*maybe* I could suggest something but first I need to see if I am
understanding you. When you have built a chain of projects do you always
work on the first item in a chain or does relative procrastination
involve skipping to the second or third task?
-Dwight
MLO Betazoid on Windows, Cloud and Android SGN2
On 12/16/2015 6:04 PM, Laurence Glazier wrote:
Thanks Dwight.
Today I have been trying out Nick's idea of adjusting the importance
and urgency, it's good I got some practice with that, it might work,
at least it means the stars can be used as stars.
Mark Forster has changed his systems over the years, and I want to
share a link here to his latest, I think it is quite interesting. He
always says his latest version is the final one. He calls this one
FPV, Final Version Perfected
<http://markforster.squarespace.com/blog/2015/5/21/the-final-version-perfected-fvp.html>.
It involves marking a selection of tasks in a list, called a /chain/,
and working through them. It's a psychological trick which means you
are always working on something you prefer to do, he calls it
/relative procrastination/. The problem is that marking a task in MLO
in any way changes the Date-modified, which would change the order in
the sorted view you suggest. I did consider sorting on Date-Created,
but although it can be altered in Windows it cannot be edited on
Android. I tried Review-date but that didn't work well either.
When a task has been worked on (or a new one placed on the list), it
is moved to the bottom. That's what I find tricky. Sorting by
Date-modified would mean the chain of selected tasks would no longer
be apparent.
I absolutely want to work in harmony with MLO's design. It is my best
option even if I have to force manual sorting by adjusting
importance/urgency sliders, or work only in Starred views.
I'm also looking out for mathematically equivalent ways of achieving
Mark Forster's structure which do not require a manual order, which is
partly a consequence of his insistence on using pen-and-paper systems.
Laurence
On Wednesday, December 16, 2015 at 5:38:53 PM UTC, Dwight Arthur wrote:
Hi, Laurence.
I can't comment too far because I don't know anything about the
Forster methodology but I have some advice about effective use of MLO.
One of the challenges with any task manager is to ensure that the
productivity gains outweigh the time you spend managing and
tweaking the tool. It seems to me that the time you spend manually
reordering your tasks would be a problem and I would want to find
a way to let MLO do that for me.
First, you need to be clear on the difference between actually
reordering the tasks in your outline, versus re-sorting the order
in which they appear in a view. One of the most compelling
advantages of MLO is the availability of powerful tools for
defining views. If you can define a view that shows the tasks in
the order you want then you dont have to re-order the outline.
This involves coming up with some sort of a of rule that describes
the order you want for your tasks.
The starred view is an exception; it handles the case where your
rules put some task low in your list but you know that it has to
be done right away, so you tick the star. Since we are already
looking at situations that are exceptions to the rules, you can't
write a rule to put these exceptions into an order, so you often
have to use a manual sort, and for this view (only) MLO synchs
the manual order between platforms. But if you are starring and
manually sorting all of your tasks it would seem that you are
underutilizing the power of MLO.
You made several mentions of moving something to the bottom of the
list. I use a FIFO queue for this type of thing. Create a view
that includes all the tasks that you want to see but maybe in the
wrong order. Then sort the view in ascending order by date
modified. The tasks that have been in the queue the longest will
be at the top. Whenever a new task becomes included it should
appear at the bottom. If a task that's at the top or in the middle
needs to go to the bottom, just make a change to it. For example,
add a blankspace to the end of the title. This causes the modified
date to reset to "now" and your task instantly sinks to the bottom
of the view.
Similarly, instead of dragging your work folder to a hidden branch
when work ends, how about finding a way that MLP can tell whether
you are working and adjust automatically. One way to do this is by
scheduling it. In the Hours tab of the context definition for the
@work context, set up the hours of each day of the week that you
are normally working. Your tasks with the context @work will
appear on your task list each workday morning and go hidden each
workday evening. You can define an @home context that's open
whenever @work is closed.
Another approach would be to do it by location. Associate your
@work context with the location of your workplace and do the same
with your home, then use the Nearby view. Windows doesn't support
Nearby yet but I dont find that a problem. I mainly use
MLO/Windows for planning and organizing my tasks, where my current
location doesn't really matter much, and i use my phone for when i
am working on my tasks.
Read the secton of the mlo users guide that gives the seven or so
ways that a task can be inactive and look for ways to make your
tasks active only when it is time to work on each one.
One more small point. You mentioned that projects are underlined
in blue on the phone. That blue line is actually a progress bar.
-Dwight
MLO Betazoid on Android SGN4
On Dec 16, 2015, Laurence Glazier <laurence.glazier
<http://laurence.glazier>@gmail.com <http://gmail.com>> wrote:
Thanks Nick, I will try that out.
On Wednesday, December 16, 2015 at 1:40:24 PM UTC, Nick Clark
wrote:
I don't know the methodology you refer to, but have you
tried "playing" with the Importance and Urgency sliders in
an Active Actions view? These coupled with Context filters
and context active times may achieve most of what you
describe.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the
Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from
it, send an email to mylifeorganiz...@googlegroups.com
<javascript:>.
To post to this group, send email to
mylifeo...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>.
Visit this group at
https://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized
<https://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized>.
To view this discussion on the web visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/03ae382f-9a88-4456-935f-e55a8f07c7e5%40googlegroups.com
<https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/03ae382f-9a88-4456-935f-e55a8f07c7e5%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout
<https://groups.google.com/d/optout>.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
an email to mylifeorganized+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
<mailto:mylifeorganized+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>.
To post to this group, send email to mylifeorganized@googlegroups.com
<mailto:mylifeorganized@googlegroups.com>.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized.
To view this discussion on the web visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/ede6014b-2ad9-4e8c-9a74-7b320ae42744%40googlegroups.com
<https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/ede6014b-2ad9-4e8c-9a74-7b320ae42744%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"MyLifeOrganized" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to mylifeorganized+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to mylifeorganized@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized.
To view this discussion on the web visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/56722C93.1000804%40dwightarthur.us.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
