Hi, Gary. I'm enjoying following your comments on this forum.
I've used MLO for a lot of years; I learned about GTD after a few months of
MLO. My methodology was heavily influenced by GTD but I never tried to be
orthodox about it.
Your comment >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.
Does not work for me.
My lifecycle for a waiting task is new, due, done. There's no case where a
task is finished waiting and then goes on to something else. If I had such
a case I would use a dependency, future start date, or some other construct.
Here are a couple of use cases:
I am printing a couple of envelopes and notice that my supply of envelopes
is getting low. I add envelopes to my pending office supplies order and
create (new) task to check in two weeks whether I have received the
envelopes. Two weeks later the start date arrived and the task appears on
my daily to-do list. Within the next few days the task gets to the top of
my list. If I have received envelopes I mark the task completed. If no
envelopes these there is a problem and I work on solving it.
I am working on a project that requires custom envelopes. I have several
tasks marked complete-in-order within the project. After completing the
envelope design and getting it approved the next task is to order the
envelopes from the printer, then wait for delivery then stuff the envelopes
and then mail them. The context for the wait-for-delivery task is @wait.
There isn't something I need and there isn't something other than "waiting"
that's happening during this task. In a project management system this
would be an external event with the envelope stuffing triggered by the
event. I could set up envelope-stuffing with a start date of the day the
envelopes are scheduled, but that's not a good match for what's happening.
If the envelopes are delivered early or late I will start the envelope
stuffing before it's ready or I will miss a chance to get ahead of schedule
-Dwight
On November 28, 2019 09:18:13 boatshed36 <[email protected]> wrote:
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]> 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
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