Feature Request: Extra task fields (AKA "Custom Task Attributes")

[John . Smith]

Hello

I have recently been spending time with an MLO competitor which has a feature that they call "Custom Task Attributes", which I consider to be a total game-changer.

In effect these are task fields that you can add for yourself, and name them to whatever suits you, and then have them show up everywhere as if they were standard task data fields. And fwiw, you seem to be allowed to add a large number (e.g. 10?) of such "Custom Task Attributes" if you want.

Moreover you can even chose whether each new field is plain text, or is a list. And if the field is to be a list, is it multi-selection or single selection. (And even whether data can be added to it by the user).

To me this is jaw-droppingly powerful and takes the configurability of the system to a whole new level. 

Any takers?

J

PS If you are a follower of GTD method, please note that the above allows you to add fields like "Area of Responsibility" and action status (e.g. "Waiting", "Sometime-Maybe", "Active", "Later" etc), and even a "Waiting For" user field... without resorting to messy workarounds.

[Mark Krieger]

I like it. Please post it at https://mlo.uservoice.com/forums/9235-general so it can voted on.

Not sure if I still have votes left, but put it up there.

Mark

[pottster]

Nothing new I'm afraid. This comes up periodically. See here from 2009 for example. It might require sync to undergo a fair amount of re-development and I'm not sure about the impact on things like database structure and integrity. Having said that all that, it would be nice to have and I support the suggestion (although not my top priority).

[John . Smith]

Done. Please vote here:

https://mlo.uservoice.com/forums/9235-general/suggestions/15943525-extra-task-fields-aka-custom-task-attributes 

J

[John . Smith]

Of course what I personally really want is an Area of Life (e.g. Work, Personal, etc) and an action status field (e.g. Active, Someday, Waiting etc) in order to make the GTD method viable on MLO. However the MLO interface is already so cluttered and confusing I can't imagine that I'll get much support for that.

Over the last year I must have tried about 8 different workarounds but all of them have horrible unintended consequences when you have a fairly large number of tasks.

Conclusion: Without this suggestion in place, I can no longer use MLO.

J

[Dwight Arthur]

Hi, John. I would like to see User Defined Fields (UDF) in MLO. In fact, I would like it so much (if it were done correctly<see footnote 1>) that it would probably rise to about number seven on my wishlist.
-Dwight

Footnote 1: doing it correctly. I would not use what you described, as it's within the range of what I can do with workarounds. <see foornote 2>. In order to be worthwhile to me four more things would be needed:
(a) in addition to plain text and select from user-defined list, I would want numeric value, and date/time as available data types.
(b) I would want to know that creation an a new UDF, changes to the content of a UDF, and changes to the definition/validation of a UDF would be propagated to all platforms via sync
(c) I would want to be able to test any UDF in an advanced filtter, with the available tests appropriate to the declared datatype of the UDF
(d) I would want to be able to use any UDF as a paraneter for sorting and grouping.

Footnote 2: workaround. John, with the large number of workarounds you have tested, it's probable that you have already tested the one I would use. I wonder, could you point me to a thread where you have described "horrible" consequences? It would be to code a statement in the Notes fire, for example AreaOfLife=Personal (or to reduce typing, AL=P). You could then build custom views showing active personal tasks "((Notes contains AL=P) and (AS=A))" and you could easily activate someday tasks by overtypoing AS=S with AS=T. There are multiple drawbacks of this approach versus a UDF feature, including
(a) Have to remember the coding
(b) Responsible to catch and correct own typos
(c) A dedicated field would be a little easier/faster to edit
(d) these fields unavailable for sorting/grouping
(e) numeric (greater than, less than) and date (two weeks before now) filters wont work
In my view none of these drawbacks deserves the term "horrible".
-Dwight
 

[John . Smith]

Hi Dwight

> code a statement in the Notes fire

I take it you mean Notes field, yes?  :)

In which case this is sounds remarkably ingenious and I confess that I've not yet tried that particular workaround.

I think I get the principle which is to burn usual text strings into the Notes field that one can then use to filter on in dedicated views, using Advanced filtering, yes?

For completeness okay I get that
   "AL=P" would mean "AreaOfLife=Personal"  

But please can you explain what these strings would mean in your example:

   "AS=A"

   "AS=T"

   "AS=S"

To recap the main task data fields I want to create (or simulate) would be Area of Life and "actionable status" (with GTD-like list values like: Active, Waiting, Someday-Maybe, Later )

But wait I have problems with your approach.

