Moon-Jumper Pitch

This is the pitch video for Moon-Jumper Tasks.

Pitch

Moon-Jumper tasks is not a To-Do list. Moon-Jumper tasks is way to manage your tasks so that they remain organized and at any point it can present you with a short list of things that you could work on now.

Let's start by looking at why to-do lists work and why they fail. To-do lists are fantastic when they are started, but their effectiveness tends to drop off over time. That's because we tend to start a task list when we have a few crucial things that we need to remember and figure out the right order. A simple to-do list is great for this. But when that succeeds, we start piling things on. Instead of a few well defined tasks that need to get done, we start adding bigger more nebulous tasks. And things that we might not be able to work on right away. Eventually the list grows so long that it's cumbersome to pick something off it. Then we start skipping it for simple tasks, it's easier to just do them then add them to the list.

Moon-Jumper provides a collection of tools to help avoid these pitfalls, as well as some tools to help with general productivity (and avoiding procrastination). This is both a system (a way of thinking and working) and a tool.

Tasks

Let's start with "What is a task?". A task should be something that you can do. It should be small (preferably Atomic) and specific.

Something like "Empty Dishwasher" is a good task, it's specific. But "Setup Party" is not, better would be a small task for each step in setting up a party. We'll discuss that more when we get to groups. "Clean Garage" may or may not be ok. If your garage is pretty clean and you just need to put a few things away and maybe sweep, that's fine, but if cleaning the garage is going to take a few hours, it might be better to break it down into a few steps. We'll touch on this idea throughout, but it's one of the key techniques.

Something a task isn't is an appointment. Something that needs to happen at a specific time isn't a task. It belongs in a calendar, not a To-Do list. It is ok to repeat an appointment in the Task manager to block off the points, but since it can't be moved, it won't really help with the planning.

Beyond the definition of what a task is, a task will always have a title, and it can have notes. If you put a link in your notes, that link will open in a new tab. If you use hashtags, they will be available to help find tasks.

Dates

Each task has a date. This isn't the "due date" it's more of a "target date". It's almost the opposite of a "due date" because it's the earliest you'll start working on it. If a task is complete, the date is when it was completed, though you can edit that if you mark a task as complete on the wrong day. When entering a date you can use values like "+3 days" or "+2 months".

There is also a special value, "Backlog". This is a way of putting a task on hold. It will never show up in any list, except the backlog list.

In the terminal view, today's tasks appear on the right side of the screen. Along the bottom is the "forecast", the next 4 days. In my experience, anything more that 4 days out is too unpredictable.

Points

The next important idea is points. The biggest limits in figuring out what can get done, and in particular, what can get done today, is the limits on time and energy. Points is a fuzzy combination of the two. For most tasks, it's just time. A task that takes 5-15 minutes is a 1 point task, 15-25 is 2 points and so on up to a 1 hour task is a 6 point task. But something that will take 10 minutes but is either physically or mentally strenuous or just something you really dislike can be bumped up to a 2 or even a 3 point task.

This gives us a meter of how much effort we can expect to put in each day.

Labels

The first step in dividing your tasks down to manageable groups is Labels. A Label should reflect some context in your life, something where you want to put in some amount of effort each week. Everyone will probably want a "Personal" or "Home" for all the stuff that just needs to get done. Most people will probably also have a label for "Work". If you're a student, you'll probably have one for "School". I also have one for "Projects" because it's important to me that I carve out some time each week to work on things that interest me.

An example of something that's tempting to make a Label, but probably isn't a good idea is "Out" or "Errands". Unless you're scheduling a maximum amount of time on a specific day, it will be better to put these in their respective labels and use hashtags to mark them as "#Out".

Priority

There are 4 priority levels. Low, Medium, High and Now. Low, Medium and High should be fairly obvious. Now is a special designation. It means that the task is anchored to a day and should not be moved. This is good for things that are either critically important or for appointments that are being mirrored in the task manager.

When Moon-Jumper shows a list of tasks, it will be sorted by priority.

Rebalancing

Together, points and labels give us a way to balance our week. This lets Moon-Jumper take a first pass at organizing todays tasks. For each label, you define a max number of point for each day of the week. Leaving a value blank means that there is no max, where putting a 0 means no tasks of that label should be assigned to this day.

For instance, at work, you'll probably want to put the same number of points on each weekday and 0 on the weekends. One caveat to that; if you have weekly meetings that repeat, rather than having them on the calendar and in the task manager, just reduce the number of points assigned to the day. If you have no meetings on Monday, so you give it 30 points, but Tuesday you have 2 hours of meetings each week, you may want to mark Tuesday down to 22 points.

At the start of your day, hitting "Rebalance" will take all the tasks that are past due and all the tasks that are due today, and based on points, labels and priority, figure out a list of things to work on today. Everything else will get bumped to tomorrow. Inevitably, Moon-Jumper will not do a perfect job. So it's a good idea to hit rebalance, then look at the list for today and the list for tomorrow and move some tasks around. And if tomorrow is already looking crowded, maybe bump some tasks to further in the week.