Thanks Steph I appreciate your comments very much Yes I agree MLO has many outstanding features. I would also say it is well ahead of two well regarded competitors that I have used and abandoned: Nirvana and Facile Things even in its basic form.
My view of its shortcomings are specific to making GTD work consistent with what Allen describes as it's essentials. So context should not be used for temporary status like waiting. So i have used tags which I agree I'd not ideal but keeps context pure. In many ways MLO reminds me of the famous Lotus Agenda from DOS days. That is why I am making the suggestion below to expand the items listed in the columns list. I think columns are a really powerful yet under developed tool I understand what you say and do with context. Many others say and do the same. And of course it works My counter argument is that using context this way shows very poor GTD implementation. GTD says context is what you need to carry out an action. So using context for "waiting" robs the action of its true context and requires it to be re-updated. Both these are definitely not what GTD says. Waiting is part of time and there should be a view which calculates and reports time. Context should always be "resting" ready to come into play at any time. Early time management writers strongly recommended grouping tasks with common features together. This was in the time when they would recommend making phone calls to different contacts one after another using energy and awareness generated. One attribute of task is supplier. It seems to me that it should be possible to add a column in a view for supplier and it should be then possible to create a view with the heading of supplier names and show the activities that relate to them below I am currently experimenting with INBOX view to see if it is better to have a view without columns for uncluttered entry or have the columns there ready to complete when in the clarify and organise phase. GTD doesn't have an answer and the carry over of INBOX to task view makes it clear what the developer thinks. But I suspect if the column had a folder view that could be selected it would be better. I am mindful of a David allen comment that initially when starting GTD the user will have many many activities requiring actioning Warm regards/gary On 28 Nov. 2019 at 9:31 pm, Stéph <[email protected]> wrote: Hello Gary, Interesting thread. I haven't contributed so far, because I've set out my system (hybrid of GTD, with Steven Covey's 7 Habits for my planning) in other discussion threads. I'd point out that, while Importance and Urgency are meaningless to the GTD system, there will be people who use it for their non-GTD or enhanced-GTD planning - for example, those who like to use an Eisenhower Matrix to help them with prioritising their tasks. Another thought - You suggest that MLO has insufficient parameters. However, it does have *a lot *of parameters already. The best task management system is one which is quick to implement and minimises the time you spend entering task parameters, so let's look at what we've got: Although there isn't a dedicated field for contact names, linked to you contacts address book (wouldn't that be good!), there are options such as reserving the Text Tag field for names. I work with too many contacts to start creating a context for each one, so my own solution is to put the contact name at the top of my task notes, using a hashtag (well, actually a query symbol) to make it easy to search or filter for a particular contact. So, for example, if I'm waiting for Jim Smith to send me some project information, I'll set the task context to "?Waiting" and my note will start with "?Jim Smith". I use other symbols to tag other defined information in my notes, for easy filtering of my tasks by a particular keyword. I'll be interested to see how your system works, once you've written it up or if you post an example template to this thread. Stéphane On Wednesday, 27 November 2019 16:44:58 UTC, [email protected] wrote: > > Glad Susannah it has helped > > Many apps including MLO have insufficient parameters for GTD. You used > context which most MLO users do. The consequence is you lose the location > or tool context which GTD reserves as the expected context. > > What MLO lacks is a supplier/performer field to capture responsibility at > the person or title level. I suspect this may be easily addressed by giving > folders a property. As they stand now folders have an effort and importance > property which is meaningless, so potentially properties can exist. > > I am still developing and hope to have some notes ready next month. The > next thing is to develop some broad categories that zoom can select for > workspaces. I need to read the new edition of GTD to see what it says about > the number of manageable high level categories. I have a 15 page summary of > the 2003 edition > > Warm regards/gary > > > On 26 Nov. 2019 at 4:58 am, Susannah <[email protected] > <javascript:>> wrote: > > Thanks for the screen shots. These are so helpful b/c I still don't have > mine setup like I want. I recently added some new contexts that are > working well. I have a Delegate and a Followup context. Similar to your > locations I have DelegateSally, DelgateKevin... They are all included in > the main Delegate context and the same for followup.... I have about 20 of > each. Then I have a tab that just shows the Delegate and Followups grouped > by context. Delegate is I want to Delegate. Followup is what I have > delegated already and now need to check that it is done. So far it is > working nicely much better than my previous attempts using tags and > contexts and folders.... So now if say my programmer comes today I can > look up what I want to give to them next and also what I need to make sure > was done. Or if I have someone that I work with everyday I just check it > first thing in the morning. > Susannah > > On Monday, November 25, 2019 at 8:03:27 AM UTC-5, [email protected] > wrote: >> >> Here are the main screen shot files - hope they help you >> >> My list of contexts and I really liked Till Poppels idea of "take" so it >> is there slightly different to his >> >> I show the inbox with no columns to ensure rapid entry because i do not >> use the dialog box because I keep 3x5 card in my pocket for quick notes and >> dump them in as a batch (see my comments on batching above) >> >> In outline i show all tasks with the columns I have added. i dont use >> start date for tasks very much because i never hold to it >> >> I show I use a "text tag" to get someday and waiting instead of wasting a >> good context functionality >> >> I dont use many of the Covey ideas because they require a matrix and most >> apps do not offer this feature >> >> Warm regards/gary >> >> >> On Monday, 25 November 2019 10:03:51 UTC+11, MG wrote: >>> >>> Hi, >>> >>> Can you send a copy or some screenshots of what you describe? >>> >>> Thank you >>> >>> BR >>> >>> MG >>> >>> -- > 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] <javascript:>. > To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/ > msgid/mylifeorganized/9d5b9a39-304a-46ff-95da-5ca311fd7b47%40googlegroups. > com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/9d5b9a39-304a-46ff-95da-5ca311fd7b47%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > > -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/034e07ed-8c3b-4aba-ba6d-d247c27c8f23%40googlegroups.com <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/034e07ed-8c3b-4aba-ba6d-d247c27c8f23%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> . -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/CAHXwRzceeGboMX%2BrJ2Rk4hgGXxgwwvpgoy2Qqbuu7X4S2%3Dh%2BTQ%40mail.gmail.com.
