I am afraid I can't agree with > you can get something done by next Friday, I don't think an app can really tell you that.
for the very reason that you cite in the next sentence: > Sure I could take on a new commitment and get it done by next Friday but I may have to drop or change my current commitments. It is this precise activity that I need help with. I don't want MLO to tell whether I can get it done but to help me visualise my up coming workload when I add in that new task and to present me with the information that will help me decide what to drop out. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Steve Wynn Sent: 11 September 2010 9:19 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [MLO] Re: MLO without a Calendar Hi, Overall I tend to keep things as simple as possible, utilizing paper for both a schedule and calendar. It is a bit more complicated than that, I Unschedule and Reverse Calendar as per 'The Now Habit' by Dr Neil Fiore. Which brings into the frame a sort of three dimensional thinking. Workload balance I think has a lot do to with commitments. People often overcommit themsevles and when you have too many commitments it's nearly impossible to get any sort of balance. Balance comes from reducing commitments and perhaps adopting new/different habits. Whether you can get something done by next Friday, I don't think an app can really tell you that. Sure I could take on a new commitment and get it done by next Friday but I may have to drop or change my current commitments. I think although MLO can help me organize and plan these aspects - I think commitment is at a higher level than MLO. So balance can be helped by MLO but ultimately it's supply and demand. If you have too much demand and not enough supply, even MLO isn't going to help. All the best Steve _____ Original message From: "Richard Collings" To: [email protected] Received: 11/09/2010 13:25:00 Subject: RE: [MLO] Re: MLO without a Calendar I am wondering whether part of the problem here is terminology because I would agree 100% with you final sentence - that is exactly what I want (and would certainly be happy to consider alternative approaches). By 'calendar', I mean a calendar like view of my existing tasks in MLO which gives me a view of my day by day workload, NOT a calendar where I record all my appointments, etc - I would still use Outlook for this - transferring appointments into MLO manually that I want to see them in MLO. I don't need synching For me a list of key tasks for Friday is actually very useful, particularly if I have attached to those tasks an estimate of the amount of time they will take (see other postings on this subject) because I can then see whether I am overloaded or not on Friday. I agree that you need to be able to adjust priorities etc all the time but MLO is already good at allowing you to do this and with a calendar view would allow me to do even more. I don't need dynamic scheduling - because I can never see that working. You mention that you use 'schedules' and 'calendars' all the time but you don't say how or which ones. If you have got a solution to the problem of being able to establish whether 'can I get this done by next Friday' (or whatever) then I would be very interested. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Steve Wynn Sent: 10 September 2010 10:00 AM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [MLO] Re: MLO without a Calendar Hi, I realise it's not about scheduling an appointment for Friday, it's about balancing workload. But I am saying MLO can only partly give you this information. For example MLO can't take into account how you feel, what your energy levels are like and a whole host of other attributes. A list of tasks for Friday is actually pretty meaningless. You don't, to my mind, need a list to tell you your priorities. I utlise calendars and schedules heavily, I scheduled 24 hours 7 days a week. Personally I think people blur the boundaries between these tools, which probably causes problems. If I need to know if I can do some work by the end of the week I would look at my schedule for the week. If I needed to know if I could do some work by the end of next week, or the month. I would look at my calendar. But the plans and the information come from MLO, it's the source but the tools are specific and defined. A list of tasks for a specific day on a calendar I don't think indicates anything at all. I would argue that tasks shouldn't be on a calendar. When a task makes it onto a calendar you start to get into the realms of task scheduling, I think it's micro management when you get to that point. Task scheduling requires something complex like Dynamic Scheduling (Above&Beyond) which can take into account all the relevant factors and to me is a bit too over the top. I am more in favor of MLO utlising some sort of timeline or graphical view of goals and projects. Something that is to my mind more befitting the application in question. If people want a calendar that's fine, but from past experience calendars are tricky. I have lost track of how many applications have supplied a calendar that I have just never used. Supplied because it was assumed it was required because other apps of a similar ilk had a calendar. But of no use at all because it couldn't sync with various apps, groupware stuff comes into the frame, work calendars, home calendars, shared calendars a whole host of issues. I vote keep MLO as lean and mean as possible. But look to supply innovative ways to display workload and to balance workload. All the best Steve _____ Original message From: "Richard Collings" To: [email protected] Received: 09/09/2010 19:56:21 Subject: RE: [MLO] Re: MLO without a Calendar Its not about scheduling an appointment for Friday, Steve - its about having a mechanism for determining whether I can fit a new piece of work in to an already busy schedule - or rather what the implication is on my existing commitments if I fit that piece of work in. I don't know what you do for a job but I am a freelance consultant who fortunately is normally kept pretty busy. However, to keep customer's satisfied, I need to meet deadlines whilst at the same time also bidding for new pieces of work. Typical real world scenario: I have committed to a current client to deliver a report by the end of next week. This is already a tight commitment. A new potential client phones up and asks me whether I would be interested in pitching for a new piece of work but he needs a proposal also by the end of next week. I desperately need something to tell me what my workload is over the next couple of weeks and to help me identify whether there is any chance of me meeting both deadlines. I already have all my tasks in MLO, I can put estimated efforts against these and plan them out day by day (if I had a calendar) - why would I want to put all my tasks into another tool in order to do this? Do you have a similar challenge, Steve? If so, how do you this sort of planning exercise? If not, then you are a lucky person. Work where it doesn't matter how long it takes would make life a lot easier but is not a realistic proposition for me (and I suspect many others) Whilst I can understand you not wanting to have time spent on providing a facility which would be of limited value to you personally, I think there is a significant contingent of MLO users who would find this sort of facility extremely useful. For me a tool which would help me with