I was paraphrasing what I heard, rather than quoting you directly. Sorry
not to be more clear. You did not say stupid in so many words.
Lisa / [email protected]
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On 12/4/2014 1:15:52 PM, "John Smith" <[email protected]> wrote:
Lisa
Your comment that MLO is more "task management platform" than "task
management system" is, IMHO, absolutely spot on.
That said, I notice that there are various different "Templates" that
you can choose when creating a new MLO file and this in theory ought to
go a long way to helping the "mainstream" user (i.e. the vast majority
of potential users out there) who will of course want a system that
they can use "out of the box". And given unquestionably huge the power
of the MLO platform, I think that is something that MLO would do well
to address, if significantly improving their sales is something that
they interested in.
In fact I now wonder if maybe there could be some sort of secondary
market for selling task management systems that are good to go and are
based on the MLO 'platform' ??
I find your comments about my moaning about "bugs" surprising. I have
found MLO to be remarkably stable and bug free. I only recall one time
when I nearly accused MLO of having a bug and even then I said it was
"effectively" a bug due to the fact that there was extremely
information (on the Next Action by Project view) that might have been
extremely useful to the user that was simply not being shown in the
view. This was one of the reports that resisted showing the Importance
& Urgency to the user at the Project level for no apparent reason. Can
you cite any other examples?
I have tried searching Google Groups but
a) I could not find the text in question within thread in question and
b) Iin all 3 of my browsers including Google Chrome very often (yes,
despite clearing out my cache with CCleaner) certain pages on GG simply
refuse to load. This certainly did not help. [Aside: The bug here was a
Google Groups bug if anything! ]
So no, I do not find MLO "buggy" and I never say it had an actual bug.
I said it was "effectively a bug" which is different.
I find your comments about my moaning about stupid features surprising
too. The only comment I can remember or find about something being
"stupid" was my accusation that many of the hotkeys where not standard
and yes I do regard that to be a significant lost opportunity for MLO
... which some people would call "stupid", in as much as that the
learning curve for new users is being significantly added to for no
clear reason. I didn't say the word stupid in order to be offensive, I
said it because losing easy chances to have a much improved learning
curve for new users is in my options "stupid" design.
And even though MLO may like to think of itself as a platform not a
system, it seems to me as a new user to be clear that not enough trials
of new users have been done on MLO. A simple example would be
Shift/Alt/arrow Left and Right. To me this is one of the most useful
pairs of hotkeys on MLO. Personally, had I not discovered it within a
couple of hours of use, I would very likely have abandoned MLO - it's
that important and useful to me at least. But can anyone name me any
other application(s) that use that particular combinations of keys to
move items around the screen? I mean shift/arrow... control/arrow...
alt/arrow, yes maybe. But shift/alt/arrow? How likely is a new user to
be to find that out without looking it up?
So "read the manual" I hear you all say. But you know what for an
system that is an out of date response. Take all that Apple iPhone &
iPad stuff. Nowadays the manual is mostly an after thought. The
intelligent user should be able to work it out for him/herself. The
manual is not something to be read. It is something to be used as a
last resort.
But what's actually wrong with using keys and hotkeys that mainstream
users are already used to? What's wrong with just plain old Tab and
Shift/Tab? (which is what is already used used by various competitors,
btw)... Now, I made these points to express my opinion that it would be
a trivial 'quick win' for the developers to change. Afterall if they
want new mainstream users, why make it unnecessarily hard for them?
OK I now get that the readership of this forum is mostly other users.
But clearly MLO do read the forums, at least a bit. And believe me, if
they didnt do so then they would be living in the wrong century and I
would fear for their long term future, because let me tell you, the
developers of new competing products (like GTDNext) are exceedingly
interested to hear as much feedback as possible from users. Yes I am
totally aware the my opinions are just my opinions and may well not get
acted upon - of course I do. But a forum provides and opportunity for
other users to chip in and agree or disagree - exchange of information
is what they are there for.
Apologies for length - I didn't have time to reply in fewer words.
On Thursday, December 4, 2014 5:35:55 PM UTC, Lisa S wrote:
Ken: definitely. I enjoy having it appreciated so steal away :-)
John: here's the thing. In the opinion of many of us here, MLO is an
amazingly powerful, very carefully designed task management platform.
(it's not really a task management system, in my opinion, but a
platform. More on that in a sec) It's certainly not bug free, nor is
it consistently the same level of sophistication in all areas. ( for
example, rich text, documentation, etc) . No one is arguing that it's
perfect. Honest.
But some things that you are vehemently calling bugs are intentional
and appropriate design decisions, and have had a lot of smart people
thinking in much detail about the best way to implement them
cohesively with other features. This is not defensiveness or "because
it's always been this way" which I think you will be able to see as
time goes by....there are real design trade-offs in complicated
software systems as I'm sure you know.
However, some of the points you bring up are valid - but you can't
really know which ones until you understand the system as it is. so
coming in and saying "this is a stupid way to do things" takes people
aback. So I ask you to come in with an attitude of, "explain what I'm
not understanding ." And to realize that the people replying to your
questions are other users, so you may not always get answers.
I think one area of confusion is that MLO is not really an
out-of-the-box wysiwyg task system, and should not be, when you get
into the complexity that we are talking about. It's designed to
support many methodologies robustly, and even though it uses GTD
terminology and can be implemented as a GTD management system, it is
not hardwired that way. My experience, even people that want a "pure"
GTD system (which I moved away from years ago) implement it radically
differently in MLO.
so I guess that is my answer to a question you raised in another
thread about do you really have to set up your MLO structure and why
it doesn't just work intuitively. Yes. You do. It's the curse and the
beauty of MLO , take it or leave it. then after you've explored it
more, you will be better equipped to advocate for missing and
unintuitive features. I can tell you will be good at that :-) let's
see… I'm guessing you will be wanting a calendar view?(Sorry, inside
joke).
The good news is that you don't have to design your system all
perfectly the first time because it's not that hard to change later. (
I've switched from context to flags to tree structure , for example,
for my areas of focus. I just created a view that selected all tasks
with a particular context or flag and edit them as a group ).
I have actually begun to look at my task management system as
something that has a natural evolution . I energize myself to organize
my life by reviewing my processes and adjusting my MLO structure to
match. thinking about my task management system organization is part
of my review process and helps me organize myself as well. I used to
be on my own case about always changing it, but you know? I think my
brain just needs to keep it interesting.
I hope you give MLO a chance to show off its amazing features as well
as its quirks, rather than trying to line it up with the picture you
have of what it ought to be. Be curious. (You might want to choose
your on-list curiosities based on which ones you most want an answer
for ).
By the way, welcome to the crowd.
On Dec 4, 2014 9:27 AM, "pottster" <[email protected]> wrote:
You might want to adjust your vinegar to honey ratio accordingly...
Love that expression! Have I your permission to borrow?
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