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Welcome to Own the Task Application

Newest features:

Added meaningful menu items, although not all of the menu items are implemented or debugged
Icons to add/sub from topten, change priority and change status without clicking on drop down. These functions complete with no screen refresh.
Ability to click on a thumb up or down and have it immediately save without a screen refresh.
Ability to change the due date by clicking on the Due date text which saves immediately without a screen refresh. See Due date section below!
Colors and percentages now show the percentage of time remaining by create date or by start date.
Archived available as a Show Status option again.
Notification bubbles on top right of page show a tooltip explaining the circles and the numbers.
Due only on Show Status will display only items with a Due date.
Top ten can be turned on or off from Show Status.
Items to review can be turned on or off from Show Status - Anything which is up for review which has not been review or review-cancelled will show up at the top of the page. Note: reviews can only currently be turned off by editing the item. But should have a button similar to the top ten add or subtract. Also the review dates should be editable just as the due date currently is.

This site allows you to organize yourself in several ways.

Item types

The kinds of things stored in this system

Ideas - these are ideas which may turn into the following things. It is best to turn item types into other these item types within 24 hours.

Tasks - discrete actions to take, that clearly can become complete or done. For example: buy dog food, turn in the report, take daughter to the airport (find out details).

These are not calendar entries, in other words if you have a task to accomplish on a certain known date and time (not just when you'd like to accomplish the task necessarily), this item should be entered directly into the calendar of your choice.

Projects - More complex things which will require many tasks, and possibly a number of people to complete over some time frame. These things also can have a specific outcome or outcomes. Checkpoints (goal points / milestones) may guide you to your outcomes. The project may have a large number of tasks each assigned to a checkpoint.

Areas - These are things you want to accomplish which may or may not have a clear end point - something like improving my health or creating a strong relationship. These things may or may not have something to measure, like a weight or a number of steps per day. They may also have a qualitative answer. For example, how was I feeling today on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is badly and 10 is amazing. You may setup these scales and use them for multiple areas or create a unique one for a specific area. If you do have either a numeric or quantifiable result you may view a chart allowing you to see your progress over time.

Resources - This allows you to create a knowledge base. This items are simply information. They do not have an end date or a state of being completed. You may add #tags (to any of item types) to assist you in searching from them again in the future. You may also add an APA citation to the entry. A wizard will walk you through the process to create an applicable and accurate citation - which may also be searched for.

Item statuses

What is happening or not happening with this item?

Each of the item types will have one of these status'

Active Being active means that you are currently taking action either physically or mentally on this item. "Taking action" may be loosely defined. In other words, you may be waiting for something to happen. For example, waiting for a car part to arrive next Thursday to fix your car. You will continue with this item whenever the part arrives even if the part arrives early.

Active resource type items are resources that you have not decided that the entirety of the information contained has become obsolete, inaccurate, or not useful.

Inactive - This is an item which you are not expending any action on either physically or mentally. For example, if you have no idea where or when, or perhaps even if you'll find that part for the car, you may want to set the status of the item to Inactive. You definitely still want to fix the car but you don't want this item to distract you from other more currently relevant projects or tasks. These items will be there and you may review them as often as you'd like. You may also add a specific review date. Once these items are marked as Inactive you allow yourself to let them go mentally knowing you'll review the list regularly or at the specific review date.

Marking a resoure type as Inactive may not have any meaning to you different than marking it as Archived. But you make make it mean anything you'd like - perhaps the content is speculation or a part of a book or a blog.

Archive - These are items which you have chosen to archive or which you've decided are obsolete (for resources). You may add a review date if you would like to check to see if you'd like to reactivate them on a specific date in the future. These may be items you've decided that you are simply not planning to do in the forseeable future or ever, that is, things you have decided that you not going to do, as opposed to other things that you'd still like to do but you are not doing now but do plan to do at some point in the future. These items are not even on your bucket list.

For example: You no longer plan to learn how to surf. Climbing Everest was never on any of your bucket lists so that idea would never have ended up within this system. But there was a point in your life where surfing sounded exciting. So putting learning to surf in this system and marking it as Archive may assist you in removing it mentally from the list of things that you will ever take any effort to consider doing again. It may also assist you in letting go any regret that you might have for not having learned when you were younger. You've chosen not to learn to surf and you don't see any reason to change your mind about this.

Complete - These items you've decided to mark as complete. They are done, the goal was reached, or the outcomes were fulfilled. Time to celebrate!

Removed - These items you may consider to be in the trash can. Nothing is ever actually deleted from the database unless you specifically start the Clean up (empty Trash) process which will archive items to a file (in a couple of different possible formats) before deleting from the database. Even if these items have a review date, they will not appear. There is a mechanism to find, review and reactivate or duplicate items with this status.

Folders

Categories of your life

You may create folders and sub-folders and put any of the items in any of the folders or sub-folders. Items may be moved between folders as well. You may edit the folder names and icons. A suggest major category list (top level folders) include Home, Health, Relationships, and Business & Finance. You may add or remove as desired. You may want to add Education in the Business folder, or Church in the Relationship or perhaps add Spiritual (Health) in the Health folder and then add Church to the Health-Spiritual folder. Create the structure that works for you. You can also rearrange the folder order to suit your needs. Some may choose to put all of their Resources within a top level folder of the same name. You can create the structure that works for you and if you decide to change it, go ahead and create the new folder structure first and move the items around in the new structure. Folders that are not empty cannot be deleted.

On the right portion of the screen you may select any combination of folders to view in the main portion of the screen. Simply check the folders that you'd like to see and hit apply. The new selection is stored in a layout called Current (see below). If you save the layout now you can quickly access the same set of folders to view any time in the future.

