Nice. I like this approach. So, the first project is 001 tagged, the next 002, and so forth, capable of up to 999? "p" for project, and "n" for next action?

I like how you do it, I use a similar method.

I like how you do it, I use a similar method.

Just a question, before I try it out myself. What is the actual purpose of the p001 and n001 prefixes? Is it purely for sorting? Wouldn't a tag of "project" or "next action" along with the "001" tag do the same thing?

dan.julian: You got it! p - project, n - next action. Helps you identify projects. vs. next actions when you do the smart search using the project # in the tags filed.

vjcamarena: care to share?!

ajcooper: Yes, but it would be hard to identify what is a project or next action if you used the tags only. Try it out to see what I mean.

@mark.thomsen - I can see that would be a problem, hadn't thought of it that way (hadn't finished my coffee).

oh, ok. For my projects I use tags (same as you) but

-I dont have an "outcomes sought" list -the smartlist titles serve me, though I like the idea.

-I do not follow a prefixing convention. I tag, date and prioritise everything, and then I look at what I have to do in a smartlist (several actually: one for when I'm at the university, one at home, etc) based on that values. (May not be efficient for everyone... but I love it!)

vjcamarenea, if smart lists work for you, regardless of their efficiency, then the solution works! :-) I'm constantly changing my setup, but the prefixing has remained through several changes thus far. Will keep all of you updated as time passes.

oh yeah, I also use smartlists to filter based on my tags. I just created the outcomes sought and next actions lists so I have clean lines/boundaries between the two.

I like this system. Sometimes I prefere to use a character to dictate if a task is part of a project like the plus character + and then add the name of the project after it +example-project.

Thank you for this approach Mark. Unless I'm missing something, it seems to me that you would not even need to have a numeric assignment for projects and next steps. Maybe you were just using p001 & n001 as examples.

Couldn't one use descriptive names instead? Using your example above, it could just as easily be:
p-RTM_Fee_Waiver RTM Annual Fee waved for 2010
n-RTM_Fee_Waiver -1- Document procedures for creating subtasks
n-RTM _Fee_Waiver -2- Post these procedures on RTM forum
n-RTM_Fee_Waiver -3- Pray emily gives me a free 12 months of RTM

And tag everything with "RTM_Fee_Waiver"...that way you don't have to remember which number goes with which project in the tabs. Just a thought.

Thank you for making this contribution.

Seems that tagging tasks belonging to a project with the project name "+project" remains the single best and easiest way to use RTM ofr project-management. And I must say; it does the trick just fine.

John.e.hess - That's another great way to do it! Personally, I like to have my projects list separate from my next actions list. Bias to David Allen, I know.

Sometimes entries in my "Outcomes Sought" list are also much longer than a few words that I can prepend to each next action task. So for example, my outcome sought/project name is: "License for software baseline identified and procured". Taking your approach, as I understand it, I would have to append that lengthy project name to each next action. So instead, I just assigned a code to each outcome/project. Simply clicking the #code will list all tasks associated with that project.

Mats.kirknes - i believe my response plays to your point as well. If not, help me understand by provide an example?

To finish my post..

So by creating a code for the project name, I append ### instead of "License for Software baseline identified and procured". It's easier and faster, in my world that is.

Great idea. I'll have to try out the number codes for projects. I especially like the number prefixes (like n001-1) for task names, because this gets them sorted in the list nicely.

Just to share my current solution for the GTD project/next action problem: I use priority 1 (orange) to mark projects. I don't need 4 levels of priority anyway. This makes projects a different color from next actions of any priority, and puts them at the top of each list. My projects list is then just a smart list for priority 1.

If projects are more complex and require more subdivision, then it gets it own list. In my system, tags are mainly for contexts.

I'm going to give the number system a try though, or maybe think about a combination of the two.

bubbles68 - let me know how the combination of the two systems work out. I'm always open to blowing up my current system so I can evolve it!

mark.thomsen - if I have three projects I manage; I make them available on various smartlists using tags, such as "+sunflower", "+orchid", and "+tulip".

Now I can keep track of the projects individually, as well as having my complete timeline available.