What do I do when I want to move an entire project (consisting of say 10 or 20 tasks, and maybe even 2 or 3 sub-projects) from actionable status of "Active" to "Someday-Maybe" and then on to "Later".

Problems:

1. MLO does not let you edit multiple Notes fields at once. (life is too short to manually edit each of 20 tasks in a project - nightmare!)

2. And even if MLO could, I may want to use some Notes fields to actually store notes (!) and i would not want them to be over-written. (Out of desperation I could live with it but definitely not idea.)

3. When quickly adding a task to a project, I don't really want to have to add all your manual tagging(s?), it should really default in, by inheriting its value either its parent task from the task currently immediately above it in the current view (both methods would work OK)

The two obvious workarounds that I tried for controlling Area of Life and "actionable status" were

A) Folders and B) Tags, both of which can be made to in effect "inherit".

A task's "Area of Life" is unlikely to change, and I can certainly live with just one Area of Life per project/task.

As suggested by other users Folders did work quite well for Area of life. 

The difficulty was then how do I move projects/tasks between "actionable status" values?

I didn't want to further clutter up my Tags which I was already using for Context as well as some other aspects, so I tried putting them into sub folders as well (i.e. within Area of Life folders). Given the large number of tasks that I have (400+) this proved to be a nightmare with lots of clicks and scrolling required just to move between values of say "Active" and "Someday". Worse because I use position as some sort of informal relative priority between the different stuff, when physically moving stuff between folders, the original position is inevitably lost.

Then I tried using Flags for actionable status. At least they can have hotkeys. But when adding a few tasks into say "Someday", it was a real pain to have to remember to flag each new task with the "Someday" flag. [ASIDE: If flags could be set to inherit life would be easier.]  

Also it was a slight pain when wanting to change status of an entire project to remember to manually select the entire project and all it's tasks before changing it's status flag. 

Then I tried using Tags for actionable status. At least they can be set to inherit and they have hotkeys. But I found the cluttering up of with my 'genuine' tags to be quite irritating. For one thing the tags appear to care which order they are edited in. And so the more tags you have per task (and I might have say 2 or 3 real tags & contexts) the more messy it gets in the view column as the action status could be in any one of 3 or 4 positions, and this means that it's pretty hard to see what it is that you are looking at!

[ASIDE: If tags could be made to show up in alphabetic short order life would be easier.]

All in all it's pretty clear that what is needed is a field for each of Area of Life and actionable status, and they need to default in some sensible way. But for anyone with a large number of tasks, none of the workarounds I have yet come across are viable. 

J

[Dwight Arthur]

Hi, John.

A. Fire=>Field. Yes, Cupertino effect.

B. AS=The typo, AS values for you would be A, W, S, L. Or anything else you chose.

C. When thinking about this I had identified a disadvantage identified as "can't edit with multiselect" but I forgot to include it in the writeup.  It turns out to be the one that can't be tolerated.

D. I agree with you that Folders provides a good implementation of Area of Life, so in subsequent discussions I'd like to focus on Action List Status.

E. I believe that when you say "tag" you are talking about the field known to MLO as "context", is that correct? If so, I totally agree with your assessment of the disadvantages of using this field for Action.

F. I believe that Flags would be the closest fit for Action, because you can use hotkeys, they work with multiselect, and they work like radio buttons in that setting a value clears any previous value. The difficulties that you describe all seem to fall under inheritance. The thing about inheritance is that sometimes one wants it and sometimes one doesn't.  For example,  if you change a project from Someday to Active but some branches of the project are Later and a few tasks are Waiting, you would have to defeat the inheritance.

Workaround: create tasks without paying attention to Action List Status. Create a view called Action List Status Cleanup showing non-folder uncompleted items that have no flag, sorted by modified date/time, most recent first. Find a clump of tasks that all need the same Action, multiselect them (Windows, select first item, then shift's elect last item and set the appropriate flag)

I'd like to reaffirm that I would support creation of User Defined Fields, but that a full implementation including numeric and date fields and changes to sorting, grouping, advanced filters and, as Pottster mentioned,  database and sync changes, adds up to a long and expensive development effort.

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[Smith, John]

Hi Dwight

So to get clear "AS=" stands for "Action Status=", with possible values of. 

