Requested script: Counter of open projects/tasks

[Marek Kowalczyk]

Hi,

To reduce stress and overload, it behooves the OF user to keep the number of active projects/tasks within reasonable limits. My reasoning behind this claim is here: http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=5618

Therefore, the following features might be very useful:


a counter of the number of active projects and tasks
ability to set a preferred max number of active projects/tasks
a "warning light" that would "flash" when the number of active projects/tasks approaches/crosses the max allowed number of open items


Anybody interested in writing such a script?

Any hints how I could do this myself (no experience in writing scripts)?

Thanks,

Marek

[pvonk]

Are you saying that you want to "legislate" how many tasks you want to allow in your life?

I wish we could all do that!

[Marek Kowalczyk]

I wouldn't use the word "legislate" but rather "control work in process (WIP)".

If you have too many open items, you're fooling yourself. You are very likely to engage in bad multitasking, which will result in a very low project completion ratio, stress, feeling of being overwhelmed etc.

And that's what I'm experiencing and I assume I'm not unique. The only solution is to freeze a significant number of projects/tasks, swiftly complete the active ones and gradually defrost the frozen ones.

It's proven to work. It's not only that we can do that; we actually must do that to be effective rather than busy.