General questions about the app and future plans

[AtBios]

Hello again!

After using Everdo now for a couple of days there are some things I’m curios about (that I didn’t find or missed on the roadmap). I’m mostly curios if there are ideas or such for this, I wouldn’t say it’s anything stopping me from switching 100% over, but I would still like to know.

1. Sub-projects

I have some larger projects that I have split up into several “sub-projects”. At the moment they are tagged so I know they belong togheter, but I wonder if there are any plans on adding support to add sub-projects to a project. Mostly to make it easier to find and see.

2. Change/Add so “Focus” marked tasks are at the top of the “Next” list

I really like that I can set a “Focus” on tasks I have a deadline on. However, I would prefer seeing that among all my next actions under “Next”, but maybe at the top under it’s own header. Just like it says “Next” and “Done”, maybe another header at the top that says “Focus” and you can open and close it like all other headers.

3. Be able to change the order in the sidebar

Currently how it looks it says:

1. Actions
2. Projects
3. Contexts (if I have them)
4. Notebooks
5. Tags
6. Cleanup

Would it be possible to make this changeable? Because I need to access my “Projects” a lot less often that I need to access my “Contexts” and since I have quite a lot of projects (which I assume most people do, I believe David Allans says most people have between 30-100 projects) I always need to scroll past that and then up again when I want to access the “Actions” area.

This isn’t something really important to me, but would be a nice change.

4. Mobile: When I click a project, please show me all next actions associated with it

When you go into a project on mobile at the moment you end up editing the project. I understand why this happens, but would it be possible to also add all your next actions associated with the project there? Most of the time when I click on a project I want to see all associated Next Actions, and on mobile I first need to find one Next Action that belongs to the project and try to click the small blue link to it. With my huge fingers I tend to miss and 95% of the time I end up just editing the task instead.

5. What is the plan for the “quick goto”

I’m just wondering if it is something like in VS Code where you press CTRL+P (I don’t remember the command 100%) and you get a small search bar so you can jump quickly between projects, contexts, etc.?

6. Is there any future plans to add a “Read” list?

GTD talks about having a “Read & Review” list for articles and such. Is there any plan on adding a specific list for adding that? Since that isn’t really a “Next Action” in a way that you do it at X, but if you have ten minutes to read something you go into the list and just picks the article you want to read.

I believe that is the few things I have noticed up until this moment of usage. I really look forward to seeing the roadmap implemented! I also want to mention that I see these as questions and nothing that will stop me from buying the app. I’m really just curios if anything of this is planned or what other users / devs think.

[manu]

@AtBios

At the moment they are tagged so I know they belong togheter, but I wonder if there are any plans on adding support to add sub-projects to a project. Mostly to make it easier to find and see.

I use a project prefix to do this and then search for the prefix to get a overview of related projects. You even could use a identifier like P020.3.5 using the dots to build your project hierarchy, although I didn’t try this yet.

@AtBios

I really like that I can set a “Focus” on tasks I have a deadline on.

Since “focus” is not listed in your navigation panel, could it be that you disabled it?
Grouping and sorting is one of the weak points of everdo IMHO

@AtBios

Be able to change the order in the sidebar

I would like to change the order, too.

@AtBios

GTD talks about having a “Read & Review” list for articles and such. Is there any plan on adding a specific list for adding that?

Just use the “Someday” list, that is exactly how David Allen suggest how to handle this. Is this missing in your everdo?

[Andrei]

@AtBios

I have some larger projects that I have split up into several “sub-projects”. At the moment they are tagged so I know they belong togheter, but I wonder if there are any plans on adding support to add sub-projects to a project. Mostly to make it easier to find and see.

There are no plans to support sub-projects at the moment.

@AtBios

I really like that I can set a “Focus” on tasks I have a deadline on. However, I would prefer seeing that among all my next actions under “Next”, but maybe at the top under it’s own header. Just like it says “Next” and “Done”, maybe another header at the top that says “Focus” and you can open and close it like all other headers.

Think of Focus as a special tag with its own list, that’s it. It doesn’t make sense to show all Focused actions under Next. Only Next action appear under Next, whether they are focused or not.

