Widget crashing

Anyone's getting the FTF widget crash when switching between the squares? We've got several crash reports, but can't reproduce the bug - don't know the exact steps or conditions. Most reports come from Samsung devices S2, S4, S4 mini. There are quite few of them, but we still want to have this fixed. So, any help would be appreciated.

Recurrence: Select week days + more

Can now select the week days on which to show the action - new recurrence type! With this functionality, the Week day and Week end recurrences seem obsolete, but let's keep them for a while.

The other important update (actually, all of them are rather important) - the view of the WeekPlan is now persistent! Whatever view you see last on the page, that one will open when you return - the weekly goals or the weekly actions. This will meet the needs of both those who preferred the old actions view and those who like the new goals view.

The priority and week day choose dialogs were improved - a new section called Now! has been added to both. When you choose this section, it sets the priority of the action to A and day to today.

On the FTF page, in the expanded mode when the squares are full screen without details section, clicking on an action now opens it on its page.

On the Note editing - the Save/Cancel buttons at the top have been removed - they clashed with default Copy/Cut/Paste components of the android and made them unusable. So, the note now is being saved automatically, whenever you leave the note page. And the Copy/Cut/Paste works well!

And some playing around with colors - we prefer to think the app is alive and evolves as everything around us :).

As you see, a lot of work has been done in quite a short period of time to increase the productivity of helping you increase your productivity! Don't forget to reward us with a a good, fresh 5-star rating out here!

Enjoy :) !

Upd.: Recurrence Start-Stop has been removed. Turned out not very popular feature)

Recurrence Start-Stop

Do you even use it? B-)

Week Plan. New big changes.

As you remember, the WeekPlan page is relatively young in its current view - we have updated it just several months ago. The new look has been practical and much more pleasant then the old one. It does great job in everyday action checking. One of the most used pages by me personally.

But, every time I entered it I felt like I missed something. It was all in front of me and, still, something was missing. So, one day it struck me. And we've implemented it. The new updated will be out within few days. And when it is out, you will ask yourself - how come we haven't thought of it before and how had you lived without it? It will be a natural fit.

Meanwhile, hope you are enjoying the great feast of bootball that's happenning right now in Brasil, just as we do! Here they show some of the games at 2 a.m. due to the time differences, which, of course doesn't stop us at all :).

Now that the Spain is out, who do you think will be the King of football for the next four years? I can tell you my favourites: Netherlands, Chile, Mexico - these teams showed beatiful, fast, bold game. Besides them, I think Italy and Germany are pretty strong. And, of course, Brasil and Argentine.

Checklists strange behavior

Does anyone have a strange shaking behavior on a Checklist page?

Checklist items UI change

There are some changes to the checklist items now:

• They are one-liners now: when you press enter on the keyboard, they get added. I.e., enter on the keyboard has same effect as the + sign near the text.
• Drag-n-drop is by long-press now. Before current version (0.8.4) you could drag an item and move it up or down by three-dots at the right of the item. The problem was it was difficult on some devices to catch the required drag-able margin, so some users complained about this. Now you just need to long-press on any place on the item to move it.
• More room for already added items while adding new one - this was on of the worst things about this page: when you were adding, you couldn't see already added items and the one you've added the last. Now we show 2-4 already added items when adding. And when you press the + or enter buttons, the list is auto-magically scrolled to this last one. Much better UI experience.
• The items are dismissable by swipe. Just like on many applications out there, like gmail, to delete an item you just need to swipe it off the screen in either directions. After that, you'll have about 2-3 seconds to undo your delete. Again, much much better UI experience.

The other update was about fixing adding photos to the Role page - when the photo/picture was in some remote gallery, it usually failed. Now it's fixed. Thanks for the reports!

Hope you'll like the changes as much as we do and support them by rating us on the Play Store - nothing keeps us stay awake at nights enhancing the app better than a good, old 5-star rating out here!

FirstThingsFirst/Actions page important change

An important change introduced with the update, currently rolling out staged (20% lucky users will get them first), to the First Things First, Actions pages and the First Things First widget (aka Habits / FTF Squares): the filters you apply on these pages are persistent now.

What does this mean? It means, they are saved between visits to these pages - when you go back to android home screen and back again, or when you switch between the pages within the app. And, the FTF widget will reflect these filters. E.g., if you set filter for #day: Saturday(as on the picture below), the pages and the widget will show actions for that day:

This makes the widget and the pages more consistent with each other. Furthermore, it should help you concentrate better on these pages. We think this is not fully finished so some changes will most certainly come. But the general idea - to have filters persistent and for widget to reflect current FTF/Actions pages, also most certainly, will be preserved.

Also, the common left sliding menu is added to two more pages: Week Plan and My Roles.

First Things First widget

Will look like this:

Together with Quick the widget and application icon:

Squares are selectable, scrollable. Clicking on a task you'll go to its details, clicking on a square (if you manage to hit it :-) will lead you to the FTF page.