what is my most significant time management problem, would be absolutely brilliant. Richard From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Steve Wynn Sent: 08 September 2010 12:54 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [MLO] Re: MLO without a Calendar I vote against turning MLO into a PIM, it's not a PIM and there are plenty of those around. It's a Task Outliner and as such I don't think it needs a calendar. In fact part of it's strength is the lack of a calendar, because it makes you address the primary concern - tasks. The lack of a calendar makes you establish things like views that address the specifics of what you require, rather than relying on a general overview that a calendar might provide. Knowing the workload you have outstanding can only be aided by things like MLO, but I think if you rely on any tool to inform you how busy you are then it's time to take stock of your commitments. MLO isn't about scheduling an appointment for Friday, it's about making an overall plan and addressing areas of your life. Breaking those down into goals, projects and specific tasks. In a way it doesn't ask you to focus on the completion of a goal or project, it asks you to address the next step - the next task. I think if you find yourself looking to add a calendar aspect you sort of miss the point of MLO. Having no calendar in MLO allows you to keep the two aspects separate, tasks and schedule. Now to my mind that is the best combination because very few applications can combine both aspects to form anything with a semblance of sense. I think only Above&Beyond with it's Dynamic Scheduling manages to merge both aspects into one seamless application, but even that has issues. The lack of a calendar in MLO means you are free to use anything which suits you, Google, Outlook, Time&Chaos, Paper, Diary you are not pigeon holed into using MLO just because that is where the bulk of your information is stored. As I said before MLO isn't a PIM and I don't think it should become one any time soon. Overall I think people believe a calendar will make a significant difference to MLO. I don't think it will and if anything I think it may cause more problems than it resolves. All the best Steve _____ Original message From: "Mark Levison" To: [email protected] Received: 07/09/2010 18:40:21 Subject: Re: [MLO] Re: MLO without a Calendar Please help make this clear to Andrey - go to: http://mlo.uservoice.com/forums/9235-general and vote for the suggestion that is already there. Add your own suggestions. If enough people start to use the site it will give Andrey a better idea where to put his time and effort. Cheers Mark On Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 1:28 PM, Richard Collings <[email protected]> wrote: I would agree that MLO is good for helping decide what you should work on next and making sure you don't forget stuff but in my world at least people say to me 'Can you do this Friday?' and I need some way to work this out given all my other commitments (and it is something that I am truly dreadful at - so I end up working into the night very often). Something like MS Project is way over the top - I just need a tool which helps me visualise my upcoming work with some indication of what I have to get done each day over the next week or two and some indication of the scale of work involved on each day. As I have all this information in MLO already it would be brilliant if Andrey could find a way of presenting this sort of view I have been using the Pomodoro technique to some degree (where you measure time in 30 minute blocks) and I think there is some considerable mileage in developing this further. In terms of large scale new developments, this would get my vote very time. Richard From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Neal Sent: 07 September 2010 4:23 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [MLO] Re: MLO without a Calendar I'm a big fan of this concept. I use flags to define groups of work. Every task fits into one of these groups. Projects People Paperwork Physical work Personal stuff My calendar simply defines which flag I am working on. I then filter flags in MLO views and let my MLO order decide which task to work on. I found this works out better for me then trying to pre-plan which task I am going to schedule at what time. At this point I no longer want a calendar for pre-planning. It still would be useful to have a calendar for time tracking though. On Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 1:28 AM, Mike <[email protected]> wrote: Yeah, that seems like a decent solution. One more thing though, when do I process to-do tasks that aren't in my alloted times? For example, "Call XYZ regarding blah blah". Tasks like these could pop up un-announced. Do I just interrpt whatever I was doing to perform these kind of tasks or what? On Sep 7, 1:38 am, Fletcher <[email protected]> wrote: > Hey, Mike-- > > I am in the same boat that you are in, but I found a bit of stop-gap > solution which is: > > 1) Using Google Calendar, allocate time to various projects (in my > case, contexts/allocation buckets) each week. > 2) In MLO, add another context to each task for the project. > 3) When the event comes up on the calendar, switch to MLO and filter > the To-Do view for the given time allocation. > > It is not perfect, but it does solve the problem and is available > today. As long as you are disciplined about respecting your allocated > time, it will work and deliver results. > > On Sep 5, 9:02 am, Mike <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > Hi, > > > MLO seems like probably the best task management software around, but > > it's missing a critical component - the calendar. > > > I currently have a few projects I want to start and each of them have > > various goals and "checkpoints". > > I'd like to allot a particular amount of time to each project > > throughout the week in such a way that I won't really have to manually > > plan what to do in each session - it should be taken care of by the > > project's massive to-do list so I could just pick off where I have > > left off earlier. > > > Without a built-in Calendar, MLO can only be used with software such > > as Outlook, which may be utterly useless to some of us (I'm a student > > - I don't need the burden of Outlook because I use Gmail for my > > emailing needs). > > > Is a Calendar feature being planned for a future revision? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] <mailto:mylifeorganized%[email protected]> . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] <mailto:mylifeorganized%[email protected]> . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] <mailto:mylifeorganized%[email protected]> . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized?hl=en. <http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3543/3833840021_3bd1777182_o.jpg> Mark Levison | Agile Pain Relief Consulting <http://agilepainrelief.com/> | Agile Editor @ InfoQ <http://www.infoq.com/about.jsp> Blog <http://www.notesfromatooluser.com/> | Twitter <http://twitter.com/mlevison> | Office: (613) 862-2538 Recent Entries: Self <http://www.notesfromatooluser.com/2009/12/self-inflicted-agile-injuries.htm l> Inflicted Agile Injuries, Why <http://www.notesfromatooluser.com/2009/11/why-use-an-agile-coach.html> use an Agile Coach -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. 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