Some projects are routine production though, so I do as bubble68 describes, using the beginning of the task name (as "01-1" og "step1 a") as the list sorts alphabetically . This comes in addition to tags though.

Seems like a lot of trouble to work around that sub-tasks aren't implemented. It would make life a lot easier if they were just built in.

I am beginning to realise they are frowned upon by the developers, just like folders in gmail, so may have to go elsewhere. I do like RTM a lot otherwise though.

sorry to see you go iain. RTM is the best list management tool out there, as that's no only me saying that. Checkout lifehacker and slate - both very reliable and credible sources.

Also, RTM is going to be receiving some new functionality very soon, so maybe you should hang out for a bit ;-)

My Project Management system (subtasks) is still evolving. I've looked at other's ideas and have been stealing shamelessly. A basic need for any system of mine is to minimize typing (I'm a slow and inaccurate typist). Originally, I had long project titles like some of you that had to be typed each time I created a new task. So I've replaced that with a project tag, so I only have to type the first few characters in the tag field until the project I want autoselects, then hit enter. The project tag actually consists of several codes, The first is "pr" which tells me it's a project. Then there are 3 letters to ID the project itself. My current major project is revising a spreadsheet called the Contact Visit spreadsheet, so the code for that is "CVS". Finally, the current subproject I'm working on is adding a new category of contact, so the subproject code is "NewCat". So the tag for this subproject effort is "prcvsnewcat".

I also have a smartlist for each project. My project smartlists all start with "z" to put their tabs together near the end of my tabs. (I also have a "zzz" list to mimic start dates as originally described by Rojan elsewhere in these forums and a tab labeled "~Check" which is the last tab and also "stolen" from someone in these forums to look for tasks I may not have labeled and taggede correctly). So my list for this project/subproject is "zprCVSNetCat". When I add a new task to a project, I select that project's tab, then hit "t" to create the task and enter the task description, which I also try to keep brief but descriptive.
When I enter it, the appropriate tag is automatically assiged, saving even more typing. I then add any other tags needed and assign a priority and a due date. And there you go. So far, it seems to be working.

If anyone has any ideas on how to improve it, let me know. It's neat that RTM is so flexible so we can have different systems to suit our individual needs. And when new features come out, we can adjust to take advantage. Works for me!

The best way would be that subtasks are added in the system. I will not star to use RTM before that happens even if the rest looks great.

Well, if we are talking about better PM using RTM, then actual subtasks support would be really handy. Mainly because with project one might want to create multi-level subtasks. This could become too time consuming if we were to use tags and/or prefixes.

On the other hand if you just need to group tasks into flat project lists, it is sensible to create an RTM list per project and then to use smart lists to create task lists from mixed projects using contexts. Lists can be archived once the project is over which makes perfect sense.

Just a thought (and that's what I do)...

All these suggestions are very labor-intensive and clunky, forcing RTM to do something it really isn't designed to do. Hierarchical task managers (My Life Organized was my favorite) have this set up as part of their design. MLO let you identify projects, tasks, subtasks, etc, and had an easy preference selection "complete tasks in order" so that in a filtered task view (all @Work next actions, for example) you'd see the first task for each project. As you checked off a task, the next task would automatically appear - no constant review of lists required, no laborious & awkward numbering and tagging schemes. I switched to RTM because of easy gmail integration, web access, and the iPhone app. There are a lot of things I like about RTM and I do support it as a pro user. But if MLO gets some of those features, I'll be switching back. Managing my tasks and projects just shouldn't be this hard!

Amanda, I understand your concern, but my methodology works for me In fact, if RTM implemented sub-tasks, I may not use it because I've streamlined my methodology so much with the approach listed above. That's the great thing about RTM - the ability to customize any way you want! Sub-tasks may come along one day. The Smart-Add stuff rocks and is very valuable. Goes to show the development team knows what's important to the greatest # of users.

Hey there,


one simple way to to this is, instead of treating sub-tasks as special, you treat the project and the project steps (or milestones) as special.
This way you divide your project in smaller tasks that can be checked of and don't lose track of the rest.