This is the initial version, some enhancements and adjustments are to come. Staged rollout is on, first 20% of lucky users will be able to try it out within the next few hours.

Enjoy! :)

First Things First widget

Will be out in first version later today!

Upd.: Sorry, guys, today is Champions League day!) Widget will be tomorrow ;)

Habits new widget

New 'Common' widget is out with today's update. Update is staged (means, first will be available to ~20% of active users) - will try to use this feature so that, if any problems with the update, it doesn't affect all the users. If by evening everything is ok, will do the full rollout.

The name 'Common' is not final, reflects the common most used operations: add a note, go to First Things First page, go to My Roles page, add an action (go straight to entering the text). If you find a more suitable, we'd be very grateful to hear :).

The widget looks like this:

Together with the Today's Actions widget and app icon:

Besides this, several fixes were done. As always, your feedback and reports has helped a lot - a big Thank You for them!

Enjoy the new functionality!

Add to calendar, goal details to actions

Some new functionality out there:

+ 'Add to calendar' button has been added to the action right-side menu, where reminders and recurrences inhabit. Clicking it you can add the action as an item to your calendars on the device. If you have several calendar apps, a 'Choose action' dialog will appear (usual android behavior). If your device is Android 2.x (below 3.x) - the function might not work, couldn't well test it. If you have issues, would be really great if you contacted us and we tried to solve it together!

+ Goal 'Details to action' function added. Remember in complex actions you could type your sub-actions in the Details pane, then click one menu 'Details to actions' and the app would auto-magically create the sub-actions for you? Same functionality has been added to the goal 'Envision' section now. The motivation for it is simple (as always) - it is often much more convenient to just type the steps you want to implement, entering in a kind of action generation flow. Type your actions, separate them by one of the symbols: '+' ,  ' . ' , ';', and click 'Details to actions' - and get a list of actions for this goal. You can then cleanup the generated stuff deleting and/or renaming, prioritizing them.

+ It appeared that 'Snooze reminder' didn't work for some time periods. This has been fixed. Thank you for pointing this out!

+ Ads are back :) I know this sounds not so encouraging, but we tried to show them on as few pages as possible. And we'll be rolling out the paying feature soon, so wanted to see the behavior of the app and users with ads before that.

Again, thank you all for your constant feedback.

And one more thing - we have decided to change our update policy - we'll try to roll out updates more often, as soon as they're working, not waiting for week(s) period or for several updates to couple together. This way, we think, you'll get the best use of the app as soon as we prepare it!

Some news on the recent updates to Habits.

+ Have removed most of the widgets - only the QuickAction left from the previous ones.
+ Added the 'Snooze reminder' functionality with previous update. You can snooze for several periods, from 5 minutes to 24 hours.
+ In Android 3x and above - have added the 'Today Actions' scrollable widget - can see your Today actions from the Home screen now.

The list is identical to what is shown for Today on the WeekPlan activity. Have been thinking of adding the full WeekPlan widget, but don't know if it is demanded - will see the result of current update.

Note: unfortunately, the widget works only on devices with Android versin of 3 and above - they allow scrollable list to be added to home screen widgets.

Translations

Have rolled out initial translation of the Habits into Russian. Since main part of the work is done, can try to translate into other languages. If you want Habits translated into your language, write us at ksasdk@gmail.com, we'll send back the resource file (file with original English texts).

How do I (usually) use it

Hi all,
Sorry for the long silence in the blog and in app updates - it has been a pretty busy after-the-new-year period - at work, studying, private life and other projects :). Though it puts off a bit the planned functionality, I prefer to look at it as an opportunity to have a little rest and take an overview look on the app - hope it will bring fresh ideas to further development. Meanwhile, did a little update to the other app - the 'A-to-Z Notes' free version. The app is pretty simple and not as rich as other note-taking apps, but has its audience. And I myself find it useful in practise)

That being said, the actual reason of this post is I wanted to share the way I use the app myself.

First of all, don't know if comes as a surprise to anyone, but most of the daily task work I start from the week plan. Not the Eisenhower matrix. In fact, many users say they like the app due to the matrix, but I almost never-ever open the matrix. This is because all the actions I enter end up in the 2nd quadrant: important and not urgent. So, all of them are colored red. I don't use the advanced filtering of the FTF and Actions pages, because I go through the week plan for today, top-down - actions are already ordered there for my use. Not sure if it is the best way to plan/work, but it is how it is now.

As you know, actions are listed in the lists by priority from A at the top to F at the bottom. For an action to come into today's section of the week plan, I usually add it from a Role. So, the main planning starts and goes via the 'My Roles' section. I find a role of interest, add a goal I want to implement being in this role, then write the action(s) needed to reach that goal. The actions are then given priorities (and maybe days). I usually do the planning for today in the morning or a day or two before the day needed. Often actions I couldn't finish today get transferred to tomorrow. For some actions I do the planning ahead of the week, as it is supposed to be the best. But, unfortunately I still can't reach that point organisation when all the things would be done ideally and not describing the ideal way but the way I happen to do it.

