Help Getting Started

[Emilio Jimenez]

Hi I just downloaded  trial version and I like what I see so far.

the only thing I am having trouble is planning my week. How do you guys go about doing that with MLO.

My pen and paper process for the week:

Write everything down, all I can think of that must be done or advanced towards (MLO Ok, although it is kind of a pain to brainstorm and then organize contexts, etc. I wish tere was a way to drag and drop into contexts or locations)

Divide in categories / Projects (Perfect MLO)

Mark MUSTS for the week (Perfect in MLO)

Prioritize (ok in MLO)

Then the hard part

Put does tasks into the days of the week and assign them estimated duration (duration is available in MLO but so far I see no use)

But how do you gys plan your week with MLO?

Before MLO I was thinkig of using Asana, and found an awesome app called hourstack. Problem is working offline.

It is  basically the days of the week, you add the task and duration and gives  you how much time you allocated to that day. Basic but awesome!!!! You can do it in excel and I would if  I could drag and  drop MLO tasks.

I believe task management should consider not only what tasks need to be done, but also the time to do them. I mean budgets, people, etc are project management but the day when to do the 

any input would be really appreciated! this is what I have been looking for! only link is making the tasks happen planning my week.

[SRhyse]

Hi Emilio!

I'm not sure there's any way to assign specific dates to tasks or groups of tasks other than to select them and then pick them from the calendar/date wheel depending on what platform you're using MLO on. For reference, however, how often are you accurate when it comes to things being done on certain days or at certain times? I ask because one of the nice things about MLO is that it can easily help you prioritize things and get to them when you can. In my experience, though I do use start and due dates to help with that on some things, most things are really 'when I can get to them and in terms of their importance/urgency', not so much 'this needs to be done on Tuesday or we're all gonna die'.

Most of the attempts to precisely schedule things I see people do all tend to fall apart because things never go as planned. Relative urgency, importance, and priority, however, are more forgiving, flexible, and accurate for a good number of things I see people having trouble when it comes to trying to over structure them in terms of the date they'll be done on.

[Elizabeth Lindsay]

Welcome!  I hope you will be as happy with MLO as I am.

I cannot address your specific concerns because of what another user said - how accurate can I be on Monday for what I'll do on Thursday.  Instead, I set due dates for things that MUST be done by that date.  For the rest, each time I am available to take a new action, I review the list of active actions and decide.  Also, when I'm closing an action, I perform the Getting Things Done (GTD) process of defining the next action, so I won't have to reconsider next time.

Have a good day!

[Emilio Jimenez]

thanks SRhyse!

Well actually it works for me very well. Because part of my Workflow is marking the "must do" of important projects. And then drop them at different days, with other tasks. And mark the priority.

The since each tasks has a guesstimated time, then I know I might have tons of tasks one day, but they are emails so I can get a bunch done in 1 hour, versus 2 tasks that take 2 hours each another day. So number of tasks is really not that important vs duration.

Unless it is a meeting or something that needs specific time, I do not assign the time for the task until that days morning, I just let it linger off my to do list until I reach the day I assigned at the begining of the week.

Of course sometimes I don't do everything, but since I marked my musts and priorities, if anything is left it is either delegated, deleted or moved to another day. And of course if I finish early then I start planing the next day, of do other day task I feel like doing.

The thing is to focus on the musts, and if something comes up then you know your day had an important milestone.

I find if I don't  assign a day to tasks, they will linger, and if they have a due date  I will probably be rushing them at the last moment, and then as you said if something comes up, it falls apart but if instead of putting it on its due  date, I assign it a day of the week 1 or 2 days before, if I procrastinate or something comes up, no problem.

although I agree that if you try to schedule everything to the minute with no time cushion between tasks and use the 24 hour of the day, you will fail, but if of the  lets say 8 hour work, you assign 4 or 5 hours of tasks and plus you know you gave each a bit more time than you really thought, then you have other  3 or 4 hours to deal with other / personal stuff.Or if you  have assigned every tasks to your week, and gives you 12 work hours for each then you know you won't be able to do it, either move, delegate, delete or at least know you probably won't finish them all, and you start with your musts, then by priority, and see what you can move at the end.

