you can consult your list when you are on the go, then it may be helpful to include additional places that might be different from the set you would typically use at your desktop or laptop.

Some ideas for places that are more general situations:

• Commuter rail
• When I’m tired
• Standing in line
• With the kids
• Good weather
• In the car

Creating a new Place

To enter a new place, tap on the Plus button in the navigation bar for the Places view and fill in the name and details for the place from the Place Details view.

Included Places

A place can include other places. For instance a town or shopping center may include other places like a bank or bookstore. By including a more specific place inside of a more general one, you can make sure that tasks assigned to the more specific place show up on your To Do List when you select the more general place.

You specify included places by selecting them in the "Included places" section of the Place details view.

Included places are not recursive. For instance, if Downtown includes a Shopping Mall, and the Shopping Mall includes a Telephone, Life Balance will show Shopping Mall tasks on your Downtown list, and Telephone tasks on your Shopping Mall list, but it will not automatically display Telephone tasks on your Downtown list. If you want Telephone tasks to appear on your Downtown list, you must add Telephone as an included place for Downtown.

Entering Hours for a Place

A place may have hours during which it is open or available. You can set the hours for a place by either tapping on the Plus icon to add in an hours range, or by tapping on the "add or reset hours" table cell in the Place Details view. The Plus icon takes you directly to the view for adding in a new hours range without the other options for resetting the hours ranges to "always open" or "always closed."

If you do not specify hours for a place, Life Balance assumes it is always open and available.

Notes

Place notes are available for editing whenever the Place Details are visible. Tap on the edit button in the Place Details view. The Notes are located under the Place description.

Tasks, places, and calendar events all have separate notes.

Deleting a Place

To delete a place, you tap on the edit button in the navigation bar for the Places view. The round red Minus buttons appear to the left of the list of places. Tapping on a Minus button activates the delete button for that place, so that you don't delete a place accidentally while you are scrolling.

In the confirmation dialog that appears you can select a place to substitute for the one you are deleting. The default choice is to substitute the place "Anywhere", but you can select any other place from the list.