@AtBios

Would it be possible to make this changeable? Because I need to access my “Projects” a lot less often that I need to access my “Contexts” and since I have quite a lot of projects (which I assume most people do, I believe David Allans says most people have between 30-100 projects) I always need to scroll past that and then up again when I want to access the “Actions” area.

I think I have not heard a concern about too many projects in navigation before. When divided between different areas and move to the appropriate status (active/someday
/scheduled), 30-100 projects is quite manageable.

Being able to reorder the navigation section is one of those things that is not hard to do, but also of questionable significance for 95% of users, so it won’t get done unless there’s a real need.

@AtBios

When you go into a project on mobile at the moment you end up editing the project. I understand why this happens, but would it be possible to also add all your next actions associated with the project there? Most of the time when I click on a project I want to see all associated Next Actions, and on mobile I first need to find one Next Action that belongs to the project and try to click the small blue link to it. With my huge fingers I tend to miss and 95% of the time I end up just editing the task instead.

This probably could be improved, but needs some thinking through.

@AtBios

I’m just wondering if it is something like in VS Code where you press CTRL+P (I don’t remember the command 100%) and you get a small search bar so you can jump quickly between projects, contexts, etc.?

This feature is on List B of the backlog. That means lower priority than most other pending improvements/features.

This way of navigation is critical for code editors / IDEs since there are on the order of thousands files in a project, so you cannot navigate effectively otherwise. In Everdo the number of navigation targets is much smaller, so I don’t see goto as extremely important.

@AtBios

GTD talks about having a “Read & Review” list for articles and such.

The book encourages making lists for all kinds of things. I find this very easy to do using the Notebooks feature. For example you can create a notebook “Reading lists” where each item is a checklist of books on a particular topic. Or you can have one notebooks with various lists per area, as I personally do.

[AtBios]

@Andrei

I think I have not heard a concern about too many projects in navigation before. When divided between different areas and move to the appropriate status (active/someday
/scheduled), 30-100 projects is quite manageable.

Being able to reorder the navigation section is one of those things that is not hard to do, but also of questionable significance for 95% of users, so it won’t get done unless there’s a real need.

Hmm, maybe I didn’t explain this clearly enough. Because they thing I mean is this:

I can’t even see my Context menu by default, but I want to access that constantly. However, I will also admit that after using it more yesterday I started using the filters more in the “Next” part, so I’m not sure I really need this anymore. Just wanted to clarify what I meant.

@Andrei

This feature is on List B of the backlog. That means lower priority than most other pending improvements/features.

This way of navigation is critical for code editors / IDEs since there are on the order of thousands files in a project, so you cannot navigate effectively otherwise. In Everdo the number of navigation targets is much smaller, so I don’t see goto as extremely important.

That is understandable. I was mostly curios what your plan was on how it would work in Everdo. I also agree with you that it is far from a critical feature, I believe it is something only coders use often. For me it is something I look for in every single app I use. E.G. I use “Joplin” for note-taking part of the reason is that it has that feature, I use “fman” for file-explorer because it has that feature. So this question was mostly asked out of interest.

@Andrei

The book encourages making lists for all kinds of things. I find this very easy to do using the Notebooks feature. For example you can create a notebook “Reading lists” where each item is a checklist of books on a particular topic. Or you can have one notebooks with various lists per area, as I personally do.

Hmm, this is actually true. I haven’t even looked into the “Notebook” section of Everdo, I need to do that!

@Andrei

Think of Focus as a special tag with its own list, that’s it. It doesn’t make sense to show all Focused actions under Next. Only Next action appear under Next, whether they are focused or not.

Also makes sense! I agree with your answer of this now that I spent some more time thinking about it.

[gypsyav]

@AtBios

Hmm, maybe I didn’t explain this clearly enough. Because they thing I mean is this:

I can’t even see my Context menu by default, but I want to access that constantly. However, I will also admit that after using it more yesterday I started using the filters more in the “Next” part, so I’m not sure I really need this anymore. Just wanted to clarify what I meant.

You can click on the sidebar headers and minimize them. No need to scroll past the entire list.