   A - Active

   W - Waiting

   S - Someday 

   L - Later

> E. I believe that when you say "tag" you are talking about the
> field known to MLO as "context", is that correct?

Yes. Great minds...  :)

Re F. - use of Flags, and inheritance, I agree that there exceptions and that sometimes when creating a new action within a project you MAY want a different Action Status, but I see that as being very rare. In those cases it is important that there should be a way of doing this correction.

On the face of it Flags would seem to be the best workaround... but in practice I found it EXTREMELY irritating to have to keep setting flags for every single new item. I agree your cleanup would work in principle, but I don't quite have the patience as I would want things to be ready to go/in the correct place almost immediately I enter them.

I can see that adding new User Defined Fields would be take a certain amount of work for MLO developers.

So I am now wondering if we could request a new setting in MLO's Options to make Flags inherit from either the parent task (or the currently selected task)? 

Interestingly enough, the application ToDoList gives you a tick list showing the full list of task fields so that the user can choose which fields do and which do not inherit their values from the parent task.

Maybe we could suggest that instead / as well??
Any takers? (or should I start another thread for this?)

J

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[Stéph]

I would LOVE an option to select whether to inherit attributes from parent, from sibling, or (for dates) to preset a date to Today.

Bonsai used to have this feature.

Stéph

[pottster]

Interestingly, Asana have just added custom field functionality https://blog.asana.com/2016/09/track-anything-with-custom-fields/

The more I think about this the more I feel it might be THE big missing functionality for MLO power users. The use cases in the Asana blog article give an insight about how this feature could be leveraged.

[John . Smith]

Yes, custom fields are very, VERY powerful. 

And would take power use of MLO to whole new level.

J 

[John . Smith]

Just to re-iterate that I have now spent many months spent trying to implement the GTD method on MLO Windows and very reluctantly I have been forced to the conclusion that for users like myself who have a fairly large number of tasks (400-500) on my system, that messy workaround simply don't work.

i.e. We need an actual field in MLO's database for actionable status (Active, Sometime, Waiting etc) - and ideally another field for "Area of Focus" (AKA "Area of Life"). Either that or we need extra fields that we can customise to behave as such. As a bonus we also probably need to be able to control the defaults for any such fields.

Yes, I can see that it would be a fair amount of work for MLO to implement this, and yes it would be adding yet more complexity to an already complex interface.

MLO Windows is a mature, extremely powerful tool that is wonderful in many, many ways. And the MLO mobile apps continue to go from strength to strength. However after months and months of experimentation, including seeking of much advice on this forum, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that without these fields MLO is effectively crippled for use by the power user and for large numbers of tasks using the GTD method it is simply unusable. 

It's a serious, serious shame.

J

[SRhyse]

I'd thoroughly enjoy being able to create custom task attributes, particulary if MLO could do things like add up the numerical ones on the fly, but saying GTD is unusable in MLO is more than a bit of a stretch on any platform it's presently available on. At base, all you'd need for GTD are separate lists, and if you still wanted to group things by project or hierarchy, you can still tag anything with any number of contexts you'd like. In GTD terms, those would traditionally be things like @home or @work or @wait or @somedaymaybe, none of which are very complicated. You can get philosophical about it if you'd like and say GTD is a systematic approach of forming habits to externalize information to keep it off your mind and trust your decisions and support your workflow, but the core of that's always been writing things down, forming good habits, and organizing them so you can see it all when you'd like to and not see it when you wouldn't like to. GTD is mostly about the user, and any app or medium will facilitate it as well as the user uses it.

If you're using the hierarchy features of MLO, which are the main thing MLO does, they let you segment things fairly well. If you have a folder for all your career stuff, and only want to see things you can do for your career, you can focus on that folder. Put all your family stuff in a family folder. Make a folder for 'Fun' if you'd like, or 'Productivity' related things like processing your inbox, but you can slice and dice things however you'd like in its present form. If you want some really complicated view of things, you can even save it, if you wanted something like 'I want to see my role as a father, which includes my personal chores and anything with my son's name in it and happening on the weekends', you can even do that and save it and call it something like 'Dad'. If you want to put something on any number of segmented lists, you can assign any number of contexts already. It handles all the date stuff and sequencing just fine at an infinite level, and even dependencies.

