Martin, My dashboard context picks up the contexts related to Daily, Weekly Monthly, Seasonal, annual routine tasks, Hot Spots, @Calls, @Hardlandscape (deadlines). It contains things such as - Process MLO inbox (morning routines) - Work down closed email list to zero (afternoon routine that helps keep email under control) - check calendar for tomorrow (evening routines) - file office papers (weekly on Wed) :) - buy Mother's day presents (in Sweden it is the last sunday of May) - wash car (also included in the @Errands context, to optimize my route for going to get all done) - spend 15 minutes on Swedish language homework - just started learning swedish, so need to be reminded every day to do a bit of homework (to avoid the crunch on Sunday evening before the lesson) ... etc.
So it is a sort of a reminder list of both routine tasks (especially the ones that are not every day or regular occurrences), phone calls and deadlines, and form the backbone of a normal day. At any given time there could be 30-50 tasks on there, which I can filter by zooming into the Work folder or the Home folder in outline view - an excellent way to see everything I have to do or focus on work only if I am at the office. Things on here can be skipped if there are more important tasks in some of the other lists, but the vast majority of them are very simple 5-10 minute actions. Part of it is a bit trivial, but it gives me the pleasure of ticking off many small things as completed each day, which is part of the reward for sticking to the routines - sad but true! It is also an excellent way to pick up a new habit. At the moment I have a task in morning routines called "Drink Vitamins" in my Home Morning routines as this is something I keep forgetting to do. Many of my other productivity habits (scan for urgent email and then close inbox) started out as a task in a daily routine list somewhere, or are still there as reminders. As an aside, I try to follow the approach of Empty your Head in Getting Things Done. This basically means getting absolutely everything that you need to remember into a system so that your mind is uncluttered with worries about the things you are forgetting and can focus on the task at hand. I feel no guilt to mark a task as complete without having done it if it is no longer relevant, or skipping an occurrence of a routine task as circumstances demand, or just deleting it after a few weeks if it turns out I am still not doing it regularly. It took me years to break free from the idea that all tasks in my to do list have to be completed - also something Mark Forster promotes in the Autofocus system. :) According to the Pocket PC version the to do list contains 710 items, presumably including the whole structure of folders and subfolders & projects to hold subtasks. 115 of these are recurrent items (i.e. routine activities) with their subtasks. Again example. The delightful task "Morning routines are done!" contains 5 subtasks (current initiative, process email inbox and close, process MLO inbox, process voicemail, check Tickler list) which all have to be completed for it to show in the dashboard. This task is part of the project [Daily Work] and is set to recur every weekday. So the dashboard shows [PRJ: Daily work] Current initiative and 4 other tasks. When they are all ticked, it shows [PRJ: Daily work]: Morning routines are done! which is a delight to tick. When I tick this one as complete, it recreates itself with all its subtasks for tomorrow (like magic! GRIN). It is then relatively easy to add a task to morning routine *or take it away or move it to afternoon rouitnes* without having to fiddle with recurrence settings and all that jazz. The question then would be why do I have all these sub contexts - morning, mid day, afternoon, evening, Monday, Tue, Wed, Thu etc. By setting the open hours of these contexts and the contexts of the tasks themselves appropriately, my dashboard does not show me routine tasks that are not relevant for now. I start the day with a relatively short list which grows as the day goes by if I do not tick them off. My list at the beginning of the week is also fairly short because routine tasks for Tue, Wed etc. are not yet showing. Tasks from last week that I have not completed or skipped an occurrence on also do not show up until it is their turn again. This is one of the most powerful uses of MLO for me, as the dashboard tends to show only routine tasks which are relevant for now. Again the default templates have some excellent starter lists in to build your routines from - mine is approximately 60% adopted and 40% homegrown. Some examples - publish weekly intranet update is a Monday routine task which also includes the Tue context. So if for some reason I cannot publish it on Monday it shows in Tue dashboard as one day overdue. By Wed it disappears from the dashboard, as the opportunity will have passed and has to wait for next week. - take out all trash bags is a Tue home routine task which only shows up on Tue, as the collection happens on Wed morning. - check calendar for tomorrow is an Work Evening routine task that is set to recur on Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu (I do not need to be reminded on Fri and Sat to see what the next day's work holds for me). ... etc. On May 26, 7:29 am, "Martin.G" <[email protected]> wrote: > Thanks for a really helpful post - just curious, what do you use the ! > Dashboard context for? --- deleted the old stuff below --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group. 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