Good question. Generally, I don't have any
loose tasks just related to an area of life. The
tasks are all related to some kind of Role or
Goal, so are in a folder. To give you a feel for
the kind of structure, here's a selection of the
Roles and Goals I've set for myself in each Area
of life:
Personal
> Get fit and stay healthy
> Get organised
> Philosophy, Religion, etc
> Creativity
> Adventure & Learning
> Entertainment - (This folder tends to be a
dumping ground for things I want to see, listen
to, taste, visit, etc)
Home
> &Shopping and errands
> &Husband
> &Father / Family
> &Friends
> &Home Improver & Maintenance -
(with sub-folders for indoor, outdoor and car)
Work
> &Line Manager
> &Knowledge Coordinator
> &Bid support
> &Electrical / ICA Engineer
> &SCADA consultant
> &Process Safety - SIL Assessor
Community
> Well, this Area is a little more messy,
possibly reflecting the reactive way I respond to
community, charity or other events and activities.
I should plan this area of my life a bit better,
really.
OK, I do cheat a little - There's an "Admin"
folder under each life area too, where I keep some
folders of notes, contact names, etc which I
haven't yet transferred to Microsoft OneNote.
The projects and some loose tasks (single-step
projects?) are grouped under each Role or Goal. My
philosophy (taken from bits of GTD, along with
bits of Stephen Covey's "7 Habits") is that, if I
have a task which doesn't fit in with any of my
Roles or Goals, then I should delegate or ditch
it. So sticking to these defined roles and goals
helps me to filter out the unnecessary stuff.
Here's a snapshot, with an example branch
showing structure and formatting of an example
role, project and tasks in various states.
So, how does that compare with how your own
outline is developing?
All the best,
Stéphane
Thank you for this, Stéphane. Much
appreciated. One question: if I would drill
down into one of your area folders, do you keep
single, non-project related tasks just loosely
in the area's folder or do you have another
folder for just single actions? Or perhaps you
don't have non-project related actions.
Peter
On Friday, January 15, 2021 at
4:14:38 AM UTC-4 Stéph wrote:
Welcome to MLO, Peter. You'll find that MLO
is very flexible, so there are lots of ways to
achieve almost anything you want. I've just
posted a note about my outline structure in
Joel's recent thread,
here. I use GTD contexts (I was thinking
of using them for flags, to assign one
exclusive context for the next step on each
task, but have ended up using the "Context"
parameter for that. I can recommend taking the
time to understand how to set up Advanced
Filters, to get exactly the views you want.
At some point I'll post a couple of
screenshots.
Good luck with setting up your system.
All the best,
Stéphane
Hello
all,
I
am very new to MLO and just started
playing around with it a while ago and
found that I actually really like it. I
am a long-time GTD practitioner (10 years
plus) but never looked at MLO even though
I knew it was out there.
In
2020 I reached a frustration level with my
system: too bloated, too "not the way I
really like it", too many hacks to make it
work for GTD, etc and declared system
bankruptcy.
Spent
a big part of 2020 looking for something
that is simple and down-to-earth.
Now, I really MLO is a complex tool with a
lot of features yet I think I can build a
back-to-basics GTD system here that I
like. I really like outliner based
systems. For a good while, I used GTDNext
but found the lack of mobile apps a
hindrance. Also used Dynalist for a
while. Yet here I am at MLO.
I
really enjoy seeing screenshots of other
systems and if you have any tips and
tricks that may be useful, I would welcome
your advice. Happy to share at some
point what I come up with.
I
enjoy community around software tools and
was happy to find this group. I am an
accountant by trade and live in Nova
Scotia in eastern Canada.
Peter
