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Comment by educated_idiot | Hacker News Reader

An app to visualize and organize your tasks in an Impact/ Urgency matrix. The app currently uses local storage only, no accounts yet.

Would love some feedback :)

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Local storage only and no accounts is a feature to me

Haha, IKR! Too many accounts :D

A really cool feature would be to be able to "save" and share charts by setting the url parameters:

e.g. https://ballertodo.com?n=first;second;third&i=0.5,0.3,0.7&u=...

Then you can just bookmark the link or share w/ someone

There is a limit to url length

Correct, safely you can make the url 2,000 chars [0].

The base will be 29 chars (https://ballertodo.com?n=u=i=)

Then each additional todo would be 6 chars (impact and urgency score to 2 decimal places e.g. .65, 1., .7) + the length of the name

So assuming the average to-do name is 14 chars, you can safely fit 98 to-dos in the url ((2000 - 30) / (14 + 6))

If the name is 40 chars, you can fit ~41

I think that will fit 90+% of use cases.

[0] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/417142/what-is-the-maxim...

Eventually, depending on how it goes, the URL will contain a key to some DB entry, so multi-device persistence can work. Adding all this to the URL is doable too, I might just start with that, thanks for the idea ;)

If at all you could make it stateless, you should. For one, you don't need a db. Also, there were some people in the thread that liked the local storage feature. Finally, as a user, I can feel safe using your service because I know at any time, if you site disappears, I have the url and I can trivially parse the url into json and do whatever I want with it. You could even build the parser or have an export to json button.

If you want to add more stuff like images, longer descriptions, some links, etc, then yeah you'll likely need a backend

Yeah, I haven't given it that much thought. It only started as a weekend project. I would like to keep it as local as I can. Possibly, there will be 2 uses: a non-db, non-url, local version AND an account based thing.

I’ve done this for a website, but when you’re pasting a really long link and texting to a friend, it can get a little frustrating, since it eats the entire chat window.

Good point, maybe leverage a link shortener built into the app?

Yup, but you’d still need a database since you need to store that lookup somewhere from long URL to short url.

What about using an IPFS key and using js-ipfs to look it up?

If I'm not mistaken. I think IPFS keys might also be too long. Since a shortcode is only 6 chars long.

Here's the website[1] I built with base64 encoding to share weblinks. I've been trying to think of a non-db approach, but haven't found one yet for link shortening.

[1] http://share.getamna.com

> Local storage only and no accounts is a feature to me Agree! But the privacy policy is missing. Who tells me that the stuff is not uploaded tomorrow and sold to advertisers?

A takeout as csv or json would also be needed. That could also be the basis for multi-device, which some people undoubtedly will need.

Ideally of course open source it. I am always hesitating to feed closed-source services with my data.

Fair enough. Yeah, I don't intend to make money off this, so will open source soon.

Great job! You could mention it is an inspiration from the Eisenhower Matrix. This aims to solve the urgency trap.

First time I see a tool made for it. I will give it a try!

Thanks! Definitely, should mention that somewhere

Is there a metric for the ease of completing a task? This could be relevant in two ways.

First, task impact per unit of effort is technically a better measure of how worthwhile it is to complete the task than absolute task impact is.

Second, I recall some writing in the personal-finance genre which said that people often make more progress getting out of debt by paying their debts in order from small to large, ignoring the interest rate. This is more expensive than paying debts in order of high to low interest rate, but it may give you more of a feeling of progress when one of your debts disappears, even though that debt wasn't, in reality, causing much of a problem. By the time you get to more difficult debts, you're on a roll.

This suggests that there is probably a place for configuring the priority scheme; absolute impact, impact per unit effort, and absolute effort are all reasonable choices.

Yep, IIUC what you are talking about is similar to the question others have raised about an "Effort" dimension. To keep the daily or slightly more long term planning simple, I opted to not consider those dimensions. You raise a good point and I need to give it some thought. It has to be "complete" enough that you can prioritize properly, but easy enough that you can use it all the time. The finance example is a good one, but I think you could boil all the costs down to a single term for that case. (essentially it's just money lost). Just like the user makes a choice there, the expectation here is that the user will formulate an impact-effort code in their mind and add a task.

How about offering, say, three effort options, reflected in the size of the circle in the matrix?

Who is this for? I feel like PMs will just put everything in the top right corner.

Maybe some sort of form to input details about task to automatically assign the two variables?

I think that complicates the UI a tiny bit. Right now, the user can drag any task to place the task anywhere. I don't think numeric fields make for pleasant UI. I could be wrong though. Will keep this point in mind, if more folks complain, will work it in :)

Good question. This isn't for PMs. This actually should not be used for large/ group projects. As you rightly said, a PM will put everything in top-right. This was intended for self-prioritization.

The imaginary PM stereotype everyone likes to bash would do that, real teammates you work with that respect your time will work with you to plot things in a way that better reflects the team/organization’s shared priorities :) Don’t sell this short because of an imaginary threat (rampant PM abuse)!

Fair enough, that's a good point. My spouse is a PM and when I asked them to use this, they actually ended up using all quads except for Bottom Right (Low Impact, High Urgency). So your points stands, a competent team will correctly prioritise.

What people do you have? Every owner will put it in top right corner. The reason is organizational neglect and lack of due process. Just happened again some weeks ago, and due to org, was sadly necessary.

Haha, take the other people out of the equation. This is more about self-prioritization. How your team/ org works/ prioritises depends on a variety of factors and I do not think any single framework will serve all those. This is not even attempting to solve that need.

It's a neat idea, though I too started over-engineering planning for myself. Over time a simple text-list works well for me. Quadrants is more a communication and collaboration tool. Looks like nice work though.

Besides, if someone asks, they always get response.

Yeah, planning is a double edged sword. And I don't believe one tool works for everyone or all needs. Our brains and thought processes are too varied to all fit in opinionated frameworks.

Yeah, I posted here for the feedback/ response. Trying to improve my understanding of UX/UI and no better way than to get users to tell you :D

if that's your impression of PM's you're either not being fair to the PM's you work with or you need to work with better PM's.

Na, PMs who do that should all be beaten senselessly with a baseball bat, metaphorically of course? ;-)

If your PMs would do such a thing, they don't understand the role of a PM.

Don't put the tooltip on the task so close to the draggable circle. On mobile my finger basically blocks the entire tooltip and it's not readable.

> The app currently uses local storage only

This means I can actually use it. My data stays with me? Nice!

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