I create a new tag for each project I have (nothing new there), but I name the tag starting with + (important), - (not important), _ (on hold) to group them on the tag cloud.

Projects have also one task that names the project (with the # prefix) and a due date.
Project steps (or milestones) follow the same idea, with naming and due date, inly the prefix here is ##.

This way you can quickly list "sub-tasks" of a project and "assign it" to a step (or milestone) using the due date, wich makes sense if your steps are sequential.
If they are not, they you can pretent they are as a workaround, setting arbitrary due dates to the steps just to group them.


Well, that's pretty much it, any comments, ideas?

sub tasks please.

subtask please ;) !!!

amanda.stanley , I couldn't put that any better... MLO has a huge setback, either you use dropbox or a usb stick (i will never ever understand why Andrew still relies on FTPs and those outdated approaches), the iphone version has been in developement for years, no email-in feature, etc

If MLO goes up into the cloud, I'm following them... Why not teaming up with MLO?

Regarding subtasks, RTM users have been begging for that for ages (in fact there is a very loooooong post about that) and we don't even have a timeframe...

Hi all,

I am a bit of a newbie, but I like to bite off more than I can chew, so I already upgraded to pro.

I am using 001, 002, etc. as tags, and priorities 1 and 2 to denote projects and subtasks, respectively.

My question to Mark is this: If you number your "next actions", what happens when you have already created 1, 2, and 3, but then you think of something you would like to do as 2, and therefore need to renumber the existing 2 and 3, changing them to 3 and 4?

All input is welcome.

I'm just starting to use RTM and haven't started any subtask listing yet, but it's not too far down the road -- I've been reading this thread for ideas. I'm sorry, but I'm a visual person -- is there any way (or anywhere) these ideas could be shown as a screenshot or something like that? I think I've got the idea but I'm not looking forward to the trial and error process of flipping from blog>task list>blog, trying to figure out the various tags. Otherwise, I'm loving this and the sync to Google and BB.

Hi,

These are good suggestions.

What I don't understand is: if so many people bump their heads on something that clearly is helpful for organizing their tasks, could be solved by RTM, but isn't - then there's a problem - with RTM!

Why do I need to have such a sophisticated tagging system like these suggestions. Why do I need to force tags to do something they are not made to do? Why pollute my tags with something that is meant to show dependencies, a hierarchy?

I really don't get it. I think "Ease of use" as an excuse is just not good enough. There are a number of ways to do this without ever sacrificing "Ease of use" of RTM.

There's already "Location", "URL" and similar things associated with a task. Why not have: "Depends on" where you could enter several other tags? And then have a special View on these which shows these dependencies in a hierarchical view?
This even would allow for several Tasks to be dependent on one single other Task and similar things.

So RTM team: If you are not already working on this. Please implement it, as its' so clearly necessary.

Regards

I've created a new forum post for this, since I doubt anyone will find this comment down here, but I think there's a very simple way to get sub-tasks into RTM without having to add functionality into the system that's not there.

Create a task
Add note
List the subtasks in the note

If you're working on a task and can't remember the next subtask, just open up the note.

i didn't think i needed subtasks.. untill i needed them. not having this functionality is actually quite ridiculous.

ridiculous doesn't do it justice lol - but yes ;)

I was inspired by this method but since I share my tasks with my wife, we can't use the numbers as project tags because my 001 project might not necessarely be my wife's 001 project (but the tag would be share with the tasks).

So we use two tags for projects. First one is "project" to identify the task as a project, I also set it to priority 1 so it's on top of the project list. Also, I add another tag ".briefnameoftheproject" This way I know every tags starting with a dot is a project and I get a project list with the "project" tag.

Subprojects are set the same way as projects but two "dot tags": their own dot tag and the one of the main project.

All actions have the "dot tag" of their respective project or subproject (not both) and next actions have an "na" tag (plus what is needed for the action). One could also set priority of next actions to 2 so they are below the project in a list but above other actions.

I found that setting a (rather complicated) smart list for "misstagged" tasks is quite usefull so that no actions get lost in the process.