Task board visualization

In another post I will talk about how I use a NOT TODO list to improve my workflow. It includes entries like:

• change Linux DE
• optimize emacs flow
• learn another programming language

It turns out "build a task manager app to improve your workflow" was not on it. Big mistake... The world does not need another one, so I will keep mine to myself.

But I would like to share the visualization, which is the core of this app. It encodes 4 dimensions using x, y, circle size and color. Intermediate visualization technique, nothing new here. The interesting part are the metrics themselves and how they fit well in this visualization.

• Y axis — impact
• X axis — urgency (reversed, left is more urgent)
• Circle size — estimated time
• Circle color — complexity (green to red)

Impact and urgency are intrinsically relative metrics. The absolute position is not important, the relative position between tasks is. Once tasks are defined, you can move circles around to redefine these relative metrics, and seeing all tasks in a global view makes it very instinctive. Tasks on the upper-left are urgent with high impact. Tasks on the lower-left are urgent with low impact and so on.

My definition of low complexity is: the probability that the task will be fully completed in the estimated time. Green tasks have low complexity, red tasks have high complexity. Usually one picks green tasks for execution, leaving red tasks for refinement.

That said, if you want to try it, leave me a message. I would be happy to share the app.