In retrospect my way of doing things is probably viewed by many as convoluted but it works so well for me and honestly it took a long time to evolve to what it is that I am hesitant to change. It is probably best described as mostly GTD with horizon principles. I'm old I grew up with filing cabinets. To this day I still use windows explorer in "tree" view format and my outlook is also a tree / folder format. It is what I am comfortable with. So in my brain hierarchy folders just flows for me.
so my all task view is a virtual filing cabinet of folders that contain tasks. I have various "drawers" (also a folder) that I use for my own sorting purposes. I do a periodic review manually, I have not started using the built in "review" thing yet as that forces a review and honestly most of the stuff stored in my system does not need a forced review. It is either actionable or it is not and if it is not then I have the time to review it manually to decide on what is next to work on I do not need a nagging reminder to remind me to review the stuff I know needs my attention someday otherwise I would have never kept it in the first place. my simplest flow is simply using contexts. I have a "folder" named @office so I can find it in my tree easily. it is marked as a folder and has the context assigned to it @office. it is set so all subtasks inherit that context. I use this folder for things I immediately plan to do my current horizon. the things that I want to accomplish before I worry about anything else. If anything in this folder is higher priority than the others I'll use a reminder to annoy myself but basically this is a 20ish task folder at any given time so quickly glancing at the list is not a big deal. I do this tree method in my all tasks view because I did not like the confusion of an unorganized list even though according to strict GTD methodology I should really ever be "in" this view anyway its just storage. my normal everyday working view is called by context and I have it set as follows: I use the filter then under general I have show actions active show hierarchy yes show completed no under contexts my operation is set to no and then at the top of the task list where you can change the view I use *by context also>> I leave my filter always displayed so when I am in my by context view and i want to see a different context I just click on it in the filter section. I only see the active tasks for each context this way. If I am at my desk I click @office and now see everything I want to work on including the folder where it came from because my tasks are short only a few words, i don't use the notes section too much as its very limited anyway and usually the "folder" is my mental trigger what that task relates to. so by seeing the task and the folder it resides in I usually know everything I need to know about it in case it spawns future thoughts or tasks or ideas. getting back to my all task view and my collection system here is my system for dealing with the items that I deem are over the horizon: I have a folder named someday maybe. This folder represents a virtual AND a real filing cabinet drawer where I store things that I may work on someday. The real drawer has a folder system that is alphabetical (go figure) so naturally my virtual someday maybe folder also has 26 sub folders alphabetically all these folders are marked to accept the context of the master folder (someday maybe storage) and all are set to hide sub-tasks. using my method above I cannot see these in my by context view no matter what because by definition they are not active tasks. They are over the horizon tasks and are greyed out for a reason which is to keep me from worrying about them. I know I have them but I do not want to "review" them. they are over the horizon. when I do get to something in this folder that I decided its time to act on I move it to an actionable folder that makes it a active task with an appropriate context that I know I'll see in my by context view. I can still set reminders and due dates and start dates on these hidden tasks if I want but nothing will make them active until I manually do it. By adding start or due dates to items in this folder it would force me to review the folder periodically which defeats my purpose for it in the first place The cumbersome part of it is that regardless of start or due or reminder the only way to make the task "active" to where it can be seen in my by context view is to move it or to un-check the hide sub-tasks box on every folder in the hierarchy until it gets to the parent folder. I guess that's ok in the short term but long term it really defeats the purpose of the whole someday maybe over the horizon system I use. after all that painful typing as I have been working on this for 3 hours with interruptions I think I just read an elegant solution in my email using closed hours and a view for someday maybe that might work well for you. I am in no way recommending my system. It currently works for me. as an aside about this time every year I look around to see what can make me more productive. I am concurrently using xmind and asana and mlo and one note and outlook. I wish there was one comprehensive platform that seamlessly included ALL of them and you could just drag and drop at will but oh well. I cannot believe how powerful and flexibleMLO is so I cannot see not using it for task management. I shake my head often because so many are using this their own way that is totally different than everyone else and they find a way to make it work for them. There are many features I just have not explored yet. I just wish it was everything I mentioned that I use now along with smartsheet and smartdraw combined....lol oh and I want it all for under 100 bucks....ha On Wed, Mar 11, 2015 at 6:22 AM, J Smith <[email protected]> wrote: > @Daniel > Interesting... please can you say a little more about what you actually > do. I'm guessing you have a context called "@Someday-maybe" or > "~Someday-Maybe". I can see that assigning that Context to a task is dead > easy. But when you are working in your Active Tasks workspaces (e.g. doing > a daily or weekly review etc) are you also filtering out your Someday-Maybe > contexts? > > Also when you come to review your Someday-Maybes - do you put them on a > dedicated Tab that filters to select just the "Someday-Maybe" contexts. > (Confession: I'm not very good at using Contexts yet...) > > > @Dwight > Yes I'm using Windows. Yes, I see your plan. It's a slight pain to set up > every time you go into MLO but that broadly works, although you do then > need to decide where exactly within the Someday-Maybe folder you will put > the Task in question... Either way, what do you think of Daniel's solution? > I mean if you JUST use Contexts you could avoid using that whole F3 drag > and drop thing? > > Many thanks > > J > > > On Tuesday, 10 March 2015 21:17:27 UTC, daniel wrote: > >> do you use contexts? I make exactly what you do work by using them >> >> >> >> On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 4:46 PM, John Smith <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Hi >>> >>> I'm having trouble putting things into (and out of) Someday/Never. >>> >>> Background >>> I've made my "Someday/Never" file a folder, which for which I have >>> ticked "Hide Branch in To-Do". This means that it doesn't appear in my >>> Active tasks views - all good so far. >>> I am also putting more an more stuff into the future using Start Date >>> (e.g. if someone hasnt got back to me in say 5 days, then give chase). This >>> works fine so long as I live mostly in the Active Tasks view, however if I >>> move to All Task view, then things become irritatingly cluttered up with >>> stuff I definitely don't want to see yet ! >>> >>> So the problem is that if I want to move a task into my Someday/Never >>> folder, the only way I even see this folder is to go to the "All Tasks" >>> view. But that view is now is horribly cluttered up with future stuff. And >>> because I am moving task up around with mostly with hotkeys (e.g. >>> Shift/Alt/arrow-key), all these things for the future a mighty pain. >>> >>> Any suggestions? >>> >>> J >>> >>> >>> -- >>> 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/9cc5e4e0-bd55-48a7-951c- >>> 2d28a2e4d9b0%40googlegroups.com >>> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/9cc5e4e0-bd55-48a7-951c-2d28a2e4d9b0%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >>> . >>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >>> >> >> -- > 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/89194127-60a4-4353-88db-3be202ddc2c7%40googlegroups.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/89194127-60a4-4353-88db-3be202ddc2c7%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group. 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