First I want to say thank you to @ispyridis. These are not actually issues that I have, but it sounds like helpful advice for someone who does have these problems.
Djo wrote: ↑Mon May 29, 2023 12:20 pm
I often create (initialize) a parent task (project), without any subtasks, and add (and complete) subtasks in it over time, when I think about it and when it is OK for me to do something about it. So the subtasks are not always created day 1 in my parents, they may be created and completed on the fly depending on the necessities. I have to admit that this shows a serious lack of planning on my part! I think it is one of the reasons why I feel uncomfortable with some of my parent tasks, because I haven't created all the subtasks needed... The ball is in my court here!
I don't think this is necessarily a shortcoming of your planning.
I find that typically maybe about 20% of all my tasks in a project are unplannable in the beginning because they involve factors that are unknowable at the time a project is planned.
So part of all of my planning is to have a flexible system that can accommodate unanticipated tasks. Hopefully the task manager I use can incorporate this concept to facilitate dealing with changes in the plan along the way.
That also brings up another issue I've always struggled with. What is the difference between a project and a task? Yes I've seen the definitions, but they all seem subjective to me. In the end I wonder if it really matters whether there is a difference or not. So my current definition is that a project is just a task with a lot of subtasks. I see no objective distinction between projects and tasks nor need to make one.
Yet another other issue I struggle with is how to break down tasks into subtasks and parent tasks. As unanticipated subtasks arise during a project I find I often need to completely rearrange the parents and subtasks to make them more manageable. This can be quite tedious since there are so many attributes to consider.
I think the problem is that a lot of these things are subjective and what works best for one person and the way they think may not work best for another. That can make things tricky, especially when there is more than one individual involved in the project. One size does not fit all. It may not be optimal for all.
To make a point with an extreme example, the first task on which all other tasks are dependent is the creation of the universe. Everything else is interconnected with dependency relationships after that. So where do you make the starting point for each branch of tasks and subtasks?
Recently I've been structuring things with close attention to the fact that there is an implied dependency between tasks and subtasks. That may sound elementary, but I sometimes don't think about that factor and think of the parent as a container instead. That causes confusion in structuring. And that's part of the reason that I initiated this topic.
So now I am structuring each level of subtasks so that it complies with the implied dependency relationship all the way up to the root level task. And within each hierarchy I am setting dependencies manually for tasks that depend on tasks in other task hierarchies. That is a nice way of helping define and enforce both the order of execution AND, importantly, the PRIORITY of tasks as well. Prioritization is yet another gigantic and critical element that is very difficult to quantify objectively and subject for another gigantic topic. I am pretty convinced that only the human mind can do a good job of prioritizing since priority depends on a constantly changing set of sometimes intangible factors that cannot possibly be entered into software quickly or broadly enough even if that software was able to process it and calculate the optimal priority level of each task. Maybe this is something AI can tackle someday. I am sure it is already being used this way somewhere.
