Lope is the first task manage­ment sys­tem, working with the lean-princip­le. It con­si­ders the dura­ti­on of tasks and the time avail­ab­le. You’ll recei­ve warnings when your workload is full, allowing you to can­cel tasks and appoint­ments ear­ly or inten­tio­nal­ly work over­ti­me. Not­hing will be for­got­ten and no dead­lines can be mis­sed. This way the rema­in­der of your work will nice­ly fit your time­ta­ble. Lope prio­ri­ti­zes your tasks the way you would, and only shows you the most important ones at the time, so you’ll never lose track. Lope hel­ps you to always do the right thing. At the same time it’ll allow you to com­ple­te your tasks fas­ter than befo­re becau­se you now plan ahead, have fewer dis­rup­ti­ons and are able to moni­tor your pro­gress. It’s a gre­at fee­ling. You will be able to say “it works”.
Lope is fol­lowing insights from Lean Manage­ment. Thus, tar­gets can only be achie­ved by task-reduc­tion. Tasks with vary­ing time requi­re­ments must be care­ful­ly sized up to be suc­cess­ful­ly imple­men­ted. Lope is simu­la­ting human beha­viour: Pre­cisi­on is igno­red every time an esti­ma­te or appro­xi­ma­te is fas­ter and works just as well. That’s why Lope is mis­sing opti­ons that might look nice but aren’t essential.
The key is to con­cen­tra­te on as few tasks at the time as pos­si­ble. With fewer things on your port­fo­lio you keep a bet­ter over­view, work more focus­sed and uti­li­se your time more effec­tively. This work sta­te will impro­ve and incre­a­se, once you adap­ted your work habits.

The­se tricks can help you:

  • Always com­ple­te tasks in one go. Even if that requi­res an addi­tio­nal step. Remai­ning steps often seem minor or less important but none­theless stay on your to-do-list until the task is finished.
  • Tasks and appoint­ments more than two or three weeks in the future should be recor­ded into your calen­dar and only be moved to your acti­ve port­fo­lio once your calen­dar reminds you.
  • Time con­suming tasks should be allo­ca­ted an appro­pria­te slot in your calen­dar to deal with them wit­hin that slot.
  • Be con­cise in your inqui­ries and inst­ruc­tions. Pre­cise­ly com­mu­ni­ca­ted dele­ga­ted work will result in on-time deli­ve­ries or your co-worker will noti­fy you in case of delays or pro­blems. This allows you to eli­mi­na­te remin­ders for sta­tus inqui­ries on your side.
  • Dealing with big­ger pro­jects, always con­cen­tra­te on the immedia­te task. Once you com­ple­te tho­se you can move on to the next.
  • Things that are not actual­ly necessa­ry but that you don’t want to for­get about do not belong on your port­fo­lio. Crea­te a memo-list that you can refer to when you find the time.
  • If you find tasks sit­ting in your ‘top 3’ for a cou­p­le of days without making any head­way, recon­si­der if you want to do it at all. If not, you might want to era­se it from your list – real­ly important tasks always come around again by themselves.

An effec­ti­ve port­fo­lio in which all tasks are suc­cess­ful­ly dealt with wit­hin a few days has never more than five to fif­teen tasks.

