Sanity Check

Yesterday I got started with Eric Mack's eProductivity template, which gets applied to your mail file. I'll hold off on any comments until I've gone through a full cycle including a weekly review (potential blog silence for a week),  but it got me thinking about how Lotus Notes implements tasks on the calendar. (Quick lingo check here: Notes calls Tasks "To Do's" but uses a Task form. BlackBerry calls Tasks Tasks.)

Notes' To Do's do not have an exposed time field in the Task form, just a date field for Start Date and Due Date. These values are saved in four fields StartDate, StartDateTime, DueDate, and DueDateTime with a 12:01 PM time stamp. If you set the preference for displaying To Do's on your calendar they show up separate from the other calendar entries (reminders, meetings, appointments) above the calendar.

Syned to a BlackBerry, the Task will show up inline on the BB calendar on the correct date, but always at 12:01 PM. If  you subsequently edit this task on your BlackBerry and set another time the Task will show on your BlackBerry calendar inline at the time expected (e.g. 4 PM). Syned back to Notes, you will notice the StartDate/StartDateTime, DueDate/DueDateTime fields are updated by the BlackBerry, but the task remains sitting on top of the calendar. And of course there is no facility on the Task form to edit the due time in Notes.

Here, BlackBerry has gotten it right. Notes unfortunately forces me to use Reminder calendar entries in place of Tasks where I want to show a Next Action inline on my calendar. This is not ideal, because To Do's are the correct document type to use for Tasks because the have state (done/not done), and can be categorized ("Context" in GTD-speak).

I've posted this idea in IdeaJam for those of you who concur:
Preference Option for GTD users - Enable To Do's to use a time field to display inline on the calendar

Note: I am suggesting this to be a preference option so those of you who fear (irrationally) tasks showing up on your calendar, either  inline or on top, have no reason to vote against ;-)