Add a Task Status field: Completed, Unstarted, Deferred, Cancelled, In Progress
Currently, this kind of thing is reserved for Projects, but even simple tasks have a "started" component to them-- for things that are assigned to someone else, for example, or a task that will take longer than just an immediate thing.
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Jordan Boock commented
also update the projects fields to have a deferred option.
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Peter Panino commented
Yes, a colored dot (maybe user-defined) in the checkbox (not too small!) would be nice.
There are many type of tasks which cannot be split into sub-tasks, and people normally are working on several tasks at the same time (multi-tasking). I sometimes forget about tasks I have started, so it would be helpful having a view which shows only started tasks (without projects in progress).
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Greg commented
I like this idea... Franklin Covey uses a dot in the check box to denote that a task is in progress. I think that is a nice clean way to show it on the task list.
Often I start a task but have to move to another based on interruption or simply attention deficit... rather than say I'm waiting for one thing or another it would be good to notate that I have started.
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Peter Panino commented
I agree: Currently Tasks have only TWO states:
1. Undone (checkbox unchecked)
2. Done (checkbox checked)This is NOT helpful, as tasks may also endure for a longer time (e.g. several days or weeks). And in this time it is important to see which are the current tasks in progress needed to be completed. This concept differs from Projects In Progress, as Projects generally have subtasks (and the Project's progress depends from its completed sub-tasks), while Tasks in progress are just what the word says: Single Tasks. So when I display Projects in Progress on the To-Do tab, it shows me all the sub-tasks of these projects which creates confusion. I want to see only TASKS IN PROGRESS (beside Tasks which *need to be done* which then would be shown in an other To-Do view). This IMHO is one of the painfully missing features in MLO: The program assumes that all Tasks can be done in a very short time (e.g. making a phone-call), but neglects the importance of longer Tasks.
A simple and easily to implement solution would be: Make the TASK checkboxes TRI-STATE! So when I first click an unchecked Task checkbox (Task undone) it first becomes filled (= Task in progress), and only after clicking it again it becomes checked (Task done). When the user wants to make an unchecked Task checkbox checked (without the intermediate state) he would click the checkbox with a pressed modifier-key. The tri-state Task checkbox could be implemented as an option, so people who are satisfied with the current two-state checkboxes would not notice any change of behavior.
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Sergey Dzhurinskiy commented
According to GTD each action could be in a list of Waiting action, Planned action and "Action that should be done as fast as possible". I suggest doing task, that could have as many statuses as possible. MLO will become much more flexible after that.
Currently I use flags to differ tasks of different nature (red flag for waitings, green flag for planned and no flag for other actions), but unfortunately option of using flag is not available in Android version of MLO(((( -
Fletcher Kauffman commented
This is just intended to expand from the binary: not complete-> complete.