Thanks Dwight. Today I have been trying out Nick's idea of adjusting the importance and urgency, it's good I got some practice with that, it might work, at least it means the stars can be used as stars.
Mark Forster has changed his systems over the years, and I want to share a link here to his latest, I think it is quite interesting. He always says his latest version is the final one. He calls this one FPV, Final Version Perfected <http://markforster.squarespace.com/blog/2015/5/21/the-final-version-perfected-fvp.html> . It involves marking a selection of tasks in a list, called a *chain*, and working through them. It's a psychological trick which means you are always working on something you prefer to do, he calls it *relative procrastination*. The problem is that marking a task in MLO in any way changes the Date-modified, which would change the order in the sorted view you suggest. I did consider sorting on Date-Created, but although it can be altered in Windows it cannot be edited on Android. I tried Review-date but that didn't work well either. When a task has been worked on (or a new one placed on the list), it is moved to the bottom. That's what I find tricky. Sorting by Date-modified would mean the chain of selected tasks would no longer be apparent. I absolutely want to work in harmony with MLO's design. It is my best option even if I have to force manual sorting by adjusting importance/urgency sliders, or work only in Starred views. I'm also looking out for mathematically equivalent ways of achieving Mark Forster's structure which do not require a manual order, which is partly a consequence of his insistence on using pen-and-paper systems. Laurence On Wednesday, December 16, 2015 at 5:38:53 PM UTC, Dwight Arthur wrote: > > Hi, Laurence. > I can't comment too far because I don't know anything about the Forster > methodology but I have some advice about effective use of MLO. > > > One of the challenges with any task manager is to ensure that the > productivity gains outweigh the time you spend managing and tweaking the > tool. It seems to me that the time you spend manually reordering your tasks > would be a problem and I would want to find a way to let MLO do that for > me. > > > First, you need to be clear on the difference between actually reordering > the tasks in your outline, versus re-sorting the order in which they appear > in a view. One of the most compelling advantages of MLO is the availability > of powerful tools for defining views. If you can define a view that shows > the tasks in the order you want then you dont have to re-order the outline. > This involves coming up with some sort of a of rule that describes the > order you want for your tasks. > > > The starred view is an exception; it handles the case where your rules put > some task low in your list but you know that it has to be done right away, > so you tick the star. Since we are already looking at situations that are > exceptions to the rules, you can't write a rule to put these exceptions > into an order, so you often have to use a manual sort, and for this view > (only) MLO synchs the manual order between platforms. But if you are > starring and manually sorting all of your tasks it would seem that you are > underutilizing the power of MLO. > > > You made several mentions of moving something to the bottom of the list. I > use a FIFO queue for this type of thing. Create a view that includes all > the tasks that you want to see but maybe in the wrong order. Then sort the > view in ascending order by date modified. The tasks that have been in the > queue the longest will be at the top. Whenever a new task becomes included > it should appear at the bottom. If a task that's at the top or in the > middle needs to go to the bottom, just make a change to it. For example, > add a blankspace to the end of the title. This causes the modified date to > reset to "now" and your task instantly sinks to the bottom of the view. > > > Similarly, instead of dragging your work folder to a hidden branch when > work ends, how about finding a way that MLP can tell whether you are > working and adjust automatically. One way to do this is by scheduling it. > In the Hours tab of the context definition for the @work context, set up > the hours of each day of the week that you are normally working. Your tasks > with the context @work will appear on your task list each workday morning > and go hidden each workday evening. You can define an @home context that's > open whenever @work is closed. > > > Another approach would be to do it by location. Associate your @work > context with the location of your workplace and do the same with your home, > then use the Nearby view. Windows doesn't support Nearby yet but I dont > find that a problem. I mainly use MLO/Windows for planning and organizing > my tasks, where my current location doesn't really matter much, and i use > my phone for when i am working on my tasks. > > > Read the secton of the mlo users guide that gives the seven or so ways > that a task can be inactive and look for ways to make your tasks active > only when it is time to work on each one. > > > One more small point. You mentioned that projects are underlined in blue > on the phone. That blue line is actually a progress bar. > -Dwight > MLO Betazoid on Android SGN4 > > On Dec 16, 2015, Laurence Glazier <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Thanks Nick, I will try that out. >> >> On Wednesday, December 16, 2015 at 1:40:24 PM UTC, Nick Clark wrote: >>> >>> I don't know the methodology you refer to, but have you tried "playing" >>> with the Importance and Urgency sliders in an Active Actions view? 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