Originally inspired from some very basic shellcode from Thordur Bjornsson this time slicing of human time initiated by computer application has grown a bit since it began.
The basic premise is
(
(
work
<short break>
)
repeat 4 times
replace last <short break> with <long break>
)
repeat while working
...for optimal productivity. For further details, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique .
One can create a $HOME/worklist file that helps the computer prompt the human for what to work on.
It looks like this (indented for clarity here, the 'o project' must be left aligned and whitespace is only supported as spaces at this time):
o project weight=100
o subproject1
o details per subproject
can even wrap around
o subproject2
o subproject3
o project weight=200
And xtomato will automatically select the first project and the first subproject for the first work task, presenting subsequent projects and cycling through the subprojects of each project as applicable.
"It takes the 'human time' out of deciding what to do next"
Note the only granularity is for project+subproject, anything under subproject is included when displaying info about the task to work on.
If you have a desire to do:
o client1
o projects
o subproject1
o subproject2
...
o maintenance
It will be necessary to rethink this as:
o client1
o projects-subproject1
o projects-subproject2
...
o maintenance
Also note, project and subprojects are currently only supported as a single word.
This is an even-steven algorithm.
There is an in-progress weight system designed to work as the example above indicates for specifying the weight of a given project. This will eventually be extended to subprojects.
The purpose of a 'weight' is to give a numeric value which, relative to other numeric weights, determines how much time each project should have given the typical hack time. In the above example, if hack time is typically 1000s then weight=100 will receive 660s and weight=200 will receive 1320s. Basically the formula goes like this:
HACK * projectcount = totalhacktime
projecthacktime = totalhacktime * ( weight / total_of_all_weights )
This is yet to be implemented but at least the program parses the weights.
Other use cases involve needing to get one 'round' of progress in given a known hard stop scenario.
xtomato -T $((60*30)) # 30min before hard stop
xtomato -b # berzerk mode (from doom) aka no breaks
Someday we can all say "pay me more to get more weight to a 'project'" or even let others decide what weight the subprojects associated with their desires get.
I personally feel much more productive while using this application now.
As always, if you feel the need to let me know what you think, especially in the form of bugfixes, diffs, or pull requests, let me know at todd@fries.net.
Thanks,
--
Todd Fries .. todd@fries.net .. twitter:@unix2mars .. github:toddfries
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