Your nor­mal work pro­fi­le tells you how much time you have avail­ab­le every day. Lope uses this infor­ma­ti­on to show you on your task over­view how many days it would take you, to com­ple­te all out­stan­ding tasks. This way you’ll always be able to tell the lead time for any new task. In the set­tings menu you can defi­ne the scope of days, wit­hin which you will be noti­fied of a too big workload. (The workload will be high­ligh­ted in yel­low or red.)
Your calen­dar has all the infor­ma­ti­on regar­ding your mee­tings. The time during which you are at mee­ting you are not able to work on your port­fo­lio. In order to deter­mi­ne your avail­ab­le work hours, Lope takes the time of your mee­tings off of your total work day. In order to never miss appoint­ments Lope checks the default calen­dar on your smart­pho­ne. You can find that in your pre-instal­led apps. Ide­al­ly you con­nect your default calen­dar to all calen­dar apps you use.
To get rea­listic results you have to also record tra­vel time and meal breaks in your calen­dar or allo­ca­te a sui­ta­ble stan­dard time value in your set­tings menu, espe­cial­ly if they are rough­ly of the same length every day. Calen­dar ent­ries which are place­hol­ders or remin­ders but don’t actual­ly requi­re your time can be mar­ked with a signal word like ‘Lope’ or ‘blo­cker’, in order to let Lope know that this time doesn’t need to be deduc­ted. Your indi­vi­du­al signal words can be cho­sen in the set­tings menu.
Appoint­ments, las­ting the who­le day, are auto­ma­ti­cal­ly reco­gnis­ed as remin­ders rather than real mee­tings. Excep­ti­ons to this are appoint­ments with one or more key words in their tit­le, which you can also cho­se in your set­tings menu, like ‘holi­days’, ‘bank holi­day’ or ‘off’. Such days are not coun­ted as work days. The same effect can be achie­ved if you add appoint­ments to your calen­dar las­ting your who­le dai­ly work time.
For not having to chan­ge your pro­fi­le regu­lar­ly, which would mean unne­cessa­ry effort, you just take your maxi­mum work pro­fi­le. Then you enter addi­tio­nal appoint­ments into your calen­dar, in order to pur­po­se­ful­ly redu­ce the avail­ab­le time for per­forming your tasks. You can enter the­se dates exact­ly as you need them at dif­fe­rent times for each day or week. For doing so you, you can even use a new calen­dar that nobo­dy can look into, which you sim­ply con­nect with your device’s default calen­dar, too.
In order to be able to work on your task-port­fo­lio, make sure that you don’t have too many appoint­ments in your calen­dar. This is why Lope shows you in the hea­der how your day divi­des into mee­tings and avail­ab­le working hours. You can deci­de in your set­tings menu on the amount of hours you deem as ‘having too many mee­tings’ and that you want to be noti­fied by colour alert. The total time of your mee­tings will then be shown in yel­low or red.
Task manage­ment and calen­dar allow us to not for­get about our tasks. What is the dif­fe­rence? Tasks in our calen­dar have to be com­ple­ted on a cer­tain day at a cer­tain time. Tasks in our task manage­ment sys­tem can be com­ple­ted when it is their turn or if we find the time. The­re­fo­re, the task manage­ment pro­fits from more fle­xi­bi­li­ty. You always have to deci­de which sys­tem to use and that tasks are not allo­ca­ted twice. For examp­le, tasks that can only be com­ple­ted on a cer­tain day are bet­ter recor­ded in your calendar.
Topics you don’t want to for­get about or which are to be com­ple­ted some­time in the future may eit­her be recor­ded in your calen­dar at a future date or on the memo page in Lope. This way you can’t for­get about it and at the same time make sure that your cur­rent workload is as slim as possible.
 If the prio­ri­ty of a task chan­ges, you can com­for­ta­b­ly move it bet­ween „tasks“ and „memo“. You only need to tick a memo and swi­pe left. A task can also be swi­ped left and be allo­ca­ted to memo.
A time esti­ma­te is a nor­mal part of our dai­ly pri­va­te lives. If we want to eat at 7pm we know that we need to start coo­king 30 minu­tes ear­lier in order to have the spa­ghet­ti rea­dy in time. For the Sunday roast you bet­ter get star­ted two hours ear­lier. We also con­si­der jour­ney times to pick up our kids from the bus or to arri­ve at our holi­day loca­ti­on in time. Time esti­ma­tes don’t only help us to start or finish in time, they also help us to be rea­dy for the next job, so we don’t need to inter­rupt our work con­stant­ly. Esti­ma­tes help us to see the big pic­tu­re of our total workload as well as the scope of cur­rent tasks. In gene­ral, it hel­ps us to plan our days. Ever­y­bo­dy plans their days dif­fer­ent­ly, based on the tasks and time avail­ab­le. Times esti­ma­tes are the­re­fo­re ele­men­tal and natu­ral. Lope will make four sug­ges­ti­ons from which you can cho­se. This makes is easier for you and you will noti­ce that this is com­ple­te­ly sufficient.
Nor­mal work rela­ted tasks take up about 7 to 10 minu­tes. Even shor­ter tasks can be more effec­tively dealt with right away, without record­ing them in Lope at all. Lon­ger tasks can be allo­ca­ted 30, 60 or 120 minu­tes in Lope. Even lon­ger tasks can­not be recor­ded becau­se they are not qui­te com­pre­hen­si­ble and you would post­po­ne them until you find enough time to deal with them com­ple­te­ly or until you deci­de how to tack­le them. Lope will help you with such time inten­si­ve tasks by for­cing you to reser­ve a suf­fi­ci­ent slot in your calen­dar or to break the task down into a num­ber of smal­ler steps which you can then record in Lope. Once you com­ple­ted step one of the big­ger task you can then move on to the next and so on.
Pro­jects con­sist of a num­ber of tasks that we cover one after ano­t­her. When plan­ning a pro­ject, at the begin­ning we often have a num­ber of tasks in our heads we want to put down as a remin­der. Some­ti­mes, we later remem­ber tasks that we need to add. Becau­se Lope only ever deals with the cur­rent task of a pro­ject to focus on prio­ri­ties, you can add the extra steps as memos and move them to ‘tasks’ later.
Lope doesn’t dis­tin­guish bet­ween dif­fe­rent cate­go­ries of your tasks. At the end of the day you’re a per­son that wants to deal with all of its tasks, no mat­ter if hob­by, fami­ly or work. If you only want to con­cen­tra­te on one aspect of your life you can sim­ply only record tasks of a cer­tain nature.
Lope uses lean princi­ples to prio­ri­ti­se. That’s why tasks you recei­ve first, get worked on first, in order for them to allow a work flow and results you can pro­fit from. It fol­lows the same idea of a queue at the check-out. Also, we pre­fer dealing with shor­ter tasks inter­mitt­ent­ly to avoid have the sum of the tasks over­whelm us. This means that smal­ler and older tasks are of a hig­her priority.
Some­ti­mes it is not enough to com­ple­te tasks, they have to be com­ple­ted to a cer­tain dead­line. If we are late, we might miss some­thing, lose money, peop­le inqui­re after the pro­ject or get angry. Becau­se we want to avoid that, Lope puts the­se tasks at a hig­her prio­ri­ty than others. If we encoun­ter tasks for the first time we can’t anti­ci­pa­te what’s com­ing and should start a litt­le ear­ly in order to finish cer­tain­ly in time. “First time” tasks are also of a hig­her prio­ri­ty than others. Watch out that you only mark tho­se tasks “fixed end date” that real­ly have a cer­tain dead­line, sin­ce the­se opti­ons might severely limit your fle­xi­bi­li­ty. Lope doesn’t only put the­se tasks at a hig­her prio­ri­ty; it also marks them with a sym­bol. Tasks with a “fixed end date” that are due to finish soon, show a warning triangle.
If Lope warns you that you have more work than you are able to deal with, you can dele­te tasks (becau­se you dele­ga­ted them, deci­ded they were not important enough or mar­ked them in your calen­dar for later). Your other opti­on is to inten­tio­nal­ly work over­ti­me in order to catch up, until you reach a workload (cur­rent work port­fo­lio) that you are com­for­ta­ble with.
Any time you com­ple­te a task you have to deci­de what to do next. In order to make your decisi­on easier Lope only ever shows you tho­se three opti­ons with the hig­hest prio­ri­ty. If you want to see you who­le port­fo­lio you can visit the task menu, which fur­ther splits into open and com­ple­ted tasks. A han­dy short­cut is tap­ping on the workload figu­re at the bot­tom of the today-screen.
You can click any task and chan­ge the con­tent or dura­ti­on. If you don’t want to deal with it at the time you can swi­pe right and click the “later” opti­on. This way it won’t be shown for the next hour and ano­t­her task will take its place in your top 3. Once you com­ple­ted a task you can swi­pe it left and click the “com­ple­ted” opti­on. This way the num­ber and dura­ti­on of the tasks com­ple­ted today incre­a­ses which you can see in the top right corner.
In order to keep you up-to-date, Lope shows you your next three tasks and how much time is left until the next mee­ting. Until then, Lope only shows you tho­se tasks, you are able to finish befo­re­hand, without having to inter­rupt them as the mee­ting starts.
I you want to see how much you mana­ged to do over the past seven days and how your port­fo­lio deve­lo­ped, you can check the “success”-page. The­re, you’ll also find values and opti­ons to check the past 14 or 30 days. This infor­ma­ti­on will help you to allo­ca­te enough time to your port­fo­lio in future, to dis­co­ver fluc­tua­tions or an incre­a­sing workload, in order to bet­ter mana­ge your life.

