I just checked back to see what's changed in the last 18 months or so :-) I've had a great, relaxing weekend, camping, hanging out on the beach, and getting all these great ideas that I've put into my MLO inbox and promised myself that THIS time, I'll get them done! Now I just need to make that a fact... and I logged in to check whether there's any progress on making MLO a bit more helpful for me in that!
As always, the feature that I really miss from MLO is a calendar view. I DO see that the iPad v2 version proposes that there is one in development, with a tasks-per-day view. That looks great.... but... I still need more. You see, there's two ways of thinking about the calendar view. I presume most people are talking about being able to see the tasks in MLO that have a date and time, in their calendar, so that they can plan around them. Now, that's very handy - but it only really works for tasks you create that have fixed dates and times. For me, the problem is completing the tasks that DON'T have an assigned date/time. What I need a calendar view for, is to be able to drag-and-drop *un*-dated/timed tasks that are highest priority in my list, INTO my calendar - to take the tasks that otherwise lurk in the background with no assigned timeslot, and fix them with a solid date/time in my calendar so that I commit myself to work on them! It not only helps me to commit, it also helps me avoid planning to "do that tonight", forgetting that I'd already planned to do some other task tonight. Ideally, it would even force me to cancel meetings and appointments, to make way for more important tasks that I would otherwise only put in the gaps between those meetings. I recently found yet another new app that comes close-ish. I saw a review for Timeful on Lifehacker: ( http://lifehacker.com/timeful-intelligently-arranges-tasks-and-events-on-your-1616073913). While it looks nowhere sophisticated enough to replace MLO (nor is on Windows, etc), it does do one thing that I want to do - allow me to drag-and-drop tasks into specific timeslots (see 00:30 in the video). It even autolearns and autoplans - again, something I can do without - but in its place, having MLO consider the place/context that I will be at (and is open) when it auto-schedules, would be great! Ideally, I could sit in the MLO interface and see all my calendars (synced from Outlook, say) in a day/week view, along with my next tasks by priority on the side. I could then drag-drop the tasks into the gaps in my calendar - maybe allow a few tasks to be dropped into the same timeslot (eg. "I'm going shopping from 10-12 tomorrow, and I need to do these things - in this order" // "I should call Marcel at 9am tomorrow, and I have these 5 different things from different projects to discuss with him"). At present, the best case is that in the evening I will look at the next MLO tasks, then switch to Outlook and create appointments for those tasks, to ensure they're scheduled in. It comes to the same end, but it requires me to manually transpose everything from MLO into Outlook, which a lot of additional manual effort. It also clutters my schedule, and requires switching between tools a lot. I guess another way of saying it, is that I'm looking for a Gantt chart auto-integrated with my existing Outlook schedule, in a Calendar View! It would just be nice to be able to do all of this management in one tool - MLO - in a quick and productive way! <cross posted to a few other relevant threads> Damian On Thursday, January 3, 2013 1:57:32 AM UTC+11, damoski wrote: > > Hi, > > I was going to propose a calendar view, until I searched here and checked > Uservoice, and realised it's already the most frequently-requested feature > :-) > > However - I wanted to extend this a little further, by proposing that the > calendar view doesn't just show the deadline dates of the various tasks, > but actually allows you to tentatively schedule some tasks for a certain > day and even timeslot - and, going one step further - would allow you to > view your prioritised ToDo list, and *quickly and easily *drag-and-drop > the tasks into the free slots on your calendar (alongside your calendared > appointments). > > I keep reasoning that if I execute GTD correctly and use MLO correctly, > then I should just be able to keep ticking off the 'next in the list', and > everything will magically get done. However, the reality is that I often > end up scheduling what I know I need to do, in that particular timeslot > that I know I can do it in. At present, I often end up 'double-entering' > (ie. re-writing the existing MLO task as a calendar appointment), to > co-ordinate this. Using MLO flags up what I need to do on a day-by-day > basis, but I'll still manually compile my 'Today' list from that, and then > work on that. > > Currently, I use a 'Today' context, and Starred view, for that, so I can > quickly look at the Starred view on my phone, but every time I look at it, > I still have to make that mental review of "OK, * task 6... was I going to > do that before OR after the 3pm conference call?". Much better, if I can > drop them directly into a calendar view for today, then glance at that. > > Anyway, I've posted this as an idea on Uservoice: > > > http://mlo.uservoice.com/forums/9235-general/suggestions/3509561-close-the-gap-between-the-todo-list-and-the-schedu > > Cheers! > > > Damian > > -- 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/7d87836b-cd70-4aa8-ab78-5e803876f51a%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
