Assigning the Importance of a task

The importance of a task indicates how necessary this task is to completing the project that contains it in the Outline.

Drag the importance slider left to reduce the importance or right to increase it. If the project cannot be completed without finishing this task, then the importance slider should be set to “essential”, regardless of the importance of the project. If it is possible to complete the project without finishing this task, then set the slider to an appropriate lower value. Even though there are labels for particular positions on the slider, the range of values for the slider is continuous and you can set the importance to any position along the slider.

Setting the importance slider in Life Balance is different from setting a task priority in most to do list software. In most other programs, you set a priority manually by comparing a task to every other task in your to do list, usually with a limited set of possible values. In Life Balance, you only need to consider the importance of the task to achieving the goal. Changing the importance slider for a project with subtasks will change the position of those subtasks in the To Do List, even though the importance sliders in the subtasks do not change.

When you update your To Do List, the importance value is combined with the importance of a task's parents (and other factors) to come up with an overall calculated priority which controls the order of tasks in the To Do List view. Since the importance of the task's parents is automatically factored in, there's no need (in fact it's counter-productive) to try to set a task's overall priority using the importance slider. Just think about how important the task is to accomplishing the goal above it, and leave the rest to the software.

The importance of a task or project can be changed at any time. If a project has to be put on the back burner for a while, you may want to lower its importance rating temporarily and then raise it later.

If you set the slider all the way to the left to "None", that task and any subtasks will not appear on your To Do List. Use this for planning projects that you may have no intention of working on right now. When you are ready to tackle the project, simply raise the importance and the tasks will reappear the next time you update your To Do List. Most of the time the importance slider should be set to reflect some importance, even if it is very little.

Assigning Places to Tasks

When you enter a task or goal into the outline, you can specify where that task can be performed. You can display a list of your places by tapping on the table cell when you are in edit mode for the Task Details. Then select the appropriate place from your list.

There is a special place in Life Balance called “Anywhere”. Tasks that are assigned to Anywhere will be displayed on all of your To Do Lists, regardless of which place is selected at the top of the To Do List panel. New top-level tasks are assigned to the place Anywhere when they are created.

When you create a new subtask, it is initially assigned to the same place as its parent task. When you are entering a group of related tasks, you can save time by setting a place for a project before you create its subtasks.

Specifying Dates, Times, and Schedules

If a task needs to happen according to a particular schedule, you can assign that schedule by tapping on the table cell when you are in edit mode for the Task Details. There are four types of schedules that you can assign to a task using the “Happens” popup menu: Once, Routinely, By due date and By Calendar:

Lead Time

If you choose Routinely, By due date, or By Calendar you should also enter the amount of lead time you will need to get ready for the event or task.

Lead Time prevents future tasks from appearing on your To Do list until you are ready to work on them. Tasks will not appear on your To Do List until twice the Lead Time before the deadline, and will gradually reach their maximum priority at one Lead Time before the deadline. If you need three days to prepare for an event, the Task will appear on your list six days before the deadline at a low priority, and gradually climb the list so that three days before the event it has its maximum priority. This does not necessarily mean that it will be at the very top of the list, only that it will attain the highest priority it can have relative to your other tasks and projects.

Complete subtasks in order

There is a table cell in the "Time" section of the Task Details titled "Complete subtasks in order". Selecting this allows you to set up a sequence of tasks that must be completed in order. When you choose to complete subtasks in order, only the first uncompleted subtask (and its children) will be included in the Life Balance To Do List. Essentially, this allows you to break a project down into "stages" where each stage must be completed before the next stage can begin.

The restriction that subtasks must be completed in order only extends down one level in the outline, so if the stages of your project are broken down into even smaller tasks, Life Balance assumes that these tasks may be completed in any order. For instance:

• Project A (Complete subtasks in order)
  • Stage 1
  • Stage 2
    • Task A
    • Task B
  • Stage 3

In this outline, Stage 1 must be completed first. Then Task A and Task B must be completed, but the order doesn't matter and they will both appear on the To Do List at the same time. When both Task A and Task B are completed, Stage 2 will appear on the To Do List and can immediately be checked off. Then Stage 3 will appear.

Effort

Effort is an abstract term that can be used to apply to time spent, task complexity, or even task stressfulness. In the Balance section of Life Balance, in the Actual pie chart, you are awarded credit for the effort or energy that you bring to the top-level goals that are important in your Life. The Balance section shows where your time and energy are being spent, and helps you to balance those efforts by adjusting your to do list to match your actual pie chart to the desired pie chart.

Generally it is a good practice to break your goals down into what feel like manageable tasks. This is certainly less overwhelming for tackling long-range plans, and if you do this consistently, you may not need to adjust the Effort slider at all.

There are circumstances where you may nevertheless find that some tasks require more or less effort than others and times when you may want to adjust how tasks get credited to your Balance section pie charts.

You may simply want to get higher credit for a task that takes more time to accomplish, but time is not always a good measure of effort. Sometimes you may want to get extra credit for completing an especially difficult or stressful task even if it doesn’t take very long.

When you create a new task, it will default to having the same amount of effort assigned that its parent task has. (This is similar to the way that tasks inherit places from their parents.) This way, you can create an item called "Buy groceries" with a very small amount of credit, and each item you add to the grocery list and check off will only give you a small amount of credit. This effectively allows you to have different credit defaults for different parts of your outline.

You can adjust the effort slider lower, for frequent, small tasks that would otherwise skew the effort awarded in the Actual pie chart too high for that top-level goal.

Notes

On the iPhone, notes appear below the task description. You can add a note to a task when you are in edit mode for the Task Details.

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