I love MLO. But for me, I have to admit, it's not really working. My problem is immediate task queueing and focus. I funnel all my tasks into MLO - 700-800 in all at present, and group/categorise/prioritise them accordingly - but even with all the contexts, priorities and algorithms, actually working on them is not as simple as clicking the ToDo tab and picking the top one.
There are always immediate tasks in the forefront of my mind. At any point, I have an idea what today, and tomorrow, and the day after may bring - maybe up to next week. That includes commitments, appointments, physical location, and even how I feel about the day. This can modify, pretty much on a 4-8 hourly basis as new crises and requirements appear. (I have quite a reactive job). The way I work probably isn't anything special. I wake up in the morning, look at my agenda, and know what I have booked, and what my intentions are, for the day. I then review my MLO tasks, and fit in those tasks into the day that I feel I can. The way I do that at the moment is that I STAR them, order the starred list, and then I look at the starred list through the day. However, it's quite one-dimensional. What I'd really like to do, is have all the various algorithms, contexts, etc. give me a rough priority/order, and then I go through the ToDo list and fit them into folders - like 43 folders. Then, every morning, I can look forward at each day in, say, the next week, and see what I intend to do today/ tomorrow/the day after. If I can see it's not going to work, I rearrange them. Pretty much how 43 folders work. The question is... how to do this? - If I use subtasks (folders) (eg. 13Jan/14Jan/15Jan/16Jan), then I lose all the existing folder hierarchy that I use that makes MLO so great (eg. Home/Home Admin/Finance/Pension/... or Work/Clients/ Client A/Project B/....). - If I use contexts (ie. 43 contexts, on top of Home/Work/Shopping/ Laptop/iPhone Online/iPhone Offline/etc), then it would be unmanageable, and MLO isn't really designed to work this way) - If I use Due Dates... well, that's closest in intent, but with three problems: First is that focusing on today's tasks amongst the huge list is quite hard (although filtering can help); the second is that ToDo lists aren't necessarily ordered by Due Date (priority might escalate some); the last is that the Due Date (ie. deadline) might not be the date I intend to do a task. eg. I have a report due by Friday, but I want to write it on Tuesday. I'd appreciate any feedback on how others do this. At the moment, I'm trying using the Due Date approach, with a custom ToDo list grouped by Due Date - so that I can view each day's 'folder' quite clearly. However, this view is only available in the desktop version, not iPhone/iPad. Thanks! D -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized?hl=en.
