Quote:
Originally Posted by wilsonng
I thought the "start" date would be the equivalent of "OK, you can start doing this task on this date because it is now available"?
I set the start date for "Prepare my 1040 taxes" on February 1st of each year. I assume that I have already received all the necessary tax documents by February 1st. Because the start date is February 1, it pops up in my context list as being available. Thus, I can "do" this project.
Perhaps I read your post wrong?
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You could begin working on your tax return on Feb 1st (though maybe you could be more detailed and have Actions such as "Receive 1099 from ___" etc. as pre-requisites).
However, you may have no intention of beginning work on your tax return on Feb 1 this year (does Feb 1 fall on a weekend? do you already know that you will not be home?). There are a whole variety of reasons why you might know ahead of time that your Tax Return is not something you want to see on your 'hot list' until some later date. If a change happens, and you find yourself wondering what step to take next - a quick look at the current Context would still show Tax Return as something that is available (assuming you are at Home, it is Feb1 or later, and all forms have arrived) to work on - but when everything is going according to plan I don't want to see Tax Return on today's list.
Start date is still Feb 1 (pending receipt of necessary forms, etc.) and Due date is still April 15 (or enough earlier that you can complete the job). But "Do" date is more fluid. A recurring task such as Tax Return would likely have the same Start and Due dates every year, but would have different "Do" date each year (and the "Do" date this year is likely to get pushed around).
You can mark a task with a Flag on the day you intend to do it. There are two problems with this. 1) You can't set the Flag to appear on a future date (and Start date is not what we want to change - especially with a recurring task that will re-use the new start date), and 2) it is cumbersome to turn Flags on and off in the iPhone version.