Hello there !
Recent new user of Everdo; I loved the privacy and offline aspects, loved the GTD integration, and I’m having a great time with Everdo. Thanks again for the project !
I just wanted to propose a feature that I’ve seen, and that I think could have some great potential in everdo : Task/Actions relations or links.
I’ve been experimenting with different task-related software those past years, in parallel with note-taking software. One of the things that strikes me as a huge boost in productivity is the idea of relation and encapsulation, that allow us to make “paths” between precise units of information. This way, it’s really easy to find what we want : we just have to follow the path. No need to remember, and the mental load stays minimal when we’re being active.
In GTD, there is already a big part of encapsulation. Actions are supposed to be usable by themselves, without their broader context : we don’t need to re-read everything about a project when we want to act on it. we just need to find one of the next actions, and do it. This encapsulation is done when the action is noted, not after. At worst, a note associated to my action will just guide me toward a project resource, giving me everything I need to act.
But GTD - and Everdo as it is today - lacks the idea of relation in my point of view. That is, when we finish a task, or activate a task that was “Waiting” or “Someday”, we might need to activate others in return. This often happen in the case of projects : many projects are parallel in nature, but they have different “branches” of successive actions. We might have noted all of these actions; but we have no way of properly and quickly note their relations when I’m creating the actions, which is when those relations are clear in my mind. This forces me to re-read different lists when an action is done or when I want to start it, and look at each action one by one to think : is there something new I need to focus on now that this is action is done ?
And their can be many relations between actions or tasks; I think that Vikunja shows it well by having many different possible relations between them.
In addition, I’ve seen some debates on this forum about the possibility of “nested” lists of tasks, and the fact that this would break the kind of non-hierarchical way that GTD’s actions are made. I think that task relations would solve this issue too : tasks relations can imply a hierarchy, but it doesn’t have to be represented in the interface. Several tasks can have a relation with a “parent” task, and that’s it.
Interface-wise, or in practice, I imagine that there could be a “task relation” field when editing a task, maybe under the “tags/labels” field. There would be a search field where text would be entered to quickly find a task, by showing tasks in a dynamic list as the user types. Then, a list of relations could be chosen; the simplest would be something like “When this task is done, focus on this other task”, or “This action must be done before this one”, etc.
Now that I’ve written too much, what’s your opinion on such a feature ? Would it be useful to you ? Do you find yourself having to re-read action lists often to find relations again ? Do you write such relations already in your tasks notes ? Or do you solve this problem of relations with the structure of GTD (e.g. “Waiting” lists, etc.) ?