Compiling a to-do list is not only an act of planning but also an act of making a choice — what to work on next. However, planning and doing are not always connected. We plan to go to the gym, have a healthier diet, and spend more time with our friends and family — we even promise that publicly via New Year's resolutions. We know, those are the right things to plan but we procrastinate doing them. Even with a to-do list, I found myself picking certain items from the list but reluctantly avoiding others — leaving them on that list for too long. Almost like with those New Year's resolutions that everyone forgets after a week.
Sometimes, to change that, all we need is a little nudge, a little "in your face" reminder that "you have committed to that". So we've made an improvement to our to-do list view:
1. The tasks in the to-do list are sorted by the date when they were added to the list, i.e. the tasks that were planned a long time ago will be on the top of the list, while the tasks planned recently will be on the bottom. If several tasks were added to the to-do list on the same day — the ones that were created more recently will be below the older ones.
2. Each task now has visible labels saying how many days ago it was created and planned, and if it was planned more than three weeks ago — the label will be scary red.
3. Your tasks in progress have one more label saying how long ago you started working on them. If this label turns scary red from a subtle friendly green-ish — you are probably stuck and may need to ask for help.
And it works the same way in the aggregated to-do list.
