I've read and attempted to use, or at least implement ideas from, nearly all the books mentioned thus far, and it's a great list. I have been using a lot of David Allen's GTD ideas for years, and MLO provides great support for GTD concepts, especially contexts and his notion of projects.
One of my recent favorites that many have not heard of: "Getting Results the Agile Way", with info here: http://sourcesofinsight.com/getting-results-the-agile-way/ However, as it turns out, the author has what I consider to be a better presentation of most of the information free, on the web here: http://www.30daysofgettingresults.com/2011/10/day-1-take-tour-of-getting-results.html I like the bite-size daily 30 day program, with assignments. It actually fits very nicely with MLO; "Agile Results" has the concept of "3 small stories for the Day, 3 medium stories for the Week, 3 larger stories for the Month, and 3 BIG stories for the year." This fits nicely with MLO's way of creating folders (and tasks in the folders) and then marking the folders as a Goal for the Week, Month, or Year. For those people who have had experience with Scrum and other similar types of "agile" development practices, there will be a lot of familiar ideas. One of the most helpful suggestions, for me personally, from Getting Results the Agile Way was to refactor action items out of reference material, and have them in clearly separate places. The way I eventually wound up implementing that was to start using Evernote for my reference system, and then to paste any Evernote Note Links (hyperlinks) for action items into the MLO task. For example, I have a recurring task in MLO to do oil changes on each of my vehicles. But, I'm not a mechanic, and at oil change time, I can't always remember the right oil, the right oil filter, the right wrench size. And, I don't want to keep historical service logs and mileage information in MLO either. So, in the MLO task, I have a hyperlink to the Evernote note that has my car's reference information and service history. I can click on the link in the MLO (Android) mobile app,and presto, there is my Evernote note with all the information I need, plus maybe helpful pictures I took from last time, to help me remember details needed to do the job quickly, like where the darn oil filter is (actually it's a cartrdige, but on a Saturn I had, it was really, really hard to find the darn oil filter, and pictures help). Or, let's say I have an MLO project to build a projection screen (for a big-screen video projector) from some plans/blueprints provided by the projection cloth supplier (Carl's place). In the MLO project entry, I'll have a link to the plans, captured in Evernote, from Carl's Place. Not trying to turn this into an Evernote commercial, lol, but it's awesome to be able to use it together with MLO, and the combination has revolutionized my productivity. So anything involving "action" or "projects" and "tasks" and "dependencies" is in MLO, and anything other than cursory, disposable reference information (like the part number to buy at the store) is in MLO. The last paragraph is as much about my mistakes in how I tried to use MLO earlier. I was trying to use MLO to replace another great outliner-based app (Ecco Pro on Windows) that I used to support my brainstorming processes, plus reference, plus action. I tried to use MLO the same way; bad, bad idea. Once I learned to use MLO only for projects I'm committed to doing, and limiting what I put into MLO to a horizon of only a year or so, things went so much better. Of the books above, I did use Michael Linenberger's "Master Your Workday", and while it was helpful, as a "system" it wasn't a great fit for me in the long term. It would be great for a lot of people though, and has a ton of helpful ideas, which will work great for many types of people. The other "book" I have found helpful this year, is actually an audio book, Peter Bregman's "18 minutes", which I got through Audible.com. One of the most important ideas from "18 minutes", for me, is limiting my "buffet plate" to roughly 5 "portions", for the next year. I know this is fundamental stuff for many people, but the analogy resonated for me, because I tend to overstuff my plate and myself at buffet restaurants and then later wind up wishing I had practiced moderation. The book has a helpful packaging of many fundamentals, in a useful, practical, accessible way. I wound up with 8 areas, instead of 5, including 5 personal, 2 work, and 2 that are both work and personal. However, for me, that's a big improvement, especially since I made explicit decisions to NOT tackle several "plate overfiller" projects this year. Not "give up" on them, just defer any real work to the year I decide to adopt them as a focus. One of Bregman's best quotes is that "traditional time management books start too late, and end too early." "They start too late, because they usually begin with how to manage your to-do items, and skip the fundamental step of making a deliberate decision about what we should really be doing. For this reason, it is very likely that you may accomplish many of the wrong things, wasting your time (and your life.) He thinks the majority of time management books end too early, because for people, usually the most difficult part of managing their time is not making a plan, but its day-to-day execution: getting started, keeping their focus, prioritizing and avoiding the distraction of what is really not important." A terrific summary of some key ideas from the book is here: http://top-productivity.com/take-control-of-your-life-by-making-a-habit-of-accomplishing-the-right-things/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group. 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