How do you track repetitive tasks towards long term goals?
This program seems great for one time goals. However, how would it help someone learn the guitar? For example: let’s say in one year you want to play a particular song to others. To get to that point you may want to finish a chapter of a book each month. You also want to practice every day with a minimum of 5 days a week. How would you record this? One could put in 52 individual weeks of practice but this seems ugly and not sure how the success of completing each week would appear?
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Support Staff 1 Posted by Marcus Baur on 25 Dec, 2009 11:05 PM
Hi Glenn,
this is a very good question. I must admit that we still look for a clean implementation of recurring tasks (or goals).
One thing that needs to be understood is that for building any skill, or object, there is a period of building it followed by a indefinite period of maintaining what has been built. It might not always be that clear cut, but that is the basic pattern. So if your goal is to play the guitar like Hendrix, you could create a subgoal that is about getting to the level Hendrix was at and another one that is about staying there. The first subgoal would have recurring exercises with changing content that aim for a given skillset, whilst the second one would only aim to maintain the skills that have been learned.
I believe this is actually pretty universal for almost any goal.
To make it work consistently in Goalscape, recurring goals need to be tied to a timeline. This is currently being mapped out, and I will inform you once we have it mocked up. I would be glad to get your feedback on it.
For now, your proposal is the best possible solution and it actually works well, if you narrow the timeframe to 4 to 8 weeks and then restart with a new goalscape. That keeps motivation levels up as well. Any week can be a subgoal that can be ticked off. The progress reflects upwards automatically depending on the importance of that week, so tracking the progress is easy.
Hope this helped, let me know if you have other ideas.
Kind regards, Marcus Baur
To make it work, we need to improove the timeline
2 Posted by Glenn Shukster on 26 Dec, 2009 04:02 AM
Hi Marcus
Thanks for getting back to me so fast.
I used to create customs software for 15 years so below are some thoughts.
You may have already addressed them and decided not to do them for reasons I
have not thought of.
- This reminds me of data entry vs. reporting issue
- Your data entry and reporting are currently one in the same
- not sure if you really address either future tasks or repetitive tasks
(different from each other)
- Repetitive task should only take up one time slot and may or may not be
calculated into accomplishing the final goal
- you have fields for start and end date yet you report on completed goal
only when all the sub goals even if in future have been completed. How do I
know if I am on track according to my plan?
Option
- Have a second view or report to show if I am on track for what I am
supposed to have done right now. It would not include (hide) sub goals that
have not been started yet.
- You need a variable to differentiate between repetitive and future goals.
Repetitive tasks may or may not be included when assessing if the overall
goal has been achieved, but can be looked in the on track report.
- You may want a 3rd report to track success of repetitive tasks, which
means you want an easy way to record each day or week when you do a task.
Eg. Played 30 min of guitar today. I really just want to right click and
indicate day and min completed that day.
- Because your tool is visual you may want repetitive tasks in another
color.
- You only want it to show up once because visually it should only take up x
amount of time, to repeat it would throw off your paradigm of visually
showing you only have so much time in a day.
If I am saying anything of interest and you want to discuss it further, a
phone call may bring more clarity.
Regards,
-----
Glenn Shukster
(416)456-3766
http://twitter.com/GlennShukster
Successful entrepreneur with extensive software sales experience, currently
seeking sales opportunities
----- Original Message -----
From: "marcus.baur"
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To: <[email blocked]>
Sent: Friday, December 25, 2009 6:05 PM
Subject: Re: How do you track repetitive tasks towards long term goals?
[Questions]
Support Staff 3 Posted by Marcus Baur on 04 Jan, 2010 10:14 AM
Hi Glenn,
please excuse my absence - I have been on vacation. Your thoughts are very valuable and important to extend the versatility of Goalscape. The challange is to not compromise usability of course.
I would love to talk to you! Especially about our decision to make no differentiation between tasks and goals (or visions, missions, programs, projects and other arbitrary code). We believe that goalsetting is the challenge and it should not be clouded by too much jargon. But this means that repetitive tasks are multiple subgoals to one goal.
For me, a meaningful report or outlook needs to state which timeframe it relates to. I would like to do this visually on a timeline. All goals within this timeframe would be displayed and the progress would be calculated in relation to this timeframe as well.
When could we discuss these issues? When are you available?
Kind regards, Marcus
4 Posted by Glenn Shukster on 05 Jan, 2010 04:48 AM
Hi Marcus
I am in Toronto, Canada. Eastern Time Zone. Not sure which time zone you
are in.
You can call me tomorrow morning at 9 am my time if that works for you.
I sort of agree repetitive tasks are multiple subgoals to one goal.
However, I do not want to maintain the many repetitive subgoals entries.
Look forward to our discussion.
