You mention an important point. In a to-do list view, the included tasks are shown in a flat list either ordered according to a defined set of sort rules or else ordered according to a manual sort.

Outline views in contrast show the included tasks in a hierarchical list. Most of the time, the entire view is ordered according to the order the tasks are in within the underlying profile. If you specify a sort rule in a hierarchical view, it will be used to sort the top level items; tasks in the branch below each top level item are unsorted, that is they are in the order of the underlying profile outline. So if you re-order tasks within a folder, you are actually reorganizing the underlying outline, and these changes will be synched.

You can build custom hierarchical views that zoom in to a particular branch, or that exclude any item whose contexts are all closed, or limit the display to active tasks (ie not hidden, no future start date, etc). Maybe something like this would serve you better.
-Dwight
MLO Betazoid on Windows, Cloud and Android SGN2
On 12/17/2015 5:44 PM, Laurence Glazier wrote:
Thanks Dwight

I will try something like that for the time being, and see how well it works for me. I can revert to using Active Starred view, and starring every task, which works though does not make the application shine!

If there is a solution we have both overlooked, I suspect it is in outline based views rather than to-do list ones. It may be that synchronizing other manually ordered views will be needed to solve this one. And by then Mark Forster may well have come up with new refinements to his methods!

Laurence

On Thursday, December 17, 2015 at 5:38:44 PM UTC, Dwight Arthur wrote:

    Thanks for the link to FVP, it was an interesting read. I had been
    going to suggest something about using dependencies to form tasks
    into a chain but its clear that this would not help manage FVP.

    If I wanted to do this: I would use Importance. I would start by
    multiselecting all of the tasks in a chain and setting importance
    to zero. Then, whenever I want to put an FVP "dot" on a task I
    would up the importance by one
     - <alt>2, <alt>2, tab, right-arrow
     - if <general> section in task properties is collapsed, only one
    <alt>tab is needed

    The next task I wanted to dot, I would set importance to two. Same
    hotkey sequence except two taps on the right-arrow key.

    somewhere around ten I would stop counting taps and just hold down
    the right arrow key until importance gets into the neighborhood,
    then use right arrow or left arrow to fine-tune it.

    If the last task I dotted got importance 27 and I need to add a
    new task, I would add it with importance 28 and the next task
    dotted would be 29.

    I would work from a view that zoomed to a particular folder and
    displayed tasks sorted in order on ascending importance. Each
    folder has its own sequence of importance values and you have to
    remember the current value so that you can assign a value one
    higher to the next dotted or added task.

    Do you want to use FVP to select which task to do next across
    multiple folders? If so then the view should include all of the
    candidate folders and they should share a single sequence of
    importance values

    drawbacks of this method:

     1. you need to use your own memory to track the next importance
        value for each chain. That, or else check the bottom of the
        view every time.
     2. If you use the contents of different folders together in
        varying combinations you will need to assign a single string
        of importance numbers across folders
     3. I suppose that every once in a while the rankings get stale
        and the piece of paper gets messy and you start over with a
        fresh sheet, right? The equivalent of this would
        be setting importance for all tasks back to zero. If you have
        more than 200 dotted or new tasks between resets you will run
        out of importance values. In that case I would set urgency for
        all affected tasks to zero at the reset as well, and after
        assigning importance number 200 to some task the next task
        would get urgency 1 and importance one, then urgency one and
        importance two and so on up to urgency one and importance
        two hundred, then urgency two and importance one and so on. By
        the time you get to urgency 200 and importance 200 you will
        have dotted 40,000 tasks which I think would be more than
        enough. Your view would then be sorted by urgency ascending
        and then importance ascending, next task at the bottom. This
        allows you longer lists but it's more complex and more to remember
     4. Mobile: the lists and views will synch well and display well,
        but it could be terribly difficult on Android (and, I assume,
        iPhone) to assign an importance value of 7 (not 6 or 8) to a
        task. There's a slider that could be used but you would need a
        stylus to make fine-tuning adjustments and there's no
        confirmation of what number the slider is set to. So in my
        opinion you would need to analyze your queue and decide what
        you want to work on, on Windows and you could use mobile
        platforms to tick off completed tasks, capture new tasks, and
        have a peek at what's pending.
     5. when a view gets longer than what fits on one page I could
        have trouble doing this. But I guess that drawback applies
        when doing it on paper as well.

    On Thursday, December 17, 2015 at 2:59:57 AM UTC-5, Laurence
    Glazier wrote:

        Sounds intriguing!

        As I understand it, each successive activity in the chain is
        more desirable (or less undesirable) than the preceding one.
        The last one in the chain is always the preferred one from the
        entire list. You work on that one. If you leave it unfinished,
        you remove it from the chain (unflag/unstar/unmark it somehow)
        and transfer it to the bottom of the list.

        The next one to work with is what was the previous one in the
        chain, unless the chain can be extended further down again
        with more desirable ones.

        If and when you get back to the top item, when that has been
        worked on you start a new chain again from the top.

        It takes a bit of getting used to.

--
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/ac97c122-274b-4ef8-a6bc-d6e20d86bec2%40googlegroups.com <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/ac97c122-274b-4ef8-a6bc-d6e20d86bec2%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/56738010.9030401%40dwightarthur.us.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Reply via email to