Effort levels

About effort levels

Each task will have some level of effort ranging from quick and simple to a sizable job requiring a significant amount of effort. Regardless of the task, you will spend some energy to complete it. Of course, effort level is subjective and purely in the hands of the user. Effort levels in BubblesPlanner are intended to help you determine at a glance which tasks require the most or least effort.

Effort levels are using a simple scale – from 1 to 9. When you create a task, you will assign an Effort Level using a slider  (1 to 9) where 1 represents the least amount of effort and 9 represents the most. It is essential to set a level for every task because the number you pick determines the size of that task’s bubble in the BubblesPlanner View.

This approach is intuitive and easy for anyone to use. In the BubblesPlanner View, all the tasks for a particular time period (bucket – usually a week) are shown in text form and as bubbles of different sizes. Here’s how this can be useful. Let’s say you have a few minutes before an all-day meeting. Looking at the BubblesPlanner View, you select one or more of the tasks requiring the least amount of effort as represented by their bubble size and complete them.

Edit task effort level

You always can edit effort level in Organization tab of task details. Effort levels are visible on every task as a single-digit number inside the colored circle.

View task efforts in Planner

In the BubblesPlanner View, you can organize tasks by the amount of effort, making it even easier to spot “low hanging fruit” for immediate Quick or the more involved tasks that you want to carve out a specific block of time in your schedule to handle. 

The bottom line is this – always set an effort level to get full advantage from the Bubbles interface. Sure, you can assign priorities and keep tasks in list form, but we are confident you will find this approach more natural and efficient.