beginner question about today todo

[vodesj...@gmail.com]

Hello,

I don't know if I'm using MLO the right way, I'd like your point of vue.

I'm working for several clients, so I created a folder by client. Inside, I added the projects and tasks for each client.
I also created a folder for my personal life, with my own projects and tasks.

My problem is that when I open MLO, I have so many tasks infront of me that I don't know where to start.

I'd like to create a view with all the things that I have to do each day, but I don't know how to do that.

Am I using MLO OK ? Is there a way to create a kind of "to-do today list" ?

Thanks

Veran

[vodesj...@gmail.com]

I thought there was a way to create today todo lists with MLO...
Isn't it the case ?

[vodesj...@gmail.com]

OK Dwight - I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude...
I will wait then. Thank you.

Regards,
Veran


Le lundi 7 octobre 2013 17:35:13 UTC+1, Dwight Arthur a écrit :

Hi, Veran. You are asking your question on a forum where you will get an answer from another user. If it's a small question with a short answer you might get an answer right away. The answer to your question could be a few different things depending on how you like to manage your work, so it takes a little longer. I know you will get an answer eventually, so just hang in there.
-Dwight
MLO Betazoid & Moderator
Via k@mail on sgn2

[Dwight Arthur]

Hi, Veran.

MLO is a tool that could support many different methodologies for managing your tasks. MLO by itself does not impose a particular methodology. You have to find or invent a methodology that works for you, and then MLO will help you keep track.

Most methodologies devote a major effort to identifying which tasks I should do today. But they are using your rules and your values and priorities to work it out. I understand the feeling of looking at a heap of tasks and not knowing where to start - but you have to be able to put all your tasks down on paper and find today's tasks. If you can't figure it out. MLO will not be able to.

The kind of default methodology that everyone understands is to start by trying to schedule the work. For the tasks that you think you might need to take care of soon, add the date you plan to start under Start Date and the date you plan to finish in Due Date. Then you can open a To-Do view and open the Start Date filter in the filter panel (on the left side of the screen) and put "today" in the "From" and "to" fields, you will get a list of tasks you should start today. Or you can get more fancy and use the advanced filter to select active tasks with a start date on or before today and get a list of everything you should be working on today.

Scheduling methodology is easy to understand but it doesn't work very well. Everyone overestimates how much they will get done each day, and you end up with a clump of unfinished tasks that have to be rescheduled. As time goes on the clump gets bigger and takes longer to reschedule, until you are spending all your time managing your schedule with no time left to actually do any of your tasks.

Here are two other methodologies that might help you. I'm recommending these two because they make sense to me, but they may not be the right ones for you. 

The Pomodoro technique (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique) provides an effective way of managing the tendency to overcommit yourself and helps to reduce the impact of interruptions, by breaking your work into indivisible chunks of 25 minutes each. You are still responsible for coming up with a list of today's tasks, though.

Getting Things Done (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done) focuses on getting everything you need to do collected into one place where it can be organized and prioritized. If you adopt the GTD methodology you will find lots of tasks in your MLO profile, but they will be organized. Some tasks will be organized into projects. Some projects require the tasks to be completed in order, so only the first task uncompleted task is "active". Other projects are more complex, with explicit dependencies set up. Each task has a context, which tells you where you have to be or what tools you have to have to do the task. Some tasks have dates, but the dates don't tell when you plan to do the task, they tell when it's possible to do the task (so for example if you need to buy tickets to a performance, once the performance is over it's no longer meaningful to buy the tickets, so the last sale date for the tickets becomes the due date. Once you have all of this set up you can look at the report "active by context" - it shows tasks that are ready to be done (not waiting for a start date to arrive or for a dependency on another task) and you can focus in on the contexts that match where you are and what tools you have with you. If the list is still too long, you can add importance and urgency values and use them to sort your tasks.

I hope that this gives you an idea of what to look forward to. IF the Getting Things Done methodology appeals to you, you should get the book (it's in many libraries) and read it. If you have a way of deciding what to do next, you can use that as a basis for how you set up MLO. Good luck and I'm sure you will be back with more questions and issues.

-Dwight

[Steve Gledhill]

Hi Veran

as Dwight said, you need to find a way of identifying which tasks you can do today, tomorrow, this week etc. Let me offer you an idea that might help.

In properties you have a General section and in this section you have 'Goals - for the year, month, week'. I skipped over this when I first started because I thought it was a little 'advanced' for me at that time. It turns out that I use it to manage my daily/weekly tasks. Here's how.

Each month, review your tasks and mark as Year, month, week for each task that you want to do according to when you expect to do it.

Each week, review your monthly tasks and edit accordingly.

Each day, review your weekly tasks and 'star' those that you want to do today.

Create a view that shows 'starred' tasks - this is your todo list for today. My view has two rules: (Starred) OR (CompletedDate Time is today). This gives me a view of all the tasks I plan to do today (according to whether I starred them or not) and all the tasks that are due to be completed today (on the assumption that if I have put a completion date on it then it must be due!).

I hope this helps get you going

Steve

[Christoph Zwerschke]

The "Active Actions" view is already a great starting point for picking
the tasks that need to be done today.

From experience, it makes sense to pick only the 3 to 5 taks that need
to be done at the beginning of the day and then work on these things
without worrying about the rest of the list. These may not always be
exactly the top 5 things on the "Active Actions" list, because the
automatical smart ordering can never be *that* smart.

An easy way to pick the really relevant tasks and create a closed list
would be to "star" them in the morning, then change to the "Starred"
view and process them, and then end the day with a feeling of completion
when all have been checked off. I guess this is how many people are
using MLO already, as "star = today" is a common paradigm in many task
management tools.

One minor issue with this approach is that the star is retained in
recurrent and archived taks, and cannot be used for other purposes any
more (but using a flag isntead could be an alternative). Maybe there
sould be a more explicit view and mechanism for picking the "today"
tasks (one idea is to implement it as an additional "daily" goal, as
currently only weekly, monthly and daily goals are possible).

-- Christoph