On Tuesday, November 24, 2015 at 5:37:53 AM UTC-5, [email protected]
wrote:
>
> If you have a few moments could you describe your suggestions on using the
> Projects feature?
>
Hi, Al.
To me (others will differ) the key to effectively using MLO is in the
views. There are many other powerful features, but to me, the value of each
is in what it enables the views to select/hide/sort/group/show. So the
question to me is, what can you do on a report with a project that you
cannot do with a folder full of tasks or a task with a lot of subtasks.
And it bears mentioning that you can make complex and powerful project-like
series of tasks without ever using a project. You can use "tasks in order"
and dependencies to ensure that you get the prerequisites done by the point
where you need them. You can use the "next action" filter without projects.
You could even create a folder or a parent task called "Project: migrate to
new accounting package" and then make a view of items named "project" and
branch below each. All without using projects.
So the first question is, why do you need to think of your tasks as
projects, irrespective of whether you designate them in MLO as projects.
For the most part, my tasks fall into one of three types. There is the
ongoing routine stuff, much of which falls into repeating scheduled efforts
("quarterly routine" includes a task "replace filters"). Then there is the
one-shot stuff that comes up and needs to be dealt with ("order a case of
filters" and "received case of filters?"). And then there are some bigger
initiatives that typically involve a series of steps, things to be waited
for and workstreams to be started up when the waiting is over. These are
each something that matters, that cannot be allowed to get lost or
neglected for long, but that go on across multiple days and that I need to
be sure that I get back to. For me, these are projects.
So: the first benefit: by calling them projects I cause them to show up on
my Projects view. Every day, at least once, I look at the Projects view to
see if anything is looking neglected and if adequate progress is being
made. I try to keep the number of open projects below 15 as I believe that
above that I will not be able to meaningfully interact with all of them
every day.
My projects view is actually a collapsed Next Actions view so I can hit f7
and see the next action for each project. In order to avoid a lengthy list
of next actions under "Project: none" I added an advanced filter
"ProjectName is not empty". Now, I could have built my projects as tasks
with subtasks, with the word "project" in the caption. Each one would have
to be at root level in order for Next Action to work. Building the view
would be possible but not easy. It's a lot easier and more convenient to
just make them projects.
Second benefit: projects can show a progress bar. I have a mental image of
how far along each of my projects ought to be at this point in time, and it
only takes a few seconds to glance at the project list and see if
anything's dragging behind.
Hop this helps,
-Dwight
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