I use Everdo in a busy office environment where it helps me stay on track with what I’m doing while juggling multiple projects and adding new ones on-the-fly as I take phone calls. Having a sequential project blocked by a prior task just seems to make sense to me.
Example sequential project:
- Check sales details with client
- Upload listing
- Check listing views
- Phone client about viewing figures
So on my next action list, the first task of the project is to contact the client to see that they’re happy with the listing (1). I phone the client, and they say they will check it over and get back to me. So at this point, I’d like to move the task to Waiting to effectively put the project on hold until I hear back from the client. This way, if I haven’t heard back from them, I can see that from my Waiting list along with how long I’ve been waiting, or if they call I can go to the Project itself and check it off.
The client is happy with the listing and I check it off. The project returns to my Next list. Now I upload the listing (2) and check it off. I would like to check the figures after a few days after people have viewed it online. I would change the task status to Scheduled and set it for 4 days’ time. Again, this would put the project on hold, clearing my Next actions list of anything related to this project until the time comes for me to deal with it.
4 days later, the project resumes, task (3) appears in my Next actions list. I check the listing views (3), check off the task, and proceed to call the client (4) and complete or add to the project.
This functionality would allow me to set up projects and then action them effectively based on the needs of individual tasks rather than having to make decisions about an entire project by changing its status, possibly several times if it was a particularly long project.
Hope I’ve made sense!
p.s - I’m looking forward to the front-end reminders on the desktop. This would be particularly powerful in this case, as say I called the client and they were on lunch, I could potentially schedule the task for an hour’s time and set a reminder for when to phone again.