1. I have a special view called "daily to-do list" which includes all
active tasks that are starred, active tasks with a completion goal whose
time since last modification exceeds the goal, active tasks with
importance=200, calls with importance over 100 but only during the hours
when the calls context is open, tasks with a "waiting" context whose
start date, if any, has arrived or passed, and lots of other
dwight-specific conditions. It's kind on an active actions list with
everything that I can predict I won't want to do today removed. It's
rare that a month passes without one or two tweaks to the daily to-do
list filter.
2. The way that I am using goals it would have very limited use for a
project. Completion Goals are only functional for a task that is active.
The project parent for an active project is almost always not considered
an active task because it has uncompleted children. At most, if some
project has a next action that has made it to my daily to-do list that I
do not want to allocate time to right now, I might give it a weekly
completion goal and remove whatever's pushing it into the Daily list.
Somehow I doubt that this has anything to do with your question. I
suspect that you are asking how I would assign a project like "Learn to
speak Twi" to a goal like "Stay well-read and knowledgable". The short
answer is that for me, tracking stuff like "Stay well read" costs more
time than it saves so I don't do it. It's good to have goals like that,
just not a good use of time to track them.
3. I'm not sure what an "actual context" is. To me, all of my contexts
are actual, whether they represent a time, a place, a person, a needed
tool, actionability or a mood. Most of my Someday tasks are in a hidden
Someday folder that's flagged for quarterly review. Sometimes if I don't
have time to move a task right now I will leave it in place and assign a
Someday context to keep it off the to-do list until I get around to
moving it. Some someday tasks cannot be moved because they are in a
project, perhaps with other tasks dependent on them. These retain the
someday context. (The Build a Shed project has a Someday task to go file
for a certificate of occupancy. The project's not really done till I
take care of it, but I am not in any rush and if I never get to it then
when my heirs sell my house their real estate agent will take care of
it.) Waiting is a context, most often used if I have something that
cannot be done until a future date but then should be done as soon as
possible, like checking if a package I sent was delivered.Tasks like
this generally do not have any other "actual" context. If some larger or
more complex undertaking includes a waiting component it will often have
a task for the waiting and other tasks with other contexts for what's to
happen when the waiting's over. A quick way to set that up is to create
a subtask for the wait. Suppose that I have a task with Yardwork context
(Yardwork has open and close times set to approx current sunrise and
sunset) to trim a bush and it is hanging around on my to-do list but I
can't trim it because it's still blooming. So I would have a task to
trim the bush with Yardwork context, and a subtask, check if the bush is
done blooming with Waiting context repeating every week on Sundays and
Tuesdays. When I see the "bush done" task on my list and its still
blooming, check complete (i.e. yes, I checked). If the bush id finished
blooming, delete the task (ie, don't need to check that any more) and
the "trim bush" task immediately pops onto the to-do list.
-Dwight
On 12/2/2016 8:36 AM, John . Smith wrote:
Dwight
Interesting...
1.
My daily to-do list includes any active task with a star,
any task with a weekly goal whose date of last
modification is more than 7 days old...
So do you have a special view set up to just show stars and weekly goes
less than 7 days old etc?
2. Also how do you allocate Projects to Goals?
3.
Tasks can only stay uncategorized for at most two or
three days, so it will get a context, probably Someday.
Are you using context tags to control both actual context and actionable
status (Someday, Waiting, etc)
Cheers
J
On Friday, December 2, 2016 at 6:44:46 AM UTC, Dwight wrote:
I I use MLO's Goals field in a different way because I find it
helpful - I'll share it in case it helps you find a new perspective
but I am not necessarily suggesting that this approach is better
than any other or that it will work for anyone besides me.
One of my highest objectives in task management is to spend less
time doing it (and more time on task execution). One of the most
effective steps in achieving this objective is to avoid scheduling
tasks that don't need to be scheduled, thereby taking back all of
the time that I used to spend on rescheduling tasks that remained
open after they were scheduled to be completed. But task management
often involves taling an open task and saying "not now, come back
later" to it. The challenge is to do so without ending up
inadvertently scheduling the task. I use the "Goals" field to make
this happen.
My purpose in using goals is to control when and whether a task
shows up on my daily to-do list. If something is a weekly goal, that
means that I have a goal to get this thing done in no more that
approximately a week. If something is a monthly goal, that means
that I have a goal to get this thing done in no more that
approximately a month. I use the star to mean "daily goal". And I
don't have any yearly goals, so I use the Yearly Goal value to
actually mean Quarterly.
My daily to-do list includes any active task with a star, any task
with a weekly goal whose date of last modification is more than 7
days old, any task with a monthly goal whose date of last
modification is more than 30 days old, or any task with a yearly
(i.e. quarterly) goal whose date of last modification is more than
90 days old. If a goal task pops up in my daily to-do list it means
that this task is not getting done in the time I set for it.
Ideally, I will get the task done when it shows up. If I cannot
allocate the time to get it dome then I must have been mistaken in
thinking that it needed to be finished in a day/week/month/quarter.
In that case I should lower the goal, for example by changing a
starred task to one that has a weekly goal. If something has a
quarterly goal and has to be lowered it goes to "someday" with an
annual review. Once in a while I am not ready to postpone a task so
seriously but I also cannot get to it today. In this case I make
some tiny edit to the task, usually adding or deleting a space from
the caption or note, which resets the modification date and gives me
another week/month/quarter. If I find myself doing this a second
time to a task I try to have the discipline to drop the goal level
at that time.
So, what do I do about visions, principles, objectives and all of
that? The first thing, in line with the need to spend less time
managing tasks, is that if I find myself spending actual time
debating with myself as to how to categorize something I will try to
change my process to make the question moot. So I reject any process
that calls for me to treat an objective differently from a goal or a
vision. I don't track stuff like "be a good father" or "save for
retirement" because they are not actionable and there is no danger
that I will forget to do them. If a thought crosses my mind like
"hey, it would be cool if I could speak the Twi language" I will
create an uncategorized task called "learn Twi". Tasks can only stay
uncategorized for at most two or three days, so it will get a
context, probably Someday. In my next quarterly review I will see
whether I can identify a next step, like chose classroom versus
online training, which will probably get defined as a project with
no subtasks, or maybe there will be a few subtasks for getting
started like a task with >Online context to find and evaluate Twi
classes. There may be sub projects within this project. If I find
myself taking Twi classes and having Twi-speaking friends over for
dinner and conversation I will probably check the parent "learn Twi"
task as completed, which does *not* mean that I speak the language
perfectly but does mean that it's not something I need to track any
more.
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