Keeping tidy is something I've always had trouble doing. There's always so much more that I want to do other than take the time to clean things up or put things back where they belong. The spring/summer season is particularly bad, especially with work, sports, and the NHL playoffs happening (Go Canucks Go!), it is hard to find the time to make things tidy.
One thing that always bugged me was my hotlist and calendar. When I used to work in support, every time a customer service case was opened and not resolved within a couple of days, a hotlist task would get created. Also, we frequently had meetings booked for us in our calendars for various things from technical info sessions to group help sessions. So if you're like me and finish your tasks, but don't mark them as complete, you can imagine how many hotlist and calendar entries built up over time.
So here are some tips that will help you keep your hotlist and calendar entries a little tidier.
- Build your hotlist with a narrow date range. This is like sweeping your other hotlists under the rug. Out of sight, out of mind.
- When building your hotlist, disable the option to "carry forward unfinished tasks". This will limit the list of tasks to those that are in the date range you've selected. This may or may not be good; unfinished tasks sometimes do mean that you really haven't done it. Other times, an unfinished task just means that you've been too lazy to complete the task within Maximizer.
- Disable the "show appointments" option. This option is very handy to see a picture of all your tasks and appointments for the day. It can also make your hotlist really long.
- Complete your appointments! Every couple of days, build a hotlist with unfinished tasks, select them all, go to Edit > Mark as complete. Having completed tasks makes it easy for you to sort by this column and group together all your actual uncompleted tasks, or build a hotlist without carrying forward unfinished activities.