Places

Places in Life Balance are used to filter the tasks in your To Do List.

You will want to create a list of places that is tailored to the way that you work, where the most important places will be the ones where you typically consult your To Do list for what to do next.

Places are listed under the Places tab on the left side of the screen. When you select a particular place from the list, the Place Details panel will appear in the upper-right side of the window where you can edit the included places, hours, and notes.

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, click on the New Place button and write the name of the new place into the blank.

You can also enter a new place name by entering a new place name in the Task Details for a task. Life Balance will ask you if you want to create a new Place and if you say yes, it will add your new Place name to the list of available Places.

A third way to create a new place is to duplicate an existing place. To duplicate a place, select it and then choose “Duplicate Place” from the Edit menu. The new place will have the same name, included places, hours and notes as the original place. To avoid confusion, you should give the new place a unique name.

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 under the “Includes” tab of the Place Details panel. Click on the check box next to the more specific places in the list so that a check mark appears next to the ones that should be included in the more general place.

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. If the “Include closed places” checkbox at the top of the To Do List is unchecked, then Life Balance will hide tasks that are assigned to places that are currently closed. You can set the hours for a place under the “Hours” tab in the Place Details.

The hours tab displays a grid showing days of the week across the top and hours of the day down the side. Hours when a place is open are displayed in daylight colors with orange during the day, and hours when a place is closed are displayed in darker blue. To toggle a range of days and times from open to closed, drag the mouse across the range of days and times you want to change. Drag the mouse diagonally to change a range of days to the same value. If you need help clicking on the right time, holding the mouse still over the grid will display a tip telling you which time your mouse is over. The hours and days you have selected are displayed above the chart as you work on setting the hours.

There are buttons at the bottom of the Hours tab to set the hours to Always Open or Always Closed. It may be convenient to press the Always Closed button, and then select just the hours when a place is open.

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

The desktop edition of Life Balance is able to is able to record more than one open period per day, and open hours that span midnight. The Palm mobile edition will honor these settings from the desktop as long as you do not edit the place on the handheld.

Notes

Place notes are available for editing whenever the Place Details are visible. Click on the Note tab and enter your text. You can also drag-and-drop text from other applications like email.

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

Deleting a Place

To delete a place, select it in the list of Places and choose Delete Place from the Edit menu.

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.