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Dynamic priorities (automatically increase priority as the due date approaches)

linickx says:
I guess this could be quiet complicated to implement, but let me explain.

I have a reminder setup to pay my credit card bill each month. For approx 21 days it has no priority, but as we get closer to the deadline the more important it becomes; what I'd like is a way of saying for 1week before the due date the task is priority 1 but other than that it has nothing... make sense?
Posted at 2:21pm on July 20, 2007
misteriousj says:
you mean that the priority would increase automatically the nearer the due date is?
Posted 16 years ago
ranbarton Power Poster says:
Linickx - this thread may be of interest:
http://www.rememberthemilk.com/forums/ideas/1992/
Posted 16 years ago
jsellen says:
Actually, I think what would help you might be a 'start date'.

When creating the credit card task, you give it a 'start date' of one week before the due date, and a priority of 1. Then, when you are crafting your smart lists, one of the filters included is to only show 'active' tasks, i.e. tasks that have passed their 'start date'. By default, the 'start date' would be the date of entry, but it doesn't have to be.

For more info, I have requested that feature here:
http://www.rememberthemilk.com/forums/ideas/2177/
Posted 16 years ago
isaac4given says:
I think that priorities and due dates should remain as separate and distinct concepts. They have different meanings and serve different purposes. If you want to see things that are due soon, you can search for things that are due soon. Having two distinct concepts allows more granularity, for example: Show me the things that are a high priority whenever they are due, Show me the things that are due soon whatever priority they are, OR Show me the things that are both due soon and a high priority.
Posted 12 years ago
mahinirb says:
This is a great idea because of the way RTM's sorting options operate. If I want to sort things by priority, I want to see the high priority things that are due now or never. But I don't want to see things that are due months from now that WILL have a high priority at that time (like call my mom on her birthday). So, for the "call my mom" items, it would be nice to set an auto-priority.

To make it more simple for the coders, there could be some set auto-priority rule: make the task !1 within 5 days of due date. That would probably work most of the time for everyone.
Posted 12 years ago
igorrs says:
I handle the "credit card bill" problem by setting the due date for some days before the real deadline (making sure the bill will already be available by that date, of course).
Start dates could be useful here also, as @jsellen pointed out.
I don't like to use priorities together with dates. I did that for a long time and my task manager was unmanageable. Now that I'm only setting priorities for tasks without due dates, I'm much happier and organized. :)
Posted 11 years ago
relevart says:
This is not a good idea...priority and due date are two very different things.
Posted 11 years ago
dbsk says:
I use a smart list which basically accomplishes your purpose:

dueBefore:tomorrow OR ( dueWithin:"1 week of today" AND priority:1 ) OR ( dueWithin:"2 days of today" AND priority:2 ) OR startBefore:tomorrow

You might not need the startBefore:tomorrow; that just lets me show low priority "floating" tasks that I should be working on.
Posted 5 years ago
dbsk says:
There's a duplicate of this at https://www.rememberthemilk.com/forums/ideas/22437/
Posted 5 years ago
davidscottsmith says:
I had just written this in as a feature request.

Yes there are start dates, yes there are due dates... But often when I enter a task it doesn't feel urgent, but I know I'll consider it urgent within 3 days of its due date.

I would love the option to use language to say "change the priority to 1 within three days of the due date"

We can do this with reminders, why not allow us to do that with priority?

It would help me out a ton when I'm in "do mode" and only focusing on priority 1 tasks.

Hope RTM considers this.
Posted 4 years ago
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