Sorry for the long response.

Thanks for your reply, this is my reasoning for wanting to put tasks into week days, not necessarily schedule them to the exact time.

Oh, btw I found something that might work, not ideal but could do. open 2 instances of MLO. Then have contexts and folders for days of the week. Copy and paste from one to the other to plan the week, forget about the first one and work with the last one. New tasks or projects come up, either assign them a day or if not for this week you can open the other instance. One would be the weekly 20,000ft view (projects, goals, etc), the other your day to day.

Still seems kind of complicated, please any feedback of how you guys use MLO and plan your week would be greatly appreciated.

[Dwight Arthur]

Hi, Emilio. If you are already familiar with the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology by David Allen please delete this email. If you are not, perhaps you should check one of his books out of a library and have a read. You don't have to follow GTD to use MLO, and a lot of people (like me) start out following GTD and then modify and customize it. But people who use MLO are usually trying to spend less time managing their tasks and more time working on their tasks, and GTD is one of the most effective ways of accomplishing that.

To me, assigning dates to tasks is a trap. It's ok if the task is inherently dated, like registering for a permit on the day on which registration opens. But if I am assigning a date just to prevent a task from lingering, I am starting to dig myself into a hole. Instead, I work on a task at or near the top of my to-do list. I use MLO to ensure that the next thing I should work on gets high on the list. The GTD methodology describes ways of doing that.

I  am generally pretty accurate in estimating how long a task will take,  but I consistently underestimate how much time I will spend on interruptions and unplanned tasks like unjamming the printer. As a consequence, when I manage by dates, I end most days with unfinished tasks. I end up spending time rescheduling when I could have been getting one or two more things done. To make it worse, I often end up rescheduling tasks onto days that are already overcommitted, makingfor an even bigger reschedulin effort some day in the future.

I  know that there are definitely people who unexpected MLO who schedule their tasks, maybe one of them will comment.

Just one hint: instead of starting two copies of MLO try this: bring up one of your views, then hit f3. This creates a new window with a snapshot of your view. Go back to the main window and bring up the other view. You can tile the two windows next to each other. The snapshot view has limited functionality but you can drag tasks back and forth without needing a second instance.
-Dwight

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[Emilio J.]

Hi Elizabeth, so just to understand you guys dont use MLO to plan your weeks and days. Only as a To Do list, correct?

Unfortunately that doesnt fit my needs, I understand everybody is different and I really need to plan to make progress. I know some might not be finished and I might have to delegate or postpone but currently I need more than a to do list :(

Anybody that uses MLO to plan their week would really appreciete your input.

Thanks!

[Emilio Jimenez]

LOL Elizabeth I can't remember if I did reply to you (since comments get approved first and don't appear immediately) or not but thank you, basically (in case I didn't) I am looking for more than a to do list like I said before.

I have been researching and think I might have a patch. Please any ideas be free to tell me it will be appreciated. Since I guess just because I need it the program won't change. Also if you guys know of any other program that suits/complements my needs also please tell me.

Ok here goes:

Context for each day: !1 Mon, !2 Tues ...

Then create a new view

Filter only !0X Day contexts

Group by context with no hierarchy

That is my tasks for that week, so every week I can filter due in the next 7 days, and assign contexts, then se all other tasks and and assign context of day if necessary. and if I input duration for those tasks and add the column I might just add it up in my head and change the context in that view to pass the task to another day if necessary. I just wish I could add the time automatically.

Sounds good? any other ideas would be appreciated.

thanks!

[Emilio Jimenez]

Hi Dwight

Don't really know why my posts don't appear right away, but I hope you get to see this one.