 

Lope shows you all you need to know with one look. You use it when you input new tasks or mark them as com­ple­te. Any time you do that Lope lets you know what is important at the time. Every addi­tio­nal mes­sa­ge would unne­cessa­ri­ly dis­turb and requi­re you to mul­ti­task, cos­ting you pre­cious time and causing you stress. That is the rea­son why Lope doesn’t uti­li­se push-notifications.
You can down­load and try Lope for free. Once you log­ged your first 100 tasks, Lope will ask you whe­ther you want to purcha­se the pre­mi­um ver­si­on. With a one-off pay­ment you are then able to use Lope per­ma­nent­ly while your money will be used to fur­ther impro­ve Lope and its functions.
If you want to make sure that the­re is no data loss in case of loss of your pho­ne or the migra­ti­on to a new device, you can save all your data to the cloud. You can find this opti­on in the set­tings menu.
You, as a per­son, are part of many dif­fe­rent groups. It is a chal­len­ge to bring tog­e­ther all the dif­fe­rent tasks from tho­se envi­ron­ments. If you use Lope as part of an orga­ni­sa­ti­on, their tasks will be view­ed as domi­nant, for­cing you to record your other tasks in dif­fe­rent ways. This quick­ly leads to you losing track of things. Lope in an orga­ni­sa­ti­on will also enab­le others to allo­ca­te tasks to your workload without con­sul­ta­ti­on (push). This way you are losing con­trol of your work port­fo­lio. For the­se rea­sons, you should only use Lope alone.
Lope is the first task manage­ment soft­ware working with lean princi­ples. If you use Lope cor­rect­ly, you will be able to bet­ter mana­ge your workload resul­ting in less last minu­te stress. You will be dis­tur­bed less by others inqui­ring when you will be finis­hed. You won’t feel as over­whel­med but focus­sed on the most important tasks, swift­ly working through them. Becau­se you will bet­ter orga­ni­se your sche­du­le, you will be able to com­ple­te tasks quicker than befo­re and see all your accom­plish­ments in the evening. This is a gre­at fee­ling and it will empower you. Using Lope, you will deal with your tasks as you encoun­ter them and libe­ra­te your life.