Day Tasks with Viira
In addition to being able to categorize tasks by Project and by Context, Viira’s tasks can be organized by day as well. I like the extra flexibility this adds to the way I can organize my to-do data on my BlackBerry, and here is how I leverage it to be more productive.
In the GTD bible Getting Things Done David Allen talks about the importance of including day-specific actions and information in your calendar. Day-specific actions are those “things that you need to do sometime on a certain day, but not necessarily at a specific time”. Day-specific information is things like tips, reminders and generally “information that may be useful on a given day”.
Viira’s day tasks are perfectly suited for both. But I also like to use Viira’s day tasks for another purpose - to plan the next day ahead the night before.
Every night before I go to bed I like to sit down with my BlackBerry and plan out the day to come. I do this by going through the projects that are on top of my priority list, pick the next actions from them and assign them as a day task for tomorrow. Assigning an existing task for a day is easy with Viira - you just check of the checkbox that says “Day Task”, set the date and you are done.
I find that this process of staking out tomorrow’s objectives adds a strengthened sense of focus when I start the new day. If I have planned out my day tasks and visualized the day’s goals in advance I find myself less likely to be thrown off course by the distractions and interruptions that will inevitably occur during the course of that day. And if I can’t get to everything that I was planning to accomplish on that day, I can review it during those nightly mini-reviews and either defer it for tomorrow or leave it off for another day.
Do tasks posted in Viira turn up in BB tasks and/or Outlook? If not why not? (PS I am sold on Viira!)
Comment by Claude Pratte — July 11, 2009 @ 5:59 am
Claude,
Glad to hear that you are enjoying Viira!
Initially it was actually our intention to make Viira tasks appear in the BB tasks list. However poor performance of the device’s tasks database made it challenging to do this in a scalable fashion. Sadly, the BB PIM API has its oddities and bugs, and often times it does not perform well under a reasonable load.
Viira is designed to hold hundreds or thousands of tasks effortlessly, and for the sake of keeping its performance we felt we had to scale back our integration efforts with the BB tasks database. This issue has been raised a few times now though and we are actively working on finding a solution.
I hope this sheds some light on our design decision and the trade-offs we had to make.
Comment by dev — July 13, 2009 @ 3:39 pm
Thanks for the very clear explanation!
Comment by Claude Pratte — August 5, 2009 @ 4:59 pm
In version 2, has tasks sync with Outlook implemented? Does the above comment mean that this is simply off the table as a design decision.
Comment by Lee Matrix — January 26, 2010 @ 5:06 am
Thanks for a very good question, Lee.
Our approach to syncing with Outlook is to create an integrated solution, complete with an Outlook plugin. This way you will be able to access Viira full feature set from Outlook - and not just the tasks.
So while Viira 2 does not do a full sync with Outlook, our Viira Outlook Suite is based on the Viira 2 feature set and will have full Outlook compatibility. And of course we will provide a full upgrade path and purchase credit for anyone who has bought the full version of Viira 2.
As the launch is coming soon, we just created a sign-up form. If you want us to let you know when the Viira Outlook suite is ready for download, put your name and email down and you will be among the first ones to know:
http://kartamobile.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=149948f188cc808b85f8fc79c&id=d4f73b41a8
Comment by dev — January 27, 2010 @ 11:17 pm