Hi, Ram. Many people use the Star attribute to mean "must do" - you can then do stuff like using the sort in your to-do list to put the starred tasks ahead of the non-starred ones, and you can pull up the starred view to clean out starred tasks that you have finished or given up on.
I hope you don't mind if I throw one other bit of advice your way. It sounds like you are working hard to build a task management setup that has a lot of complexity and functionality. Don't lose track of the fact that the objective is to get a lot of your tasks finished. There's a risk that you might get so involved in tinkering with your setup that you end up neglecting the tasks that you originally wanted to get done.Every once in while when you are getting ready to try out another feature of MLO, ask yourself, if this works will I get more stuff done, or will I just spend more of my time tweaking MLO? -Dwight On Friday, October 12, 2012 8:07:53 PM UTC-4, Ram Rachum wrote: > > Hello everybody! > > In the last couple of days I've been rethinking my self-organization > method and trying to fix various aspects of it which are broken. > > One of these is something that I want to consult with you about. > > When putting tasks into MLO, I make use of the Importance, Urgency and > Effort attributes. I set these attributes to different levels for different > tasks. The thing is, I'm starting to feel that I have a need for one more > attribute, which is similar to Importance but not quite the same, and which > I am not sure if I can even name yet. > > Let me explain the need: > > I've noticed that often I would go to my computer and look at the ~20-30 > tasks I have on my MLO to-do list, thinking "there's a lot of stuff I need > to do", and feeling the sort of bad feeling that you feel when there's a > task that you *have *to do but haven't done yet. And some of my tasks are > like that; for example if I have tasks like "Call accountant to ask about > salary mistake" or "Do the laundry", than those are things that I *have *to > do, where "have" means that I should feel that something is wrong if I > didn't do. Otherwise I might end up with no money in my pockets and no > pants whose pockets I could pull inside-out to illustrate my lack of money. > > But on the other hand, there are tasks which it'll be a great idea to do, > but which I don't *have *to do. Two examples of that from my to-do list > are "Learn how to use RegexBuddy better" and "Reorganize all the electronic > adapters in the drawer". The former would make me into a better programmer, > and the latter would make it easier for me to find adapters when I need > them. Those are great things that are really important to me in my life; > programming puts bread on my table, and becoming a better programmer is > crucial to advancing my career, making more money and living a happy and > fulfilling life. I went on a spiel here because I want to emphasize that > tasks like the 2 examples above are definitely *important*, yet they are > *still > different* from the examples of tasks from the previous paragraph. > > Let's compare the 2 kinds of tasks. For simplicity I'll rephrase the > example for the first kind of task as "Resolve financial problem", and the > second kind as "Learn how to become a better programmer". They are both > undoubtedly important. The first one may be more urgent, but not > necessarily. The difference between them is: *The first task belongs to a > bucket of tasks which I have to do, otherwise basic assumptions about my > life (like having money in the bank) would stop being true, while the > second task belongs to a different bucket of tasks which I don't have to > do. Doing them may be a great idea but I can live a great life without them > too.* > * > * > * > * > I hope I've explained the need properly here. > > Now, I want MLO to reflect those different kinds of tasks. Interface-wise, > I would probably want to have a list of the most have-to-do tasks, followed > by the list of medium have-to-do tasks, and finishing with the least > have-to-do tasks. I know how to do all of that with MLO, but, MLO doesn't > have a "have-to-do" attribute on tasks! I'm already using Importance, > Urgency and Effort! How could I make MLO set each task to have a specified > level of "have-to-do"? > > I'll be happy to hear your thoughts. > > > Thanks for your help, > Ram Rachum. > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mylifeorganized/-/3_2LqW9kX18J. To post to this group, send email to mylifeorganized@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to mylifeorganized+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized?hl=en.
