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How to sort lists by date added?

mattrz says:
I use RTM for GTD.

According to David Allen, prioritization is often unproductive, and I agree. I want to drill down through my inbox in the order the items were recorded, like I would do with a stack of papers, starting form the bottom (oldest first).

If I have a task with a due date, it goes on my calendar. My tasks in RTM don't get due dates.

Until now, I've only got this horrible workaround of adding "due today" to each item in RTM as its added. This allows me to sort by due date, which in my case is actually the "created on" date. There simply has to be a better way. When will RTM have this very basic sorting functionality, finally? We've been waiting for years.
Posted at 10:22am on December 16, 2012
brendan says:
Hi mattrz,
It's not currently possible to sort by date added, sorry.

You are able to see the Added date by using one of the "added" search operators, though. If you search for addedWithin:"7 days", for example, you'll be able to see the date each of those tasks was added.

Thanks for your feedback on this sorting option!
Posted 11 years ago
mgercke says:
Maybe Bob can think about how RTM could visualize a task's age.
GTD proposes not to put a due date to a task that essentially has no due date.
Still, the "older" a task is, the more probable that somebody is going to ask why this task wasn't fulfilled (job situation).
On the other hand, I want to know why I have a special task in a list when I'm not acting on it for x days/weeks/months.
I have many tasks that people are waiting for, but that don't have a due date.
Knowing that I have the task "review document x" that is already 30 days old is intersting compared to a task that was just added yesterday.
I'm not sure how this could be accomplished, but the priorities (1,2,3) work with colors.
Maybe Bob comes up with a neat idea.
Posted 11 years ago
claudia.walter says:
Just to support mattrz: I am also missing the "date added" option. I enter the "date added" as a note to the task each time. This is quite annoying and slows things up considerably. Isn' t there some quick and dirty solution to have the "date added" registered automatically? If you can search for it, it is already there somewhere. I would just like to be able to see it without searching.
Posted 10 years ago
brendan says:
Hi claudia.walter,
While it's not currently possible to have the Added date show on all your lists automatically, one trick may be to create a Smart List just for this purpose. For example, try searching for the following:

addedBefore:tomorrow

This will show all your tasks, and their Added dates. You could then save this as a Smart List and refer to it when you need to see Added dates. Changing the sorting of the list may help find tasks more quickly.
Posted 10 years ago
(closed account) says:
Although helpful, this only works in the web-interface. On iOS-devices doing this search doesn't show you the actual Added dates, only the tasks that were added in the specified time-frame.

I second the request for being able to filter/sort/search on Added dates across platforms. And while you're at it, it would be very helpful to have similar functionality for Changed dates, to see when was the last time I touched a task because I did some work on it, or have my list sort on the date I last changed a task.
Posted 10 years ago
homerjon says:
Every Record that goes into a DB has a created_at stamp. This feature seems like a no brainer. ToDos that are entered today are always more important than the ones I didn't bother to do yesterday. I can look back and see the ones I never got to as they age in the system.
Posted 10 years ago
This topic has now been closed automatically due to a lack of responses in the past 90 days.