If you'd like MLO to have better shortcuts, or an updated interface, or anything in that vein, that could help make MLO do what it already does more efficiently, and would seem to address your current issue. Again, I'd love custom task fields, and the ability to modify the Project Status field, and all manner of other things, but in your particular case, it seems like MLO can already do what you want it to do, and has been able to since may a version ago.

I think the problem people have that makes them run from app to app when trying to 'do' GTD or similar things is that when we finally organize our work and are presented with it based on how we organized it, we don't always feel like doing the work, and run away from it, blaming the app for the fact that it's shown us in very transparent ways that we've mismanaged our commitments, and that life is at times hard. I certainly know I've felt that way in the past. I'm writing this for anyone else that might be in the same position at the moment, and jumping from app to app hoping to save themselves from themselves in search of the ever illusive killer feature of having the apps do our work for us.

I've used a lot of apps. I never found it. I don't think it's there, so I gave up and got to work.

[Christoph Zwerschke]

Am 23.09.2016 um 03:56 schrieb SRhyse:
> I think the problem people have that makes them run from app to app
> when trying to 'do' GTD or similar things is that when we finally
> organize our work and are presented with it based on how we organized
> it, we don't always feel like doing the work, and run away from it,
> blaming the app for the fact that it's shown us in very transparent ways
> that we've mismanaged our commitments, and that life is at times hard. I
> certainly know I've felt that way in the past. I'm writing this for
> anyone else that might be in the same position at the moment, and
> jumping from app to app hoping to save themselves from themselves in
> search of the ever illusive killer feature of having the apps do our
> work for us.
>
> I've used a lot of apps. I never found it. I don't think it's there,
> so I gave up and got to work.

Fully agree with your whole post, but the last point deserves some
deeper reflection.

"Getting things done" doesn't mean just processing the things on the
list (i.e. "getting to work"). It also means prioritizing the lists e.g.
in weekly reviews, i.e. deciding which items should go to
"someday/maybe" or on the "not to do list" and which items should be
tackled this week. This is real mental work.

What I mean with this is not that it's difficult to set a priority with
a mouse click. But it's the mental stress of weighing up one thing
against the other. Personally, I really want to do all the things on my
someday/maybe list. Most of them sound great to me - that's why I put
them there in the first place - and I have no problem motivating myself
to do these things. The problem is that many of them are long-running
tasks (reading a book, learning a language, making a journey, starting a
certain project) that cannot be completed in a few minutes and will
occupy much of my time, so that while I'm working on that task I cannot
work on the other tasks. Plus, there is the plethora of urgent "must do"
tasks of common life and job and family and emergencies that always come
in front of the "someday/maybe" items, so that the latter list just
grows. If I put it there, I already know that I will never be able to
get down to that postponed task on the "someday/maybe" list. It becomes
a list of unfulfilled dreams that is a mental burden as it is growing.
The software makes this only more obvious to me. And it's not only the
mental burden of having to choose, but then also the nagging feeling of
missing something great and having no life while working on the "must
dos" or the feeling of guilt for neglecting something or someone while
working on my "want dos", and the knowledge that I have an ever-growing
list of thousands of items. Even if I can motivate myself to "eat that
frog" every day and move that heavy stone that is my first task on the
list, I still feel like Sisyphus. I do not feel like I'm eating that
frog but like that frog is eating my life.

No software will solve this dilemma for me. At its core, it's a deep
psychological or spiritual problem: Making the right choices and being
happy with the choices, and even be happy in situations where there is
no or limited choice, and not being unhappy about all the other missed
opportunities, all the other choices that could have been made.

The software doesn't help with this problem, but can make it even worse
by not only showing your mismanagement and lack of discipline, but also
showing all the choices and missed opportunities so clearly. While you
would think that seeing all the possibilities should be helpful in
making the right choice, in reality it can rather make you unhappy and
anxious (this is also known as the "paradox of choice").

Nevertheless, I believe software like MLO is useful. It helps me become
aware of the choices and ideas and plans I have and make more conscious
decisions. But it also requires me to put more effort in "emotional
hygiene" to be able to cope with the mental stress and not worry about
all the missed opportunities, setting the right priorities, motivating
myself, and to not burn out while forcing myself to always do the first
thing on my list with sheer willpower. Even if taking care of health,
emotions and mind ("emotional hygiene") - e.g. by taking vacations,
getting enough sleep, taking long walks or by meditating every day -
make look unproductive at a first glance.

