Don’t Just multi-task.  Multi Plan.

There was an interesting article in today’s WSJ called “Conquering Your To-Do List“.  Alas, they just talked about how to handle simple tasks. If only life was that simple!

Here’s how we see productivity:

Just as the building blocks of nature are electrons and protons (okay, and neutrons), the building blocks of every day in everyone’s life are Events and Tasks (‘neutrons’ can equate to ‘idle time’ or ‘sleep’).

Events have a fixed date, time and location.  For example, “Meet Joe for lunch at 9:00 at Joe’s place.”

Tasks have a variable time. They can be done whenever. Usually tasks are done in the free time that you have between Events. Sometimes, there are qualifications. Here are a few:

• “Start” Task
  Example:  Mow the lawn any time after this Saturday.
• “Due” Task
  Example: Mow the lawn no later than next Sunday evening.
• “Window” Task
  Example: Mow the lawn at some point between Saturday morning and Sunday evening.

Tasks also come from a variety of sources. Here are a few sources, also referred to in the above chart:

• Personal Tasks
  These are tasks in your list. Example: Fix the lawn-mower.
• Project Tasks
  These are tasks that follow a fixed order and are usually a part of a sequential Project.
  Example: Finish writing Chapter Two and Begin Writing Chapter Three.
• Delegated Tasks
  These are tasks that someone else has assigned to you. They may come from a shared Project, or they may come from a friend, parent, teacher or co-worker.  Example: Finish the homework assignment before you go to the Football game.

Strangely, most calendars have Events but they do not integrate Tasks.  The task list is usually relegated to a lonely and rather useless side column next to the calendar, almost as an after-thought. Or, some software designers make a fancy task list with lots of filters and tags for slicing and dicing, but you are still left high and dry because they are not integrated with your calendar events.

SmartTime, SmartCal, and SmartPad feature integrated calendars that combine tasks and events. We’ve solved the problem of integrating Personal Tasks and basic Project Tasks into your Calendar. Together more than one million people have downloaded these three apps.

Another difficult problem is how to integrate Project planning, into your To-Do List or Integrated Calendar. Project planning is usually treated as “something different.” To our knowledge, nobody has really tried to integrate the tasks from a Projectplanner, into an individual’s task list. And certainly not into an integrated calendar. Until now.

Our project planner, SmartPlans, synchronizes tasks from each Project Plan with Toodledo. From there, you can sync to SmartCal and SmartPad.  Sweet.

The latest version SmartPlans 3.0, features Milestones. Milestones are groups of tasks within a Project that have a specific deadline.  We have a novel solution that will actually integrate Milestones into your Calendar as Repeating Events. Now you can see exactly how everything fits.

As for Delegated Tasks, we’re working on that too.  We will soon take SmartPlans to the next level and offer an enterprise version that allows people to delegate individual tasks to members of their team. Each individual member can then integrate those tasks into their personal integrated calendar – SmartCal or SmartPad.

Speaking of integrating, we will be launching our Mac and Web apps at MacWorld at the Moscone Center in San Francisco January 26-28.  Come to booth 228 and see.

Soon, you’ll be able to integrate Tasks and Events anywhere.  Web, Mac, iPad, iPhone. And yes, also in 2012, Android and other devices.

It’s all part of our Great Plan. A plan that started with the question “Gee, I wonder why tasks and events are separated?”