Repeated tasks

[TomNaessens]

Some tasks have to happen regularly, for example:

• Doing the dishes | 1 hour | every week
• Shop groceries | 1 hour | every 2 days
• ...

It would be nice to be able to enter these with a repeatable time-interval so one does not have to bother to enter them manually every week/day/...

[ninewise]

Also support things like "every monday, wednesday and thursday". The best representation for this would (IMHO) be assigning a task to some fixed days withing some fixed period.

Then again, aren't these more calendar-things than deadliney-things? E.g. doing the dishes is something we do (withing a reasonable time) after every dinner, not something we do before midnight of each day we have dinner.

PS, @Silox, I hope you do your dishes more often than once a week.

[TomNaessens]

I came up with this idea because of the other idea I had (see #4). It would be nice to indicate once that I would like to (eg.) ride my bike for 5 hours every week, and not having to reschedule it every week. Putting those kinds of tasks/goals at a fixed time would not work in combination with #4

On 25 Aug 2017 13:32, "Felix Van der Jeugt" notifications@github.com wrote:

Also support things like "every monday, wednesday and thursday". The best representation for this would (IMHO) be assigning a task to some fixed days withing some fixed period.

Then again, aren't these more calendar-things than deadliney-things? E.g. doing the dishes is something we do (withing a reasonable time) after every dinner, not something we do before midnight of each day we have dinner.

PS, @Silox https://github.com/silox, I hope you do your dishes more often than once a week.

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[ninewise]

Hmm yeah, tasks like the ones in #4 are a different kind of thing, and I agree to their usefulness.

[Procrat]

Good point! I added it to the roadmap! (It was already on my personal todo list since recurring events are a dependency for having something like sleeping hours / working hours.)

I'm a bit in two minds about this though. On the one hand, you want Eva to continue scheduling as normal while including these tasks with weekly deadlines. That way, Eva can decide you shouldn't be doing the dishes on your thesis deadline. On the other hand, if you give Eva full control, you will probably always do the dishes at another time of the day, on another day of the week, whereas having daily/weekly routines helps eleviate mental load and reduces stress. But perhaps the stress involved in not having routines is just because one has to deliberate on what to do next, which is exactly the thing that Eva is trying to solve here.

What do you think?

[TomNaessens]

I see two extremes: On one side, you have the fixed tasks such as school, work, sleep which have fixed schedules. On the other side, you have tasks (e.g. those goals I mentioned in #4) which I don't care when they're scheduled.

I think I would like to have a fixed schedule for stuff I don't like doing, and do the stuff I like doing in between/after those fixed tasks, but others might want it differently.

[Procrat]

I have the same feeling about that I think. In previous discussions, it also came up that it would be useful to have a distinction between fun stuff and chores. (Although there might be cases where the distinction is not so clear between the two.) I'm a bit wary of adding another required input. Do you think it's worth it?

[iasoon]

Two small remarks about what has been said here:

• On routines: I think stress is not caused by the absence of routine. I think stress is caused by uncertainty (when will my dishes be done? 😧 ). This aspect is solved by having Eva let you know why she made a decision (you should really do your dishes, but your thesis deadline is more important right now, so let's focus on that). This also reassures you that you are doing the sensible thing, and not slowly walking towards your doom. On the other hand, routine makes people happy. It sets clear expectations, and people get relaxed when everything goes exactly according to plan. Routine is not something that can be decided by algorithms, it is a random series of actions that makes your particular brain feel good. This is all about rituals and other irrational things. For example, personally I like to relax for 30 minutes or so after I eat, then do my dishes and after that I get back to trying to be a functional person. I think the simple solution here is to not have Eva try to control your life, and let her be okay with your preferences, habits and rituals. I myself would not be comfortable with giving Eva control. I would, however, very much like her to guide me. After I completed my little ritual, I want to tell Eva "So, I had dinner, played a little guitar, and did my dishes. What's next?".
• On fun stuff and chores: I don't think how fun something is really matters. Some things are not that fun, but they are rewarding, while others are fun but not rewarding, and so on. What I think that does matter is the effort a task costs. Low-effort tasks tend to make me happy and keep me going (either because they are light-hearted, often fun, or beacuse they are rewarding, like light cleaning). High-effort tasks tend to drain my energy, either because they are really demanding, or just because I hate them. So, what about adding an 'effort' score to tasks? This way you wouldn't have to specify how much effort something is, since if you don't care enough to mention it, it's probably not significant anyways. A default 'medium effort' score would be perfectly fine there.

[Procrat]

@iasoon on routines: You raise an interesting idea. I don't know what exactly causes the low level of stress when having routines. If it this just the decision-making, then -- great! -- Eva is already solving that and we don't have to worry about it. If it's not, we still might want to put routines in place. Those can, of course, subside for more important things should the need arise. (I would hope that Eva would make sure that that need doesn't arise though.) I just spent a significant amount of time trying to look it up. I didn't find a clear cut answer, but I retained the following information:

• Routines are the most important for physical activities (when you eat and when you sleep basically).
• Besides not having to make decisions about your time schedule, having routines also gives you a sense of control and reduced anxiety due to less unexpected things happening. Moreover, it gives you a reason to get out of bed -- a sense of purpose. Probably closely related to all that is that they are a way to fight depressions. So I'm actually quite a fan of routines. I think I'm of the opinion that every significant project should preferably be split up into a daily or weekly routine. Eva doesn't necessarily have to control this if you want to have a say in what you want to do when.

@iasoon on fun stuff & chores: I think I'd want a good balance in both mental effort and fun throughout the day to keep me happy and motivated. I'm tempted to add both, but quite resistant to having a lot of inputs. (We already have (required now) the content, the duration, the deadline, the importance, (possibly optional in the future) what project it's part of, the dependencies, the reverse dependencies, the blockers, fun/chore, effort. And it probably won't be the last.) Maybe a lot of inputs isn't too bad when they're optional.

@Silox: I thought about it some more and had a brief discussion with Myrjam and perhaps it makes sense to schedule both habits and parts of projects as weekly or daily routines but standalone tasks dynamically, to fill up the gaps so to speak. Does that make sense (also in light of what I said above about routines)?

[Procrat]

Side note: I just realized that this is why I didn't think much about habits on deliberating what should be in this core part of Eva I'm building now: it short-circuited in my head because Eva doesn't have to do much about this. You should just decide on a time you want to do it, put it in your calendar and listen to your calendar. (But a friendly user-facing Eva should tell you to do so, or better yet, do it for you.)