Glenn Shukster
----- Original Message -----
From: "marcus.baur"
<[email blocked]>
To: <[email blocked]>
Sent: Monday, January 04, 2010 5:14 AM
Subject: Re: How do you track repetitive tasks towards long term goals?
[Questions]
Support Staff 5 Posted by Marcus Baur on 05 Jan, 2010 02:02 PM
How can I reach you? Phone. Skype?
6 Posted by Glenn Shukster on 05 Jan, 2010 02:13 PM
Skype, what is your skype address?
----- Original Message -----
From: "marcus.baur"
<[email blocked]>
To: <[email blocked]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 2010 9:02 AM
Subject: Re: How do you track repetitive tasks towards long term goals?
[Questions]
Support Staff 7 Posted by Marcus Baur on 05 Jan, 2010 02:33 PM
My skypename is: marcusbaur
8 Posted by Ben on 09 Feb, 2010 11:29 PM
I am solving this currently by having a separate file for daily tasks/goals. Every day I copy the template I made and add the current date and use that file. At the day`s end I archive the file.
It is a bit tedious, but the same system works for weekly and monthly goals. This is not really a contribution to the discussion, but a suggestion for a workaround until repeating goals are (maybe) implemented.
Support Staff 9 Posted by Richard Parslow on 10 Feb, 2010 12:32 PM
Thanks Ben for the idea about using separate 'daily goalscapes' to record (progress in) ongoing tasks - that would seem to be a very comprehensive workaround, if perhaps a bit 'admin-heavy'!
We are implementing a 'timeline' function to display all goals falling within a certain (user-defined) period, with relevant durations, responsibilities, etc. There will also be an option to display a time-based goalscape view showing only the current goals and hiding those that are complete or not yet started.
There will also be a filter function to highlight goals with a certain tag (eg 'due this week' or by person responsible); goals without the tag will still appear, but will be 'grayed out'.
10 Posted by Marty on 11 Feb, 2010 05:05 PM
i would chime in on the need to get the recurring goals figured out. i am wokring on a project that includes "keeping the client informed" as a goal. The sub- to that are weekly reports.
I and think of a recurring goal having a timeline and then a field for number of occurrences. The project is 12 weeks so the increments of goal progress would take the timeline and divide by 12. As each report is completed the Goal gets shaded 1/12th.
Support Staff 11 Posted by Marcus Baur on 15 Feb, 2010 09:00 AM
We decided that recurring goals will be separate instances on the timeline. Find attached excerpt from the specification. Your ideas are very welcome.
12 Posted by Glenn Shukster on 15 Feb, 2010 02:17 PM
Hi Marcus
Read through your document on recurring goals and while it looks like a
great start I was not clear on a few things.
Recurring goals display as one record, but are they stored as seperate
records?
Assuming they are seperate records.
How will progress be displayed in current view. Will it be for the current
record for that time frame of the recurring goal. How will the recurring
goal progress over the whole project be reflected in the overall goals
progress?
Glenn
----- Original Message -----
From: "marcus.baur"
<[email blocked]>
To: <[email blocked]>
Sent: Monday, February 15, 2010 4:00 AM
Subject: Re: How do you track repetitive tasks towards long term goals?
[Questions]
Support Staff 13 Posted by Marcus Baur on 19 Feb, 2010 11:58 AM
Recurring goals display as one record, but are they stored as seperate
records?
MB: Yes they are. Every recurring Goal will be a seperate goal. This will require time filtering. We are in the midst of designing that feature.
Assuming they are seperate records.
How will progress be displayed in current view. Will it be for the current
record for that time frame of the recurring goal. How will the recurring
goal progress over the whole project be reflected in the overall goals
progress?
MB: It depends which timeframe you choose. Progress needs to be calculated in relation to the filtered goals. If you only look at this weeks goals, you will also only see this weeks progress. If you look at all the goals in the coming year, your weekly progress will be relatively small.
I hope that helped to clarify your questions, if not, please let me know.
14 Posted by Michael Preiss on 26 Mar, 2010 04:25 PM
@Marcus Baur wrote: "Find attached excerpt from the specification."
Marcus -
I reviewed the PDF you provided in this discussion and, of course, have read the various comments in the discussion, and I have to say that everything looks and sounds very slick. I'm looking forward to seeing and playing with the implementation of the feature.
Michael
15 Posted by Glenn Shukster on 17 Jul, 2010 08:10 PM
Hi Marcus
I see you have enhanced many things.
Any progress on this feature?
Glenn
Support Staff 16 Posted by Marcus Baur on 27 Jul, 2010 06:55 AM
Hi Glenn,
thank you for your interest - to be realistic, my estimate is that this will only make it in later this year - we have our hands full with Goalscape Connect, the iPhone app and some more urgent enhancements. But rest assured - recurring and also synergetic goals will make it in eventually.
Kind regards, Marcus
Marcus Baur closed this discussion on 27 Jul, 2010 06:55 AM.