-- Christoph

[SRhyse]

Wonderful post. The actual thinking process and hard decision making aspect of GTD does deserve special emphasis, as that's what makes it work. You can do that with any app that can hold the results of that thinking and make it easy to find it or present it to you when you've decided you would like to see it, which MLO handles well at multiple levels of complexity while still retaining flexibility and making things easy to change or adjust.

The sad thing most of us realize after we've written down all we'd like to do, and after we've done this kind of thing for a while, is that we're never in a million years going to be able to do all the things we'd like. We're actively going to forfeit doing a good number of good things in favor of a small number of great things, which can be emotionally heart wrenching as you've said. That's the fate of most things we plan out or put on these lists if we fill them up and need an app like MLO. Most of these things will never get done, nor should they.

Where I think MLO excels is making it easier to plan and process all of this stuff based on sound principles you can decide for yourself. If you put things in the hierarchy under areas of your life, for example, give each of those relative weights of urgency and priority, factor that in with associated projects further down the line, dates, and the many things MLO can record about your tasks, MLO does an admirable job of presenting you with a dynamic list of what you should be focusing on based on all of that information, and lets you segment and group it in an infinite number of ways. Particularly love that it updates itself as you continue working. I actually find it more useful to plan less on some complex projects and leave only a few next actions if I can because MLO then pops the project up into view after I've completed them, and I'm usually in a better position to decide what to do from there as I'm doing it than I am when I'm planning it before I've began. I feel less overwhelmed that way alongside that, the quality of my work goes up, and I don't avoid my systems because I've made them overly rigid or divorced from present reality.

Every time I've switched apps or get antsy, it's usually because my life is out of order and I feel bad. When I'm feeling good and have done the relevant thinking something like GTD promotes, the apps I'm using are never an issue. It's more about how you like to work and think. MLO scales wonderfully across a wide variety of workflows in that way. You can even setup separate systems within MLO for different areas of your life and work, all working and churning together and dynamically updating. Still better to start simple and work up to that point, expanding and rearranging and adjusting things as you go, which MLO also makes relatively easy to do. Even makes it pretty easy to add things into that complex mass if you've set it up that way through the task parsing and all that.

[PJO]

LOL. Great post. I tried a lot of things and happened to end with MLO because I had been a keen user earlier of Ecco Pro, and secondarily Lotus Agenda and liked the outlining approach. Allen wisely swore off endorsing any particular tool and warned people against "cranking widgets"; better to spend the time working or even not working -- once you know what you are not doing. 

What matters most in the end is personal discipline, at least in all of the things one is personally responsible for.

I haven't used or tried to use MLO in a team. Not properly anyway. I tried to get one other person on a small board I'm on to use it and he found it too complex, and what I see here is demands for more complexity. I use a TiddlyWiki when I need to share task related information with others. It's free, open source, and can be customized in many ways to adapt to one's GTD preferences -- if one really wants to risk going down that bunnyhole. cardo.wiki is the latest spin. 

[John . Smith]

SRhyse

To get clear, I only claim that MLO is unusable for the GTD method when you have a large number (e.g. over say 400+) tasks.

Are you seriously advocating the conflation of 'context' type tags (e.g. @home, @work, @errands, @phone ) with 'action status' (e.g. @wait, @somedaymaybe, @active, @scheduled) ?

If so, yes, I have tried what you suggest and I have to tell you that in practice it gets very messy and hard to manage, with lots of unintended consequences.

1. Some of my tasks are likely to have more than one GTD "Context". And in MLO the order in which you add your Context tags stays visible. This makes the column views of Context tags confusing as it becomes really hard to 'visually' see (i.e. without reading everything), what is actually what.

e.g. You might want a task that is @work AND @phone. If you then add an action status tag you would get three tags and even in this simple example it isn't immediately obvious that all six of these tasks... actually contain the same data!

