I had just thought of this myself and was going to post a new comment/question but thought I would do a search first and found this! Thank you John for your original post.
I would like to go a few steps further though and I hope others would agree it could be useful. I would like to block out my entire week based on contexts. Now with the calendar sync this seems like many might find it a better use of the integration. Based on some of the comments in this forum and on uservoice, many people think that it would take too much time and effort to schedule and ultimately reschedule each individual task with exact times, so they don't use the calendar integration. Also, if using individual tasks, if one takes longer than expected, I don't think it is easy to bump all other tasks at the same time. Maybe this can be done on the google calendar but I haven't tried it. Here is how I envision my use: 1. Schedule exact times/dates to be in a particular context, to block out time to finish tasks only within that context without having to put hard start and due dates which can be freed for real deadlines and being able to not think about certain tasks until after their start date. 2. Be able to move the context around the calendar and adjust start, end and/or duration based on other times blocked out (contexts, events or meetings) 3. Only see available tasks when in that particular context according to the time blocked out. For example, my work schedule is very fluid and flexible but quite busy so it would be good to be able to schedule contexts a bit more flexibly. Here is an example of how I might think about blocking my time for a particular week. - Thurs work from 9-5, Home tasks from 6-9, Personal from 9-12 - Friday work 8-3 , then take 2 hours for errands around work. Nothing else until Sat morning. - Thus I would want work context active Thurs 9-5, Friday from 8-3 but each weekday I may work afternoons, evening or split into multiple chunks. So context hours would need to be adjusted individually each week. - I would not want to see errands until Friday after work, but then I want to be able to be able to see all the tasks and complete as many as possible before within that 2 hours and have the rest roll over until the next time I plan errands. All of this would make it much easier to balance my life between my different roles by blocking accordingly, not just getting stuck in one context at the expense of others (...I'm talking to you @Work !!!! ;)). I know I can switch the open close hours for the contexts, but it would be really awesome to be able to see it on google calendar with other contexts and hard scheduled meetings and events and block out my times without having to do this on a per task basis. Also, it can be hard to know when I can schedule blocks of time for contexts if I can't easily see the hours of all the other contexts and if you don't remember which context you set to be open at a particular time, it isn't easy to find it. As a workaround, I can just create general tasks (or even just calendar events outside of MLO) for each block and give it a name of the context and just use context views during those times (without adjusting hours, just keeping it always open) to essentially do the same thing. However, each block would need to be a new task and they wouldn't automatically expire so it would add clutter and extra maintenance, but I am sure I could hack together something that can work ok. Does anyone else think this would be a very useful feature? Has anyone else figured out a useful workaround and/or have any tips? Thanks, Adam On Wednesday, July 20, 2016 at 6:39:55 AM UTC-7, John Smith wrote: > > Hello > > I seem to have a problem getting my contexts to work well in MLO. > > Rather than planning which *Tasks* I'm going to do in which order today, > I want to plan which *Contexts* I'm going to do in which order today - > and I want to be able to see at a glance which tasks I have got lined up > in each of Context (and if necessary change the sort order of tasks within > each context too). > > I should emphasize that this is for planning my current day. > > Of course the more traditional / 'correct' (i.e. designed-for-use) way of > doing things would be to add my context for each task as an MLO "Context > tag" and then later to go into the filters panel on the left of MLO an > click on the Contexts (so as just to see those tasks that match that > context). > > But my problem with doing this is that although you can see how many tasks > there are (through the number in brackets beside each Context tag name), I > can find no easy way to *PLAN which contexts* to do *in which order*. > > The only way I can find to do that is rather inefficient - which is that I > create special MLO tasks (i.e. rows on MLO) which I use as containers to > hold the relevant Projects & Tasks (i.e. as if they were sub-tasks). This > way I can manually sort those containers into the order which I want. (And > then of course to sort my tasks within those context-containers into what > order I'm going to do them too.) > > Where a task is part of a project this is slightly clumsy as it means I > need to move and entire project tree into my context container... and this > can get messy for larger projects. > > How do you plan you contexts for today? > > J > > > PS Possibly one could use MLO Flags as contexts, but you get the same > problem: How do you sort your MLO Flags into the order that you intend to > execute them? > > Btw, I should perhaps explain that I am in the habit of spending too long > on individual contexts, and that I need to put time constraints on each > context so that I keep moving between contexts - as this is helps cover the > ground and also to maintain my energy levels. > > -- 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. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/4732b10c-bf3f-4ebc-973a-95ebcc1b77b1%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
