What is a task? #
A task is a specific action or item that needs to be completed within a given timeframe. Tasks are typically part of a larger goal or project and help users stay organised, prioritise their workload, and track their progress.
By managing tasks effectively, users can improve productivity, reduce stress, and ensure that essential responsibilities are completed on time.
Task attributes #
Within ‘Good Day’, a task has the following attributes:
- Title: a short description of what the task represents
- Description: a longer narrative description of what the task represents and any associated notes.
- Scheduled date: this is the date by which the user aims to complete the task. Scheduled data can be left as ‘undefined’ or set either to a specific date or a relative date (e.g., ‘tomorrow’, ‘next week’, ‘this month’).
- Scheduled time: a task may be assigned to a starting time. By default, this is left as ‘undefined’, but the user is entitled to set a specific time slot (e.g. 11 AM) or a relative time slot (e.g. ‘Morning’, ‘Afternoon’, or ‘Evening’)
- Required by date: This attribute can be used to set the date by which another party requires the task to be completed. For example, if a customer has asked you to deliver a piece of work by 1 June 2025, then the ‘Required date’ can be set to ‘1 June 2025’. The ‘required by’ date is equivalent to a deadline. This differs from the ‘Scheduled date’ field in that the work may be required by 1 June 2025, but the user might schedule the work to be completed earlier on 28 May 2025.
- State: each task will be in a state that is a step in a workflow process that moves from an initial ‘Open’ state through to ‘closed’. There are a number of interim states that can be used to represent the task status including: ‘In progress’, ‘on hold’, ‘cancelled’, and ‘dormant’.
- Priority: This represents the relative importance of the task in relation to other tasks. By default, the topmost priority setting is ‘1,’ and the range of priority numbers is from 1 to 5. The general configuration settings provide options for changing how a priority is set and the range of numbers.
- Severity: this represents the level of damage or impact that the task is aiming to relieve. The topmost severity rating is ‘1’ and the range of settings is from ‘1’ to ‘5’.
- Folder: The Good Day product supports the folder concept, where a folder can be employed to contain tasks that share a commonality. For example, a folder could hold all tasks related to a specific idea or project.
- Category: The Good Day product supports the concept of ‘category’, where a category can be used to group tasks that share a common association. For example, a ‘vacation’ category could be used to relate all tasks linked to vacations. A category differs from a holder in that a folder is more likely to e used to associate tasks that share some common purpose, whilst a category is used to associate tasks that cover the same area. For example, a folder called ‘Italy Vacation July 2025’ might contain all the tasks related to researching and booking a specific vacation, whilst a ‘Vacation’ category would be used to group all tasks associated with any vacation-related activity. If the ‘category’ facility has no immediate value then the ‘General settings’ facility include an option to hide category utilisation.
- Story points: the story point value represents the level of effort the user requires to complete the task. How and what the value represents is left entirely to the user. This may or may not be used to equate to a time measure.
- Display order: this attribute is used to control the display order of a task in a goal action plan
- Tags: The Good Day product supports the concept of free text tags. Any number of tag entries can be set against a task, and the filtering functions can then use the tags to show tasks that share tags.
- Parent goal: A task can be associated with a parent goal and, if set, will become part of its action plan.
- Recurring definition: a task may be set up as a recurring task, where multiple instances of the same task will be created at a declared repeating interval.
- Checklist: with ‘Good Day’, a task may have its own checklist of sub-tasks. A checklist if a useful vehicle for avoiding the need to create lots of small-scale tasks that are steps in a bigger task.
Not every task attribute must be defined when a task is created. Typically, the user will want to set the title, scheduled date, and priority.