Friday, October 17, 2014

FTF squares colors

Why the squares are colored the way they are? Shouldn't the first square be red?

This is a popular question and of course we understand why. The red color is one that best attracts people's attention. It is associated with action and activity. It is usually used to warn about danger (traffic 'STOP' sign), so people are used to paying more attention to it.

Thus your first wish is to put every action into the first square - the Urgent / Important one. You see all your actions both Urgent and Important at the same time. And you rush to do them all. This is the view of classical todo lists. But, it is not if you think about planning.

The first square should hold only the actions, that are burning right now, the crisis actions. That square should either be clear or you be running doing the action from it. The actions from it are usually stressful ones and you shouldn't have them in your normal, everyday life.

The more important among the squares, or even the most important one, is the second square.
Here you put your Important and Not Urgent actions. Don't be fooled by the 'non-urgency' of the actions - the fact that they are not urgent doesn't make them less or not important. It just means that they are under your control - you know about them, you know how important they are and you have thought and planned when you will do them. There's no need to throw everything you are doing and run to do them. So, this is the most important square with actions for you. And since it is the most important, you should be attracted by it more than by others. Thus the red color of the square.

The other colors were chosen so that they try to distract you less.

10 comments:

  1. В версии 0.10.3 появился баг с переключением между квадратами.
    Воспроизведение:
    1) из FTF перейти в один из квадратов
    2) переключаться на другие квадраты через цветные прямоугольники внизу экрана, при этом не всегда отображаются задачи для выбранного квадрата.

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    1. Андрей, у меня не получается воспроизвести. У Вас не стоит дополнительных фильтров на эти страницы? По дням / ролям / целям?

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    2. Нет, фильтров нет. Еще обнаружил такую особенность:
      1) Проматываю квадраты свайпом вправо/влево - все ок.
      2) Последовательно переключаюсь между квадратами нажимая прямоугольники внизу (синий-красный-зеленый-оранжевый), при переходе на зеленый, отображаются задачи с оранжевого, на оранжевом - тоже с оранжевого, на синем - с красного, на красном - с зеленого, т.е. произошел "сдвиг" влево.
      3) После этого ломается и свайп, тоже отображает задачи неправильно
      4) Если выйти обратно на FTF и потом снова в квадрат, то снова все ок.

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    3. Андрей, спасибо! Действительно, баг есть! Исправим с ближайшим апдейтом.

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    4. Уточните, пожалуйста, когда апдейт с этим исправлением появится? А то баг сильно мешает :)

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    5. Андрей, только нажали кнопку Publish. Должно появиться в течение нескольких часов. По традиции, мы выпустили обновление 50% пользвателей, если не будет косяков в течение нескольких 5-6 часов, то сделаем полный апдейт. Т.е., к утру должно быть точно. Еще раз спасибо за помощь!

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  2. Any word on when the web app that syncs with phone version for this will be up?

    Would be willing to pay, as I'm sure many others would as well.

    Thanks for the great app.

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    1. Hi Aaron, we have started work on the web app, but at a slower pace then expected due to our personal things. We hope to have some initial results in the beginning of 2015. We'll write about them once we have anything.

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  3. I've been thinking about where to place a certain types of action. I'm trying to establish some habits for small tasks that need to be done every day. For instance, scooping the cat's litter box. It's a quick task, but if you forget it procrastinate, it then becomes a huge, onerous, and stinky task. And your cat starts biting you. This doesn't seem like something that belongs in Important and Urgent because it's not a crisis, and if I placed all of the daily habits I want to build in that box, it would be full every day. Important and Not Urgent doesn't seem right because it's not like it can be put off for ten days. It is urgent to do it every day. Urgent and Unimportant doesn't work either because it is an important action.

    Thoughts about where to place these items? Thank you!

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    1. In my opinion, it's definitely 'Important, Not Urgent' at the beginning. Important, because you know the consequences of not doing it. Not urgent, because you can put it off for some time at least, you've planned it ahead of due time, it's under control. But, if you don't do it, it then becomes Important/Urgent. Stinky litter box and a biting cat are definitely crisis events)

      It would be great if the action then changed its category automatically, but we don't have such feature now. I'll add it to our Notes/Thoughts/Ideas section. Thanks for the tip!

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