For the first part on AoR, you can easily click on any folder and hit 'zoom in'. This will instantly filter what you see in the outline and associated task lists to be only within that folder. In this way, you can do what you're after in a single click if you use folders, drilling down as narrowly as you'd like at any time.
For the second part on David's lists, those aren't his next actions lists, which is what we're discussing here. The kinds of lists you're referring to are reference material. His @phone list is a list of things to do when near a phone, but I'm assuming you're not focusing on that as a talking point because you can easily do that in MLO by assigning an @phone context if you'd like. MLO can still handle reference lists well enough, but I don't recommend you have them show up in your todo views, and keeping those in their own folders. Him and the new President Mike Williams make heavy use of Checklists and Reference lists, but those aren't what they use for next actions. Mixing them together too tightly is usually a recipe for disaster. MLO does handle all that well. MLO has a general concept of a task being 'active'. This means it doesn't start out in the future, hasn't been hidden from todo views, isn't dependent on another task, and isn't a task further down in a sequential list. If a task falls into any of those categories, it doesn't appear on active lists until the right conditions are met, and only takes a click to step in some cases for any task. In one form or another, that's how other apps you're referring to operate as well. You an even set times for contexts, meaning you won't see @evening tasks when it isn't within a designated time range, but I don't personally use that. You may be able to have other contexts 'include' each other as I recall, but I don't use that much either. Useful, I just haven't needed it enough to use it. The issue you're running into with your 'someday' and 'active' distinction is trying to handle it entirely with contexts it would seem. Deferring something out with start dates and dependencies is one way. It being further down in a sequential project is another. And it being in a folder for things you might get to someday that is turned off in todo views is a third way. There are others, but these are all very easy ways of handling that in MLO. As for reviewing Someday/Maybe things, MLO does have a review feature, but an easier way is to do a weekly review. Every week, simply review your outline. Within each folder setup you have, you can have a folder called 'Someday Maybe' if you'd like that is turned off in todo views. Since you're reviewing your outline anyway, it won't be hard to find these folders, but you can always set up a quick view that shows all folders called 'Someday Maybe' if you wanted them aggregated together. You likely wouldn't have to though since you should be reviewing the whole outline anyway, if even you don't drill down into each folder all the time. I used to assign a someday ish context, but the point of those is to review them weekly, so I stopped. For projects you can put them 'on hold' and 'in progress', which does the same thing on that level. I used stars to do what you described in B. You can manually reorder tasks in a view called Active Starred to set the order if you'd like. If a task is active -- meaning not deferred to the future or hidden from todo views or further down in a sequence I haven't completed -- and it has a star, it shows up there. Works pretty well. I still use due dates at times if they're real and not imagined, but they're mostly to give me things to pick from when it comes to starring additional things, and from computed scores in MLO. Your assessment of how I organize things in MLO as akin to a mindmap is correct, as I love them as well. I'll often brainstorm in there as well if it's for something I'm planning to do as it does it well enough for many things. For other things, I use iThoughts, but I always treat those mindmaps as disposable. MLO handles relative priority for me, as well as my own decision making when reviewing my actions. I check importance and urgency on tasks from time to time in order to help with that, as well as sparingly using due dates, and assigning priorities to larger area of focus folders. For most tasks I do not change their importance or urgency, leaving them at the default. Using this, MLO does a great job of handling relative things for me in narrowing it all down. You'll still have to use your own judgement when deciding, but it works really damn well. I won't often want to 'do' things higher on the lists, but they are arguably well organized according to urgency and importance. You can assign things like 'weekly or monthly goals' as well, but I personally haven't found an effective way to make use of this that projects don't already handle for me. Big projects often have sub projects, and if each has urgency and importance assigned within other things that do as well, coupled with due dates, it all gets calculated on the fly by MLO. For small things, I either have a 'One Off' type folder in each Area of Focus or project area, or have them float within the larger folder. I haven't run into any issue with that, and many truly small things never make it out of the inbox because I can do them right there in less than a few minutes. Most of these one off folders have a context assigned so that any time I make or move a task in there, it's automatically assigned that context. I use next action views. Active Starred is my true focus list, but I look at things organized by context and project views all the time, even dates. For projects, if it's a parallel project (the default), all the tasks in that which aren't deferred or something show up under the project, or on their context lists. For sequential projects, I enjoy seeing the top next action per project so I can focus on that, check it off, and be immediately presented with the next thing to do there. I mix and match larger things with parallel and sequential subprojects, so if I can do more than one thing next that will show up, and if I can't, only the next thing will. Most things for me in project form are sequential, however. Let me know if that makes sense. On Saturday, October 1, 2016 at 5:03:02 AM UTC-7, John . Smith wrote: > Hi SRhyse > > > > If you're really needing to 'change' that attribute of a > > task that often, I'm not sure you're doing it right > No, that is absolutely not what I said. I'm not changing "Area of > Responsibility". Basically not EVER. I just want to filter all views quickly > on different AoR one at a time and/or all at once. > > > > If you're trying to fine grain your tasks to the point that > > you want to be able to see them as an @phone list and note > > that it's @small and that you can do it when you're @feeling_blue, > > then you're not doing GTD, you're futzing around beyond the > > point of a return on your invested energy. > > > No, David Allen cheerfully and freely creates lots of lists including Phone. > He even creates them for special purposes like "stuff I need to do before my > next trip". On paper that is of course easy. In electronic systems like MLO > I agree that you need to be more careful. > > > > > > MLO handles things like 'status' in the way you're referring > > to it in other means that are relatively automatic and dynamic. > I disagree with this opinion. Or at least I have yet to see it! There may be > ways of getting MLO to behave like this but it's certainly not obvious nor > easy. Rival applications like GTDNext and Nirvana are much better at this > aspect. > > > > > > you're doing everything David Allen tells people not to do > > when they try to do GTD. > No. I simply want an easy way to move stuff between Active/ASAP and Someday > and back so that Active/ASAP *means* ASAP! > > > > > > he'd likely tell you to go back to paper for a while > Yes, I have already been reverting to using paper from time to time. > > > SRhyse, you have some interesting workarounds. e.g. > > > A) Using special folders to create SomedayMaybe lists that are not visible in > the todo views. I had forgotten that was even possible! I shall experiment > and revert. > [However is there any easy way to review just those tasks that are on > SomedayMaybe?] > > > B) You are in effect moving things in and out of "Do ASAP" and "Do Soon" > action status by using Stars. Also interesting. Personally (like many people) > I have been using Stars for a "Do Today" action focus. BUT if stars are > already in use, how then do you flag things up for "do today"? > i.e. How do I create a list of stuff that I am actually going to do today, > and ideally sort it into the order in which I'm going to execute it? > > > > > Overall I do like what you are describing SRhyse. It sounds like your entire > life is pretty much sitting on a hierarchy of folders and Projects. i.e. In > effect a giant mind-map, which is good for me as I do like mind-maps (and/or > less hierachical concept maps). BUT some questions: > > > a) How do you show *relative* priorities? I mean within a project I guess you > move Actions that need to be completed sooner nearer the top. But how do you > decide the Priorities between different Projects? Do you move entire projects > relative to each other? (Or do you use fields like Importance and Urgency at > tall??) > > > b) Where to you put small stand-alone tasks in your hierarchies so that they > don't get visually swammped by larger projects? > > > c) Do you use Next Actions views much? If so have you worked out a way of > showing more than one (but less than all) Action(s) within each project? e.g. > Either showing next say 3 Actions for each project or have a way to do a > "Forced Next" whereby individual actions can be manually made to appear on > the Next One actions list? > > > 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 https://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized. 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