i know everdo is not going to support multi-level sub-tasks.
but is it possible to support multi-level checklist?
here is the case which would be useful, first add the following task:
prepare suprise for Mary’s birthday
- prepare one of a gift that she likes:
– IPhone XS MAX
– Macbook Pro
– Samsung S10+
- her favorate birthday cake
- sweet toast on her party
here we will need 3 items of sub-checklist, and we can use 2 of “-” as the second level checklist or even 3 of “-” for further indenting. if everdo can display them as sub-items, then it will be very much helpful.
Until now the product seems promising. I hope that it lives up to the “perfect to-do/GTD app” marketing.
I have tested every product available on the market since 5 years ago. Some of them more than one time. And there is a feature that almost all of them fail, the subproject/subtasks/subfolders (give your prefered name). The only ones that provide it are the non-GTD focused apps, or as honourable exception GTDNext.
And for me it is really a core concept of GTD, as David Allen himself explains that you have to split any task that is not actionable into smaller tasks until you can do it at once.
To say the truth it is the single most common reason for me to fail to acomplish a task. When a task is sitting in my focus list for more than a week I always notice that the reason is that it is too much complex to be solved at once, and for that reason it is always postponed. And most available products on the market limit this feature at most 3 levels.
So, as a new player, I beg your attention to this feature, because I believe it is a competitive advantage over almost all the competition.
The way you describe the issue, it seems like it could be solved by simply splitting the task in question into smaller actions, right?
In general, unlimited-depth project outlining like you see in GTDNext is conceptually too far removed from the current design. In GTD “projects” correspond to “desirable outcomes” and “next actions” correspond to “manageable pieces of work towards an outcome”. According to this model, I believe flat projects make complete sense and outlining at project level is not important enough to pursue (within Everdo). For this approach to work well, it does require to get used to picking the correct scope of the project and to create truly atomic and actionable project actions.
It not need to be unlimited-depth. But must have reasonable amount of levels. I would guess. 6 or 7 at least.
I have personal projects, not power-plant construction, like a one of my house’ room renew that would easily take more than 100 tasks, when properly split. The problem is when a flat list of this tasks is in place it is very dificult to process so much content at one look, it starts to become a nightmare just to look at this list, without being able to assign tasks to subprojects, and I would also like to this project to be part of some long term vision project. So that is the kind of feature that I considered core. To say the truth it is the first thing I test when I run into a new product. And if it fails it is out.
And I see similar requests in many wish lists/foruns of other tools, so I am not the only one with this requirement. But if it is so is conceptually too far removed from the current design, it is good to know it first hand. One less to keep under my radar and to spend time trying.
Would be so great to see this done properly in software. I just don’t see a good way it can be done yet, nor have I seen a good reference implementation. Multi-level projects are not the solution here, I believe.
For me this problem is currently solved with a pen+paper flowchart. It’s easy to create, it’s easy to throw away when plans change. It’s easy to create actionable Everdo projects based on such plan.
The way I see it there are two modes in GTD: planning and execution.
Everdo focuses on execution and has few planning features. The user is “supposed to” add short-term goals (aka Projects) and those are manageable as flat lists of tasks. Larger scale plans need to be kept separate and used as a source of projects to add to Everdo.
Project organization in multiple levels is a planning feature - it adds nothing to aid execution, but it adds complexity in a huge way. And it’s insufficient for planning either, unless it also handles dependencies between projects properly and has great visualization of both project structure and dependencies. Would love to see/try to use something like that.
I would really appreciate any pointers to products that do this right in your opinion. In particular it’s very interesting how dependencies between projects and tasks are managed across multiple levels.
I strongly agree with Leo. I use the free ToDoList for Windows, which supports hierarchical tasks.
I’m looking for a product that:
Doesn’t require a subscription;
Supports hierarchical tasks;
Can be self-hosted on Linux and sychronize across all clients; and
Supports extensive keyboard shortcuts.
Everdo comes really close, but it lacks the feature that I need most: hierarchical tasks. I’m a project manager by profession, and I use MS Project to manage large projects. For personal use, I really need a product that will let me organize personal projects, such as preparing and filing taxes each year, in a logical manner. A project like that involves multiple levels of tasks. For example, “Gather Tax Forms From Brokerages” is a summary task for gathering the forms from: Schwab, TD Ameritrade, and E*Trade.
There is a very good reason to support hierarchical tasks. Our brains don’t work well with very long lists of items. We can’t easily deal with more than around 7 to 9 items in short-term memory, but this becomes much more manageable when tasks can be arranged into a hierarchy, so that we can expand or collapse an outline to see whichever level of detail, or whichever part of the outline, we’re interested in.
I urge you to please think hard about redesigning Everdo to support hierarchical tasks at a fundamental level. I really believe that this should be at the very heart of the product. If you’re able to do this, I would buy a license immediately. Currently, I wouldn’t be able to use Everdo for my needs.
I can understand people who want more manageable hierarchy of tasks or projects but I am sure that eventually it leads to unnecessary complexity. GTD gives Areas, project and tasks with unlimited number of contexts. It is enough to manage all of our commitments successfully.
This is the most important aspect to understand. Complex hierarchy comes from traditional projects planning and managing software. GTD makes these parts separate for planning/support material and managing next actions. It is logical and it has its value. I think GTD oriented software should not have such complex hierarchy.
I appreciate your points. It’s certainly possible to support hierarchical checklists in some way, but it is not a priority compared to many other things.
When it comes to fundamentally changing the app design to fit task hierarchies, I’m afraid that’s not going to be feasible. We are very much locked into the current approach, which @Mateusz has pointed out.
I found Everdo while looking for an alternative to MyLifeOrganized, in which I have a few thousand tasks accumulated over many years. It’s true that I don’t actually really get to do those tasks, so I understand why @Andrei prefers to keep the tool simple and not implement hierarchies (<-- the most current discussion about this feature request, for those who land here after a search).
My use of MLO is more as a place to mind-map the myriads of tasks I hope to get to some day, each with resources in its notes. Then when a task becomes urgent, I can refer to its associated resources (subtasks, notes etc.).