Thanks Dwight I might choose the path of outline based views. For the moment I have been tweaking the importance slider but I can see this may get harder as time goes on!
I tried a different approach today, by using the Active by Context view. To move a task to the bottom of the list, I would set a context based on a date stamp, e.g. 151219/1 etc, which effectively puts it to the bottom of the list. In time, as these contexts become emptied, they would be deleted. However the synchronisation from Windows to Android did not work well. Tasks without contexts did not always show on the Android, but sometimes did. By creating a new context and putting all items without a context into it (called "New None") seemed to fix it. I may persevere with this idea for a while. I need to understand this aspect of MLO better. Even if it does not solve the immediate issue it is bound to help me in the future :) I might pose these questions, with a link to this thread, on a similar forum on Mark Forster's website which I think may have a number of MLO users. Laurence On Friday, December 18, 2015 at 3:40:20 AM UTC, Dwight Arthur wrote: > > 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 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. > To view this discussion on the web visit > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/ac97c122-274b-4ef8-a6bc-d6e20d86bec2%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/ac97c122-274b-4ef8-a6bc-d6e20d86bec2%40googlegroups.com > . > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group. 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