A lot of people tell me that scheduling is a trap, but I really can't understand why. Maybe I don't explain myself correctly, I don't mean day and time 3 months from now.

I just mean Sunday night / Monday Morn, see my different projects both business and personal and assign a day of the week for them. And each day try to get the musts done, then high priority. To me an important part of task management is scheduling, I know we all work differently, I just don't do well with a bunch of tasks on my list of all areas and just get done what I feel like, the way I do it allows me to get a bit of all areas and projects into my week and make progress, since I focus on the 80/20 of the day, progress is there even if I don't finish all.

I might be using contexts and a view context view. What do you think?

thanks!

[Dwight Arthur]

Emilio: I want to talk with you about (1) moderation of your forum posts, (2) scheduling versus planning, (3) more than a to do list, (4) alternatives to context-per-day

Moderation of forum posts
Forum posts by new users are held for review, in order to weed out spam. After you post a few times successfully, you will usually find that moderation has been turned off.

Scheduling versus Planning
At least three of us have encouraged you to avoid falling into the trap of scheduling your tasks. You continue to resist this advice, so we should consider the possibility that maybe scheduling is your most effective way of managing tasks. It might be true. In my experience maybe 10% to 20% of people actually do better with scheduling than without. Usually these are people who have to face a client who proposes some major undertaking and then demands an estimated completion date, or who need to tell a client or manager exactly how many more deliverables they can add to their already over-committed lives. You have not mentioned any external pressures like this, but still, you could be the exception. But seriously, have you looked at the Getting Things Done methodology or any of the other popular planning methodologies? Even if you think that you are the exceptional person who works best with schedules, you really cannot know that for sure if you have not even considered a different way of doing it. Let me suggest once more that you read a copy of the book "Getting Things Done, the art of stress-free productivity" by David Allen. He does a good job of showing an excellent way of accomplishing what you need to get done, I'm not going to bother trying to summarize it for you. If you don't have time to look at the book, at least invest 13 minutes in this video: https://youtu.be/kOSFxKaqOm4

More than a to do list
You said "I need more than a to do list." I agree. You also need more than a schedule, you need a plan. A plan is more than a schedule. Read the book.

Alternatives to context-per-day
OK, let's assume that you should be assigning dates to tasks and see whether you are doing it the best that you can. First, if you are going to have a context per day you could consider setting open and closed hours per context. For example, you could have a context #Monday that is open every week from midnight to midnight, and closed the rest of the week. Or, you could open up your Monday tasks for preparation Sunday nioght and leave them open for followup Tuesday morning, by setting #Monday's open hours from 5PM Sunday through 10am Tuesday.

If I wanted to manage my tasks this way, I would be skeptical about my ability to accurately predict Friday's must-do tasks on the prior Sunday night.  I would probably assign some tasks to be done today (Monday) and some to be done tomorrow (Tuesday) and some to be done before the end of the week. I would use the star to mark tasks to be done today, the blue flag for tasks to be done tomorrow, and set "the task is a goal for [week]" for the rest of the week's tasks. I would then use contexts for other important purposes like activity type (>Calls, >Online) or location (@HardwareStore, @Library) or contact/client, etc. I would then use the Active Starred by Context view to show me the tasks I should be working on today, grouped by context to make it easier to pick the next one. Monday night, I would look a the starred tasks that did not get completed and determine what went wrong and what I should try to do about it; I would review the blue flag list to see if I still think that all of these tasks should get done Tuesday (especially in view of whatever Monday tasks are sliding to Tuesday) and I would then put stars onto all of the blue flag tasks (except for any that I have decided I cannot get to on Tuesday. I would finish my Monday night review by looking through the Goal:Week list and adding blue flags to anything I think I should attempt on Wednesday.
-Dwight

[SRhyse]

If you really wanted a program that was more scheduling-friendly, I'd try Pocket Informant if you're on iOS, Mac, or Android. MLO is the superior program, and it's flexible enough to do everything you need it to do, but that program lends itself more to being a calendar integrated task manager rather than a robust task management and planning program. Not that it isn't robust in its own right. You could just click on calendar dates in that app and make either tasks or events on that day, and easily drag them around on there to change their dates, having it all roll up into a focus/today view that ties your calendar and tasks together. MLO on iOS has a similar today feature that shows tasks and calendared events.

