Timebox (grouping scheduled tasks)
under review
skoglundjonas
Not long ago, Morgen added the possibility to create tasks as small as 5 minutes, which was great.
However, it became a challenge to add several smaller tasks to the calendar. The calendar either gets cluttered, or you have to adjust the time display resolution to 5 minutes, making it impossible to view a full day without scrolling up and down the window on a typical monitor.
As a solution, I wish it were possible to create timeboxes as an alternative type of event. One could then drag and drop tasks into the timebox. The time box could be expanded to view all the tasks in greater detail. If I need to rearrange the day, instead of moving each task to another time slot, I could just move the whole timebox. The timebox could also be labeled.
This feature would solve both the time resolution problem and the clutter problem. It would speed up the process of rearranging tasks and events. It would also support the popular time boxing and task batching technique.
For example, I could gather several small email-related tasks from different projects (lists) and add them to a time box. When the Morgen team adds task tags, this will become even more effective.
I’ve added a quick sketch of how it could look.
G
Garrett
Danny Hatcher Is this something that could be almost like a frame but without AI planning functionality?
Danny Hatcher
Garrett I use frames to mimic this. When I zoom in [ and ] keys, and then look at the Frame I can see all of the smaller tasks in a time slot.
Showing tasks in an 'edit' window I feel will be more task dependencies.
G
Garrett
I love this!
M
Mario
That's a game changer for me.
This missing functionality was the reason for me to leave Morgan for Akiflow.
They have done it niceley and call it "timeslots".
Below is an example. I would love coming back to Morgen because some functionality I miss in Akiflow. And now, I just wanted to check-out what happened in Morgen (appreciating this promising post).
One feature Akiflow has, is to replan any outstanding tasks to any future timeslot. With a single click all open elements move automatically. That's nice.
I use it as already described by others with repeating timeslots on various weekdays (e.g. do private financing & admin every wednesday evening or I do repairs for my apartment or car every saturday mornings). If I didn't finalize some actions I can easily move them to next week's timeslot. However, I can also move some very important tasks to my "ASAP" timeslot or my "projects" timeslot I have for example every Friday evening.
Another important functionality is to copy the reccurance of the timeslot to the individual tasks (if I want this). I could open the task and copy the reccurence from the slot with a single click.
Last but not least I wish Akiflow or Morgen could sort the tasks within a timeslot by criteria that matters to me (e.g. starting time or priority). Currently that's missing.
As already requested below I plan my typical week by planning weekly tasks and timeslots (in case there are several tasks in a time frame). Doing urgent phone calls every morning before deep work is one more example. Having kids, my productive time in the evenings is quite short and many unplanned requests are coming in. It helps me to allocate repeating time slots for my various life areas to every evening. One of the biggest advantages is to balance sufficient time for my different life areas with more clarity.
Here is my related post for it:
I wish Morgen could do this as well.
Danny Hatcher
Merged in a post:
Time Blocks to Contain multiple tasks
R
Rich
I would love to see the ability to block out time on the calendar and then drop tasks into this block. So, let's say I block out 90 minutes tomorrow morning to tackle a dozen random, short tasks. I don't really want 12 calendar entries (too messy), but I do want to block the time out to get them done and not lose track of the tasks I want to complete in that block.
Danny Hatcher
under review
Danny Hatcher
I feel like this is very similar to this timebox feature request: https://morgen.canny.io/feature-requests/p/timebox-as-an-alternative-event
B
Ben
Do you mean that the tasks then get hidden inside the block once you add them to the time block? Because you can currently block time - I do this and call it GTD (Getting things done) and then just put the task over that block of time. I've seen other calendars where the task then gets hidden inside the blocked time which agree is tidier, but then I feel like I've lost sight of what I need to do - and the notifications for Morgen (in my opinion) need some improvement in order for this to be effective
D
Derek
Would love to see this, especially since it could provide a ton of use with the more automated flows that Morgan Assist seems to be aiming for.
As a personal example, I have a calendar with a single event series that blocks off the time dedicated to my dayjob so that its clear what time is available for other tasks. This has proven to work well even in edge cases (days taken off / company holidays, shift schedule changes, etc) as the series can just be edited to match.
However, in reality this time
is
available, and tasks do
need to be planned within it. The event (and entire calendar) is just a symptom of not being able to otherwise "tag" blocks of time as being dedicated to a purpose, not a real "Busy" indicator. Since all time-based productivity techniques are around reducing multitasking, it makes sense that trying to merge work and personal planning becomes painful - I am simultaneously telling the system it should not use that time (for personal tasks), and asking it to use that time (for work tasks). In an automated scenario, this goes from an annoying quirk to a showstopper!
R
Rich
Perhaps subtasks could be incorporated into this somehow.
V
Vince Chaney
This is well done in Akiflow if you’re looking for a potential implementation. They call them slots.
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