Re: [MLO] Re: Strategies for re-starting with MLO

[Dwight Arthur]

The old-folder/new-folder approach suggested by Wol and Stéph is probably best, but there's one drawback: the old tasks are now essentially in someday/never mode. If there's stuff in there that's actually current/important you will probably miss it, until some day when you view the hidden tasks and say, Oh, I should have done this one. If you want to still see the old stuff but want it in the background, giving prominence to the new stuff, I would suggest modifying your views to have a first group of new stuff followed by a second group of old stuff. One way to do that, if you are not using flags for anything would be to create an "old stuff" flag then modify your views to group by flag. If you are using flags that wont work. Find some other field you are not using. For example, every task in my profile is urgency 100. I could set all the old ones to urgency zero and then change my view to group by urgency. If there's some other field you are not using (goal? effort? there must be one) then group by that. Hint: to set all old tasks to some value like urgency - zero, make a view that shows all of your old tasks. You might want to use filters like created date before 3 May 2019 or something similar. Select all tasks in the view by selecting the first one then scrolling to the bottom, holding down the shift and selecting the last one. look at the sidebar on the right and update your special, eg urgency = 0. after this you can collapse the bottom group in your view and work out of the top one, but from time to time you can expand the bottom group and see what you are missing. You should not have to change your views to "go back to normal" - just from time to time look at the old tasks - if one is still needed clear the special field to make it a normal task again, if the task is no longer needed, just delete it. When there are no more tasks with the special field, the bottom group will just disappear. -Dwight On 8/28/2019 8:35 AM, Wallace Gilbraith wrote: That’s pretty much how I’d approach this, too – root-level folders of Old and New, hide Old in the Views, and gradually work through the Old folder moving stuff into New   Someone once said ‘The middle of every successful project looks like a real mess’ – you’ll always be in the middle of it, so don’t beat yourself up if your MLO profile isn’t perfectly neat Having said that, for me the critical thing is to get the Inbox emptied daily, and give all those new tasks a Context and a Due Date and move them into the right place in the Outline Now and then I may focus on tidying up a specific folder in the Outline, so it’s less of a mess – that might be a folder representing an Area of Life, or a Project (particularly a project that’s likely to repeat) But many of my folders are a bit of a mess, and it doesn’t matter, because tasks surface when their Due Date comes round, and I don’t need to think about the state of the folders they’re in   Wol     From: mylifeorganized@googlegroups.com <mylifeorganized@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Stéph Sent: 28 August 2019 12:47 To: MyLifeOrganized <mylifeorganized@googlegroups.com> Subject: [MLO] Re: Strategies for re-starting with MLO   Hello Joel,   I feel your pain! I, too, generated a huge file with various uncompleted tasks, thoughts and someday-tasks in my in-box and completed-but-not-quite-archived projects. I also dabbled with Post-It notes, on-screen Post-Its and switching some work projects to a OneNote-and-Outlook system (shared with my Team).    (Incidentally: The OneNote-and-Outlook system has several great benefits, but has not been great for tracking and managing a dynamic projects list - even if I use tags for highlighting projects and tracking their status. I've gone back to overall management of my work projects and all my non-work tasks in MLO).   To regain control of my tasks and Projects in MLO, I've created an "Old Inbox / Someday" folder at root level. I've set it "Hide the branch in To-Do" in General Properties and I've customised some of my filters (eg the projects filter) to exclude items or projects in that branch (Advanced Filter: AND "TopLevelFolderName does not contain "Someday"").    I then moved everything from my Inbox to the "Old Inbox", along with some of my potential, future projects. I've promised myself I'll go through the Old Inbox during one or more long journeys or when I haven't got anything else pressing to do, to do, delegate, defer or delete (in true GTD style) or re-instigate any important projects.   Good luck with keeping your updated task list manageable. I think that's the biggest challenge that a lot of us face.   Stéphane On Wednesday, 28 August 2019 08:59:35 UTC+1, Joel wrote: So I think I'm not alone but maybe I am.  Because 'reasons' I've fallen off the wagon keeping up my GTD system.   Have been a long-time mlo user (like v2 or beginning of v3 I think) and have a fairly well formed system (for my use) but it is now stale.   When I say "fallen off the wagon" I mean I've been keeping it all in my head.  Now it's spilling onto post-it notes.  Oh fk, here we go again. So it's clearly time to bootstrap myself and get back ON the wagon.  Ok, fine.   Foundation:  There is a lot of stuff in my existing file.  Some of it may even still be relevant.  Plenty I'm sure has passed, happened, been handled or exploded.  Nonetheless, there is a lot there. Problem:  How do I get started using my file again ensuring I see/deal with new current items and not get flooded by the clutter of the 'old' stuff?  (at least till I can make some time and energy to start working through the backlog of it)   I've started adding some items in and they are just washed out in the see of overdue/older, higher prio, etc items that my views are fleshing out.   Any others have dealt with a start/stop event like this?  What strategies did you use? I don't necessarily want to have to modify every one of my views (eventually I'll need them back to "normal", right?) so looking for thoughts.   All ideas welcome.   I'm on Windows and Android if that that helps/matters.   Thx.   -- 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 mylifeorganized+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. 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