Echoing again what we've all told you, you'd be doing yourself a favor if you tried doing things a little differently regarding scheduling, and instead planned what to do next, and set due/start dates when they actually existed or had relevance. For me personally, a task being starred means it's what I focus on ASAP/next and needs to be done that day. I use start dates to put things off into the future, like invoicing a client, or the subtasks in order feature to have things not be actionable until other things have been done. With due dates and start dates without stars, that's more for helping to pick from things, or if those dates actually exist on a project. From there, I use contexts like other people do to 'tag' things, and projects in completely mundane ways of hierarchy and breakdown. All of my attempts to use the goal feature have failed.

There's a reason GANTT charts are being abandoned and things like Scrum are being embraced. Being more pessimistic than Dwight, if you did work better with a 'schedule' and not a 'plan', which is a useful distinction, then you'd probably be the first person I met that did. As long as you set aside time to work on things that need doing, and group them in ways that make sense, you don't need a schedule in the sense you seem to be after. MLO will let you decide based on your plan what things need to be done in what order and priority and importance, and by when, or beginning when, and with contingencies and sequence. If you set that up, which is easy to do in MLO and what it's designed for, you'll have something better than a schedule, and in far more flexible a form. In my experience, the only things that tend to go according to schedule are things so mundane and trivial they didn't need to be scheduled or even written down at times. Schedules tend to be a large burden that accomplish little. Plans are great. MLO makes the latter flexible and dynamic with relatively little effort to do so.

[Emilio Jimenez]

Thanks Dwight, I have heard a bit about GTD, and about other planning methodologies the one that has worked a great deal for me is RPM.

I have watched the video and it has great ideas, I like the the outline part, it really resonated . I guess the word scheduling might have many negative connotations to some. and might bring to mind a rigid and inflexible framework, which I guess it could be, but the way I use it to program minigoals of major goals of my different life areas, it helps me to make sure each week I take a few steps towards, what I ultimately want in my life. My "next actions" are what I place in the day,

I used some of your suggestions and I have combined them with the current setup I am using. 

[Emilio Jimenez]

Thanks SRhyse

I will look into pocket informant. I might not have conveyed that I do have a plan, but the scheduling part as everyone says is important for me. I don't really call it a schedule because when I plan my week and say, I need to do x, y z, a ,b, c. I can do it A and b on monday, z and c on tuesday etc. If something happens then I just move the day, but I do l know that to make progress in my goal I need to go forward this week.

think of it as saving 1 million, if I just put a due date it will come and I won't have one million, but if I divide it into parts, and say I need to save every week $1,000 and deposit it to my investing account, then I might get somewhere. My "scheduling" is saying I will make the money transfer on wednesday, That is it, it is not being anal about every single task, but if you focus on making some progress towards your goal every single week, you will get there faster.

It's like working out, you plan it, you plan the nutrition the supps, the WO and even the rest. before, during and after it is happening. And you try to do a bit more, every time and every week.

That is the way I see it, and I think it can be integrated to GTD, RPM, etc. Because in the end, it is not about putting a rigid, inflexible day and time. It is just about balancing the week's must dos evenly through the days, and then launch at it.

And I might be wrong, or I may be right. Just wanted to know how to best use MLO this way, if it can't be done I will keep looking or have it developed for other crazy  people like me ;)

Thanks all for the interest and the help, I guess we will have to agree to disagree on this one, and the more I look for a software that I can work with it this way the more I will be bound to pen and paper forever *sigh*