Task 01 @phone, @wait, @work 

Task 02 @work, @wait, @phone

Task 03 @wait, @phone, @work 

Task 04 @wait, @work, @phone 

Task 05 @phone, @work, @wait 

Task 06 @work, @phone, @wait

2. Personally like to use the MLO Context field for special purposes beyond physically where and what technology they require. e.g. I like to store things like: @reflective_mood, @low_energy, @small_task, @Pre-Holiday

And so now it quickly becomes a serious visual mess:

Task 01 @phone, @somedaymaybe, @work, @small_task, @low

Task 01 @somedaymaybe, @work, @small_task, @low, @phone, 

Task 01 @phone, @work, @small_task, @low, @somedaymaybe,

Task 01 @phone, @somedaymaybe, @small_task, @low, @work, 

Task 01 @somedaymaybe, @work, @low. @small_task, @phone, 

Task 01 @phone, @work, @somedaymaybe, @low. @small_task 

etc 

etc

       ...} and of the above are the same as each other too, but they don't look the same and this makes them hard to edit. 

4. Personally once I have allocated a task as being @somedaymaybe or @waiting, I find it irritating to keep seeing the tasks those tasks again AT ALL, when I am changing views. i.e. Once I have said a task is @somedaymaybe, I never want to see it again until such time as I am specifically searching for such tasks.

5. As the list of tags grows it also starts to become hard to see what is already flags as being what?  You might for example accidentally have something that is both @wait and @active. Or even have some tasks tagged with the same tag more than once!

 

Finally yes, the GTD concept of Area of Responsibility (or Area of Life) can be implemented moderately successfully using MLO's folders even with 400+ task. However I still say it's more messy than it needs to be, as it's hard to change AoR in a single click and then have that temporary decision apply to all of your views.

J

[Dwight Arthur]

I would consider a task list with 400 tasks to be _extremely_ small.

Just saying.
-d

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[David Timpe]

I to was thinking 400 or 500 tasks is a small list. I use folders for area of responsibility, contexts for context, and dates, dependence, and hierarchy to control when a task becomes active. I only ever have one of two contexts with the second one being @waitingfor. I use filtered views to give me specific to do lists and project lists.

[SRhyse]

I've got 10k+ tasks in MLO and I've never really run into any issues. I've had more in there and I've had less, and it's worked the entire time no matter how many times I got futzy and reorganized things with varying benefits of utility when I was in a mood to avoid doing my work.

Based on what you're saying, you're getting caught in the kinds of traps David Allen specifically tells people all the time not to fall into with your lists when it comes to GTD. Though the area of responsibility or area of focus any task can have ranges from obvious to being something you're doing for multiple reasons, that's the kind of thing MLO has a hierarchy and folders for. If you're really needing to 'change' that attribute of a task that often, I'm not sure you're doing it right. Tasks don't have their area of focus change much, if ever. You don't do something for 'work' and then suddenly need to click a button to tell yourself you're doing it for 'mom' or 'fun'. When it comes to your other contexts, many of those can at times be useful, but you wouldn't assign all of those en mass to a task. The point of contexts is to segment your lists so you can look to them and see them when you need to and not see things you've decided you would like to see at other times. If you're trying to fine grain your tasks to the point that you want to be able to see them as an @phone list and note that it's @small and that you can do it when you're @feeling_blue, then you're not doing GTD, you're futzing around beyond the point of a return on your invested energy. You can do it in a lighter weight way than you're doing by setting up a custom view for say tasks that begin with 'Call' to see a calls list and still use things like @low as contexts if you'd like, but you'd be better off simply using better contexts and sticking to them. MLO handles things like 'status' in the way you're referring to it in other means that are relatively automatic and dynamic.

I'll say again, I like the idea of custom attributes, but it isn't going to solve your problem. Further, based on how you're going about your systems, you're doing everything David Allen tells people not to do when they try to do GTD. You don't have to do GTD as advised, but I'm pointing that out since your criticism was that MLO cannot do GTD because of your stated reasons. Your stated reasons are things that would make David Allen want to sit you down and have a chat about. Any system that supports you is fine, but he'd likely tell you to go back to paper for a while until you learn to work the process before you fell down the rabbit hole of digital tools.

To give you some examples of how I work, and I imagine others do, I have a folder called 'Career'. In that, I have 'Client Work' as a folder, with sub folders for specific clients and larger projects as relevant. Each of those folders has tasks in there in project hierarchies, tagged with various contexts (most 1, no more than 2, if I'm getting crazy 3), each project being parallel or sequential, the usual kind of thing. In various places I'll have a folder for things 'on hold' or the 'someday maybe' types of work, setting those folders not to show in todo lists. Other things at times don't show as 'active' because they're either dependent on other tasks that do not happen, or further down in a sequential project so as not to be active as well. I have folders for other areas of my life too, like health and fitness, learning, networking, all manner of things, each having it's own structure, but having the common element of folders with projects and such like that.

