Just discovered a way to use goals wisely!…wisely for me I mean!

[Luc Poitras]

Hi!
Just want to share with you my "discovery". I know a lot of you use goals, and I read your posts about the subject.
But for my part, I never, until an hour ago, found a way to integrate this aspect into my personal action management system.
So here it is, and you tell me if it makes sense:
- First of all, I am very GTD friendly;
- So when something needs more than one action to be completed, I check the Project box in the mlo Properties...unless it's too easy to do;
- The problem I faced is that there was too much "In progress projects" on my list;
- I tried before (lots of time) to just put the projects that I know I wouldn't do this week in the "Projects suspended", but for a mysterious reason, it wasn't working for me...wasn't fluid enough...it's like if, in my sense, a project is active (In Progress) or not active (Not started), or completed, and nothing else!
- So my "discovery" is that at the beginning of the week, I take a look at all my "In progress" projects, and the ones that I know I want to be done this week, I put them as "Goals this week"...so they become both a "In progress project" and a "Goal this week";
- Beside all my other views in To do, I have one now called "Liste de mes objectifs pour cette semaine" (List of my goals for this week);
- And in this view, in the advanced filter, I have " Goal=week"; and I have "Action filter: Available" (you can put "Action filter: Active" if you want)
- In my Group and sort, I have "Grouped by Top Project; then Grouped by Project, then Grouped by context; PSSS! Make sure you put "Grouped by Project" , not "Grouped by Goal" ...You will understand why when you try it!
- So, what I see in my "Liste de mes objectifs pour cette semaine" view, is only the projects in progress (or active I would say) that I absolutely want to work on, or finish this week...with their respective available actions underneath.
- I am also evaluating now the possibility of always keeping the "View: Goals" in Outline, instead of always having it on "View: All tasks"; And if I want in Outline to work on something other than my Goals this week, I can just switch back anytime in "View: All tasks".

Hummm! just realised I could create a "List of my goals for this month" view ,...meaning that here I would have available all of my "In Progress Projects\ Goals this month" that I can't work on this week, or that are due in the next few weeks.

Sincerely!
Luc

[Philb]

Luc,

Thanks for sharing this. I really enjoy it when people contribute
these sort of posts on how they use MLO. It's really helpful for me
because I always find that it starts me thinking critically of ways to
improve my workflow, even after I have been using MLO for several
years now. Filtering by View Goals in Outline....I need to think
about that one!

Cheers,

Phil

It's also a reflection on the quality of MLO itself thanks to the
input from the dedicated user group.

[robisme]

Hi,

Your post is starting to answer one of my questions : are goals "goals for this particular week", or "a goal I use to take care weekly" ?

If "this particular week", wouldn't it make sense to have a "goal for Day", so one could set his job for today and thus, having them filtered in the todo view if wanted. (I propose that because, often, a task is don before the due-date, so due-date is not convenient for planning a day.

what's your point ?

[Lisa Stroyan]

Goals can be either "this particular week" or a running "in the next week" (or however you want to use them since it's just a property with four values with specific names). I use the latter, the running list, myself. 

Starred is currently the only way to define daily goals that I've found (at least, that ports to Android), but I for one would support the addition of a Daily value for Goals, so that the Starred could mean something else. I think that would add a lot of value, particularly because the mobile apps (at least Android) support Goal in their predefined views.

Because there is not a Daily goal, and because I want all of my basic MLO system to work on Android, I've taken to using three tasks as placeholders in my Starred list:

----- big rocks for today ----

----- daily maintenance -----

----- maybe today ------

Then since the Active Starred is a manually sorted list, I move tasks around in the morning to where I want them. (Unfortunately the order of Active Starred doesn't propagate between Desktop/Android -- it would be great if it did).

So for me, recurring daily tasks just stay Starred. I then also Star from my Weekly Goals and sometimes my monthly goals, things that I should work on today, so they all show up in my Active Starred list.

I also use my Active by Goal list (which doesn't have routine daily tasks in it) to look at my upcoming work.  I sort Active actions first by Starred, then by Goal, and use that too.

It's a hack. I don't love it as a solution, but for the moment it's working for me.

Lisa

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[Luc Poitras]

Wow Robisme...I totally agree with this one. The idea of having a "goal for (to)day" or "goal for day" would be awesome. But then again, having a "goal for day", AND having the possibility of choosing which day of "this week" you want to complete that goal (which is different than putting a due date as you said) would be even more awesome....This would be like (kind of) response to the need, a lot of us have, of implementing a calendar into mlo.

...Just trying here to push the idea of day goal a little further!

PS: I have the impression that some of you would argue that you can just put a star beside the task, instead of create a "goal for day", but I feel that "goal for day" and "starred" would'nt have the same function!

But maybe I'm wrong! Haven't analysed this!

Thanks Robisme!

Luc

Envoyé de mon iPhone

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[Philb]

For me, trying different groupings has been useful also. This seems
to have opened up my usage MLO on the Desktop for me...especially when
using the "Show item count in groups" option. This is a great way of
getting a summary of how much stuff is committed. I just have to
avoid creating too many views. I think this is key.

On Apr 23, 3:02 pm, Luc Poitras <luc.poit...@gmail.com> wrote:

[m...@grantsmiths.org]

Like several others who have posted here, I use “star” to mean “goal for today” but if there were an actual “today” value for goal there are other things I could use the star for.

[kitus]

You know what, I think that mlo is a great product though it isn't perfect for real collaborative project management, but that's a different story. What really annoys me is that your "view" won't be available on your smartphone because you can't access your defined profiles/views from it.