Layouts

Creating numerous persistent views into your personal organization

On the left portion of non phone screens there is a sorting and filtering option. If you are on a phone you may click the folder icon to the left of the notification circles at the top right of the window. The filter button looks like a funnel. The sorting and filter will show in the main portion of the screen.

If you click on the drop down button to the left of Sort, you'll see a list of things to sort by. You may select any combination. Items higher in the list will sort first followed by the ones lower on the screen. You may drag and drop any of the choices and thereby rearranging the order that you'd like. For example, you may want to sort by Folders first. Drag and drop folders to the very top of the list. Then check it. Folder headers will appear on the main screen with the items in that folder below it's the Folder header. If you want the items in each Folder to display sorted by Due date of the item, then check the Due box. If there are sort items between Folder and Due that aren't checked, the sort order won't change. In other words only the check items matter. But among the checked items the ones higher on the screen will be way the items will be sorted before the lower sort options. So in the example above if you moved Due above Folder the items on the main screen would be sorted first by Due date and then within each Due date the items will then be sorted by Folder (i.e. items with the same due date and folder will be kept together. Experiment!

You may also pick the direction of each sort option. Click on the sort drop down again to hide the sort options. This allows you to easily access the apply button. Once you hit apply, the main portion of the screen will reflect your choices. If you like this layout and want to get back to it quickly - hit Save Layout. You be asked for a name that you'd like to save it as. Note if you save identical layouts the site may find the original layout first when the page reloads. If you change options and hit Apply (not Save layout) the system may discover that you saved that exactly layout before and it will call up that layout instead . If it does not find an exact match you see Current layout. This is helpful because you can determine if you've already created a layout that is exactly same as what you just now selected. So the suggest process to saving any layout would to set the sort and filter options as well the selecting the folder that you'd like to see and hit Apply. If the system does not find that exact combination of options the layout name will show as Current. However if newly applied layout matches a pre-existing layout the naem of the pre-existing layout will be one found and shown. For example let's say you select only the folders and sub-folders under the top level Folder called Home and then you sort by Folder and then by name, you will either see "Current layout" above the sort filter options or let's say "Home by Folder layout". This means that you created that same exact layout and named it "Home by Folder" and therefore you do not need to save it again - simply remember it and select it again when desire by using the drop down button beside Personal Layouts and click on "Home by Folder".

There are a number of pre-built System layouts designed to give you a range of useful layouts. If you do not find them useful, simply do not click on the drop down button next to the Systems Layout selection.

Show Types allows you to see any combination of Item types to view in the main screen. Maybe right now you only want to see what Tasks are due next, you can check only Task types and then sort by Due Ascending to see what you've set to complete next by order of Due date and time.

Similarly Show Status lets you see any combination of items with the selected Status'.

If nothing is selected in the list of Sort options, you may rearrange items in the Types drop down to select an order, if none of the types are checked but some of the Status' are checked, then all the types will be shown and sorted by the order you've set in the Status drop down. Again experiment until you get the layout you desire and save that layout for future use.

Again, it is suggested that you hit Apply first to see if you've already saved the exact folders, sorts and filters before and therefore do not need to save it again. If the Current layout appears after you hit apply, then you've not save it before and can click on Save layout and give this exactly layout a name.

Quick icons

Icons (links) to take you to your favorite web pages or Own the Task items

There is a list of icons on the left portion of main page. These icons are links to various websites or to other pages in the site. They may also be links to other items in the system. You can define these items in two ways. You can add an item to the quick icon list with a button in the item's drop down. You may also add item:Item name in the link portion of the icon edit. Let's say you have an item called "Grocery list". To add that to the quick item list you'll enter

item: Grocery list

in the link input box on the Quickicon page. You may then go to the pages (quickicon.php) and rearrange the icons in the quickicon list. If you enter a Toolip of a singe | characters (a "pipe" character) the entry will be a seperator for managing a large number of icons. It is suggest that when entering a item quickicon (rather than an external webpage) that you avoid checking the Open link to new tab checkbox.

Due dates

Dues dates will show up in different colors as follows. From either the start date and time of the item or the created date and time of the item.

Red - Crititcal - 10% of the time remaining or less.
Orange - Urgent - 25% of the time remaining or less.
Purple - Action needed - 50% of the time remaining or less.
Green - Time Remaining - 75% of the time remaining or less.
Black - Just begun - More than 75% of the time remaining.

If you click on the text of a due date, a dialog box will allow you to edit the due date for that item. The dialog box will show that the percentage will be calculated from the date and time that the item was created or, from the item's start date and time if you've previous set a start date and time. If you leave the Update start to now check box as checked then the start date and time will be updated to the current date and time and your preferred timezone. If you have not set a preferred timezone, the timezone that your computer is set upon will be used. Updating the start date and time allows you to get an accurate percentage if you are setting a new due date. However, if you uncheck the checkbox, the start date and time will not be updated and so the percentage will be calculated from the original date and time when you created the item or the same start date and time if you have previously set a start date and time for the item. Unchecking the checkbox may be useful if the task or project is a longer term task or project and you want to know the percentage of entire length of the task or project since you created it.

If you close the dialog or click outside of the dialog box the due date will not be changed. If you do click the Okay button, the entry will be immediately be saved and updated on the screen with the new percentage and color coding.

You may directly edit the start date (or remove it) using the item's pencil icon ( edit) which allows you to edit any detail of the item.

Item sharing

Sharing your items with others in the Own the Task system

In a future update you'll be able share an item with anyone else on who is a registered user of the site. They do not have to be a paid member but they are not able to edit the item nor add their own items. However, if they are full member they will be able to edit your items if you choice to allow them to do so. This functionality will be particuarly for Projects.