Why TODO lists suck

IMAGE IDEAS: Picture of a todo list with mismatched items like “Get Milk, Make Bed, Change Careers, Pay phone bill, Remodel House, Make oatmeal”

TODO lists are a list of single line items that need to be done. They don’t account for the cost or time of each item. They also don’t allow for more details. Whether it’s in an app or on paper, a todo list is very insufficient for planning what needs to get done.

You see most todos have parent todos. “Buy paint at Home Depot” could be a child task of “Paint Office” which could be a child task of “Remodel Office” which could be part of an overall project “Remodel House” which could be part of a goal such as “Make house nice to live in” or “Upgrade house for better resale price”.

So every task or todo lives in the context of larger tasks, which are part of projects, which are part of goals. Additionally, each task or todo has two common attributes: TIME and MONEY. Everything tasks a certain amount if time and money to accomplish.

I built an app call Time Money Tasklist (TMT). Each task has a certain amount of time and money associated with it. Initially when we create a task such as “Remodel House” we really have no idea how much time and money it’s going to cost. We might have to get quotes or research material cost. How do you manage a goal like “Remodel House”?

With TMT, you would first create your goal “Remodel House”. Initially you can throw whatever ballpark numbers as the time and money cost - such 1000 hours and $50,000 as the cost. Then create children tasks such as “Paint Interior”, “Replace Carpet”, and “Fix landscaping”. For each of those tasks you put again estimates for TIME and MONEY. Now that the Remodel House has 3 children tasks with TIME and MONEY estimates, it will replace the original estimate with calculated estimate based on the children tasks.

IMAGE IDEAS: Show images of the app at work

Now, say we get a quote on one of the tasks from a contractor, we can update “Paint Interior” with a new cost of “5000 dollars” and the estimate will recalculate. We can create subtasks inside “Paint Interior” such as “Remove all furniture” which might cost 0 dollars but take 8 hours. As you can see, the project of “Remodel House” gets more and more detailed. The more tasks and estimates we add, the more accurate our total TIME and MONEY estimate becomes.

Now here comes the fun part. As we complete various tasks and mark them as done, the overall estimate displays update and show what percentage complete we are at.

So overtime we know more and more how much a project costs in TIME and MONEY, as well as how far we are to completing it.

Try it out in the demo below and please let me know what you think! Soon I’ll have deployed the ability to login and save your work.