Most actions I use are simple actions - no recurrences. There's one action, though, that has an 'every day' recurrence set - do the morning warmup exercises. I don't do them everyday (I wish I did), but they are in the top of the list as a reminder :). And when I do, I cross the action and feel good accomplishing something. After using this action for quite a time, I came to a conclusion that we need to add another type of action into the app - good 'Habit'. This is needed for long-lasting general actions like 'doing exercises'.

The recurrence type I use (and like) most is 'Once until done'. This is for the action types that should be started and finished whenever you finish them - no special schedule is required. If not done, it appears on today's week day in the week plan, every day until you do it. Feels like it's swimming with you into the next day) Ongoing work tasks best fit into this category.

If an action is a complex one (a project), I use the 'Next Action' function, as a convenience guiding functionality. For it to work, the actions must have already be ordered by priority. Often I write down a project's action steps in the details, then use the 'Details to actions' menu option - this divides the actions auto-magically into required sub-actions.

Since I've wrote a long text already, will stop now and continue in the next post :) Hope it's not very cumbersome and an apparent picture can be made out from the description. Not sure if it will be useful, just wanted to share :)

Influences and Concerns are drag-reorderable now.

Long click on a 'concern' and drag it to a new place within the list. This is in today's update. Also, some fixes with password checking - previously could enter the app through widgets even if the password had been set.
These are main things. Some other minor bugs have been fixed :).

Upd.: There's a small bug with Influences/Concerns - newly added items are not shown immediately, but after leaving the page and returnning back. Will fix it with next release.

What is excessive in habits?

What do you think should be removed completely or simplified greatly in the current version?

Ease of adding to My Achievements

We've received requests from several users to maybe make adding achievements easier, with one-clicks. At first it looks like very logical to do so - to ease all the functionality.

The thing is, we think 'Achievements' section is intended to motivate and support you, remind you of the things you are proud of, things that were not that easy to finish, but those you did. Not like every day actions. Of course, you can be proud of every little action you do, like doing this week's grocery - not joking, doing today's grocery yourself (and finally) might in some cases actually be a heroic action. But for most people it is just a regular action. That's why we keep some extra steps to add an achievement as a protection against mixing them.

For example, my list of achievements has only 2 items since we've added them. One of them is about adding the section itself, which is rather for testing purpose mainly. The other is about a certificate I received after finishing an online course. After the second attempt of trying to. I tried to do this course twice, because couldn't find enough time, put little effort (spent time on Habits :) ). The course is 8 weeks long. So, it took me quite time and effort to finish it and do good enough on quizzes to get the certificate.

The other thing is - you probably have achieved a lot in the past. And you'd want to keep memory of those deeds, too. Adding them is a good idea, we'll see how to implement it in a correct way.

My Achievements

I was in a bad mood once - had some problems at work, some with car, a little more with house and so on. The time was really not fun and I felt like completely lost. Then I thought about why am I like that. Haven't I done anything worthwhile? Aren't there things that I should be proud of? I needed some thing to motivate me. I knew there were, and many of them, I just couldn't remember clearly most of them. I tried to recall the things I did which made me happy at that time. But I couldn't. This is how the idea of the new section in the app was born - My Achievements.

As the first step, we've added the achievements to the goal section. Once you reach a goal, if you are really happy with it and want that happiness feeling to stay for long, write it down to the My Achievements. Later on, when you return to this section, it will make you feel better, give you strength to move further, will motivate you.

To save the goal as an achievement, use top-right 3-dots menu 'To achievement' on the goal page, or, long-click on the goal achieved on the role page and use same 'To achievement' section. Modify the text as you want, choose the difficulty level of the goal, click Add. The goal must be finished for you to be able to add it - can't cheat the system :)

Goals differ from person to person, from roles to roles. In the context of our app, they maybe as simple as doing today's laundry and as big and tough as passing an exam with A grade, maybe after 3rd try. Not every goal is actually an achievement, but rather a general task you do regularly. Because of this, use this section wisely, adding important achievements, so that later, when you return to them, they do motivate you.

Habits. On Ads III.

Since we have promised to add an ad-free version, we think it would be fair to make the app completely free until that time. Thus, we are turning off the Ads with the latest release. Up until the time we make affordable versions for everyone - ad-based or ad-free - there will be no ads in the app. Enjoy :)

Besides that, we've added a truly great feature. It is available from the Goal list on the Role page or from the Goal page). Hope, you'll give some feedback about how much you did like it.

Force close on clicking on a Role

Anyone has this bug? Got few reports, don't know how to reproduce - need the steps. Would be really grateful.

Upd.: Found the bug, it is on the Role page when in landscape mode. Thanks a lot for the reports!