Chore manager?

[bunsen_h]

Can anyone point me towards a "chore manager" tool, for Windows or as an iPhone app?  What I'm looking for, in a relatively-easy-to-use tool, is that it keeps a list of chores to be done.  Each chore has a priority, and that priority will be changed automatically on a specified schedule.  For example, a certain task will be added in January with a low priority, say, 2 out of 10 ("don't forget this chore").  At the end of February it will start to rise, and by the end of February it will be at 4.  By the end of March it's up to 7 and by mid-April it's up to 9 ("Urgent!").  For the last week of April it's at 10 ("Aieee!!!"), falls to 8 for two weeks into May ("You missed the deadline!!  But you can still get it in!") and slowly tapers off ("better late than never").

Bonus points if it can also keep track of chore "dependencies" (this can't be done until that is taken care of) and chore difficulty (so if you're having a bad day you can deal with an easy task of moderate priority instead of a difficult task of high priority).  And if it can do recurring tasks (e.g. need to water the plants every week, need to clean the furnace air filter every two months).

Also, long-term low-priority stuff would rise in priority by, say, 1 level every 2 months.  Click on a "snooze" button and it will drop again, but only temporarily...

What I'm imagining would be a display of "things to do", sorted and colour-coded.  By ticking a box or a "radio button", the display would change to show only easy-to-do tasks.

If such a thing doesn't exist and someone wants to create it, that would probably be a good thing.
 

Comments

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

Many people I know seem to like Remember the Milk. I don't use it personally as I don't have a device, but it comes well recommended.

[jack-ryder.livejournal.com]

Clear - iphone app - has some of the functionality you need (you can't automate it, but it's easy to reprioritise tasks.)

[phillip2637.livejournal.com]

"priority will be changed automatically on a specified schedule"

Audio mixing software usually lets you use fade-in/fade-out curves with different shapes. Applying them to [anything] over a time base could be fun. ...and who wouldn't want to play with the decay time of their task priorities? :-)

[metalana.livejournal.com]

That's a pretty personal set of requirements for a task-list application. You could review a zillion task managers and never find the priority-changing feature, for instance. It would be faster to program it yourself (possibly including learning the programming language).

I created a big spreadsheet for my long-term personal tasks. It has a priority column that I never filled in; mostly I manage tasks in my head. But I can add whatever sort-columns I want, including project-grouping. (My particular coping problem is with tasks that are actually multi-stage procedures with waits for someone else to do their part.)

If you played with spreadsheet formulae, you could probably make your priority value change according to date arithmetic. Recent versions of Excel have conditional cell formatting, so the colour of a cell can depend upon its value.

For recurring tasks, calendar software would be my choice. Google Calendar is nice for sharing schedules too.

If you find the giant list of tasks (or the software search) too intimidating, especially on difficult days, maybe break it into a few short lists with useful criteria, such as "easy tasks of moderate priority" or "errands out of the house" or "must do during business hours". A little data duplication won't kill you. On the better days you can reorganize the lists :)