Bring back unscheduled later items
Taking these away with the new update drastically changed the function of the program. Now management is forced and clunkier. I don't have time to select a date for every single item on my Later list. Because the system was so ambiguous it worked better than any other program out there, but now that I have to set a time for everything the program is so frustrating it's more efficient to go back to paper.
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Dick commented
Man, that really makes me happy. I have some other ideas as well.
But you are absolutely right - the beauty of this program is it's simplicity.There are so many other programs that do todo list but they all suffer from feature 'barf' (sorry) like folders, colorschemes, groups, multicalendar and on and on. With as a result 'click overload' to do the simplist things.
Maybe there should be an option in the Microsoft store to pay for not adding 'features'. haha
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Hi Dick,
I'm now committed to bringing the unscheduled Later items back. It's just a question of how to fit them into the user interface while keeping the simplicity of the design and leaving room for the upcoming "Projects" feature.
If you're interested in providing early feedback on the design, please email your Microsoft account email address to support@hotchaipro.com and let me know that you'd like to be a beta tester.
Thanks for your excellent feedback!
-David
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Dick commented
I've read the comments and understand that it is possible to do without the Later category.
But I still feel strong that the Later category fits a specific type of things I want to remember.I'm now forced to decide between Scheduled (which it is NOT) and never (which I certainly hope it is not), tomorrow (which it is probably not and might be even sooner than soon).
All I know is that it is NOT Sooner and it is NOT Never but I'm not sure when. It is simply 'Later' Later is the perfect classification of the item. Then, every once and a while I go over my Later list and simply left swipe them to 'Sooner' or right swipe them to 'Never'.
Why take out something that was perfect and replace it with a workaround?
So, if this hadn't been a feature I would probably be asking for it.So if it's up to me, please bring it back and that on creation the default is 'Sooner' but with one thumb-poke I can make it 'Later'.
Also, I just love the name of the app describing exactly it's brilliance 'Sooner or Later'. What are we going to call it now: 'Sooner or Never'? :-)
-Dick
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Thank you for your articulate feedback, Paige! You've sold me.
Now I just have to figure out how to fit all of these options onto one small screen.
I want to bring the concept of projects into the app, and with separate Later and Scheduled and Favorites and Soon and Complete and eventually, Projects tabs, this app is getting way more complicated than I'd like. I really want to maintain its simplicity.
I've actually been thinking about how to do this since you first posted your comment, and my thought is that I will sort unscheduled later items to the top of the Later list, rather than splitting them out into a separate list.
But I still haven't figured out how to keep things simple when moving items to Later. I already have two command bar buttons to move items to Later (the tomorrow and the scheduled later buttons), and I'm out of space on small screens, not to mention that three different buttons for Later may get awkward and confusing.
I will ponder this and come up with something.
If you're interested in beta testing, email me at support@hotchaipro.com. I'll need the email address of your Microsoft account to add you to the beta.
Thanks again for the great feedback!
-David
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Paige Hanson commented
PS, thank you for taking the time to review and respond to my comment.
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Paige Hanson commented
I use the never list and the tomorrow feature actively. I loved having two tiers of "not soon" because it helped sort and prioritize the many different tasks I manage which often have to jump between soon, later, and never. The never list was great for things about which I could put my mind to rest and resurrect if they resurfaced. Never was truly a never list. Then management of the later list got that much easier. Things switched between soon and later very often, and it was nice that it wasn't encumbered with things on my never list as well. The problem I now face with with the tomorrow feature is that I have quite a long list of later items that appear and disappear throughout a week or more. The previous version of this app allowed me to keep massive amounts of specifically "later" tasks in a well-organized and easy-to-manage system. I'm talking like thirty items or so. Some stay on longer than a week, or some a month or more, but they are all still active things, not appropriate for the never list. I have 10 or so daily recurring tasks on my soon list, which is very nice with the schedule feature. At the end of the day some unfinished ones I would skip, some I would assign for tomorrow, and others I would I throw on to the later list because the requirements for completion depended on circumstances outside my control, like waiting to hear back from someone. But now I have to assign arbitrary dates to many constantly changing tasks, or I have to swipe thirty items away to bother me tomorrow, or my daily list gets flooded with items I don't want to see because the arbitrary date I assigned came up, or I have to scroll through a large list of "never" things to sort out my "later" things to make sure I'm aware of things coming up--see what I'm getting at? It changed on a fundamental level--tomorrow, never, later, scheduled, even favorites and skip--i used all of those features, i used all of those separate lists--it was a perfectly functioning system to fit large or small or recurring amounts of items, it was better than all the other apps because none of them could do it so easily. Never and tomorrow features are still nice, but this current version makes more work in my list management than the previous version did.
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Dick commented
I completely agree with this. It was the main reason i was attracted to the app