Productivity is so important these days, because people have so much going on – at work and at home. There are meetings to attend, project tasks to complete, home projects to organize, parties to throw, the list goes on. Thankfully, you are not alone in the battle to get things done. There are several productivity apps out there that can help you list what needs to be done and remind you when to do them. Lope is one app that can help, and it comes packed with the smarts to help you know how best to fit it into your schedule.
How does Lope know when to schedule each task? It uses your current load and the duration information from each task. While the power to set due dates and placement of tasks rests with you, Lope takes an overall picture of all you have going on and determines if you have overloaded yourself; and, in that case, it warns you of the same. So, you have an opportunity to reschedule a few tasks based on what is lower priority.
The app is free to download, but you can only use it for free up to 200 tasks. After you’ve created 200 tasks, the app will not let you create any more until you pay a one time fee of 3.49 € (or the equivalent in USD).
The app is broken down into various functional areas. There is an area for creating and updating Tasks. There is an area that lets you see how you are performing as you start completing tasks and this same data is then used to let you know if you need to shift items around to have a more even load across each day. The app lets you set your work hours, to be able to deduct your fixed appointments from your total time available and to compute how much time you are going to have for your to-dos at all!
The Today page is the area you might focus on the most. It’s the default landing page in the app and it lets you know what tasks you need to get done today, along with your next upcoming appointments from your calendar. Don’t let the use of workday make it sound as if only people working outside the home can use this app. Workday applies to anywhere you work, including at home.
Each task you create requires you to enter a duration period. Choices are 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour or 2 hours. I would like to have seem more choices and hope that future updates provide them. You can personalize how the app works by tweaking the Settings information. For example, you can set when you are warned of having too many tasks in one day or if you have too many minutes scheduled for meetings. This is where you set up your regular working hours, too. You can enter an End date, but if you don’t have one, you can skip it. Lope will figure out based on the characteristics of the task (age, lengths etc.)
Overall, I like the app and found it extremely helpful to have it warn me when I was planning too many items on one day. Other apps don’t do that. Knowing how much to schedule on each day prevents burnout which in turn keeps you continually productive, which is what you want a productivity tool to do.