If I want to look at what to do by context, I look at context lists. If I want to look at things by project, I look at those views. I use start dates to defer things out into the future, and stars are things I'm committed to focusing on ASAP -- for me pretty much my next actions/today list. I work from all manner of different views based on how I'm feeling, but that's the vital one. If I want to focus on an area of my life, like my 'career/work', I zoom in on that folder and only those things are shown, either by context, project, or if I'd like, tasks containing the word 'bunny rabbit' in the notes field. MLO an do a lot.

I'm not telling you to do it like this, but I am telling you in an effort to show how most people use MLO to accomplish what you're after in a very light weight and efficient way. Any app can 'do' GTD. As discussed earlier, it's a thinking process that you record so you can review it. Your current take on GTD seems to be the issue, and it will follow you and haunt you across every app and platform.

[John . Smith]

Hi David 

How do you implement an action status of Acive (i.e. "do ASAP") and Someday/Maybe? (or similar)

Personally I also have started using an action status of "Soon/Later" which I find to be extremely useful for stuff that is dipping in and out of my literally doing something "as soon as possible", without it getting lost in a sea of Someday/Maybe tasks.

I don't bother with having a "Scheduled" status I just give tasks a Start Date in the future (which of course MLO takes it off having an "Active" status and it disappears for a while). Likewise I don't have a "Waiting" action status, I simply decide how soon in the future I am going to want to see that item again in order to possibly chase up the person I am waiting for. Sometimes I tag with that person's name in the Context field.

For completeness, I also store "non-actionable" stuff that simply needs to be reviewed, e.g. stuff like:

- New Ideas

- Reflective Thoughts

- MLO hotkeys which I categorise using folders 

   - to learn soon

   - already learnt

   - ignore for now

New ideas are reviewed more often than Reflective Thoughts and are either deleted once reviewed or if useful moved into Reflective Thoughts.

So to recap, I still need a simple quick way to move tasks frequently between the following 'action statuses' for each task:

- Active (==> do ASAP)

- Soon/Later (==> review soon to consider making Active again)

- Someday/Maybe (==> review less soon to consider making Active)

I repeat, if you have a LARGE total number of tasks, moving a task into a different directory normally ends up involving lots of clicks. Using the Context tag clutters up REAL Context use. Flags are in some ways the best hope... BUT unlike directory and unlike Context they don't "inherit" their statuses from their parents. This means that if you add a task to a Soon/Later or a Someday/Maybe task, you always have to manually change its flag and that quickly becomes deeply irritating. 

Conclusion:

I have yet to find a decent way to implement action status in MLO.

J

[John . Smith]

Hi SRhyse

> If you're really needing to 'change' that attribute of a 

> task that often, I'm not sure you're doing it right

No, that is absolutely not what I said. I'm not changing "Area of Responsibility". Basically not EVER.  I just want to filter all views quickly on different AoR one at a time and/or all at once.

> If you're trying to fine grain your tasks to the point that

> you want to be able to see them as an @phone list and note 

> that it's @small and that you can do it when you're @feeling_blue, 

> then you're not doing GTD, you're futzing around beyond the 

> point of a return on your invested energy.

No, David Allen cheerfully and freely creates lots of lists including Phone. He even creates them for special purposes like "stuff I need to do before my next trip".  On paper that is of course easy. In electronic systems like MLO I agree that you need to be more careful.

> MLO handles things like 'status' in the way you're referring 

> to it in other means that are relatively automatic and dynamic. 

I disagree with this opinion. Or at least I have yet to see it! There may be ways of getting MLO to behave like this but it's certainly not obvious nor easy. Rival applications like GTDNext and Nirvana are much better at this aspect.

> you're doing everything David Allen tells people not to do 

> when they try to do GTD.

No. I simply want an easy way to move stuff between Active/ASAP and Someday and back so that Active/ASAP *means* ASAP!

> he'd likely tell you to go back to paper for a while

Yes, I have already been reverting to using paper from time to time.

SRhyse, you have some interesting workarounds. e.g. 

A) Using special folders to create SomedayMaybe lists that are not visible in the todo views. I had forgotten that was even possible! I shall experiment and revert.

[However is there any easy way to review just those tasks that are on SomedayMaybe?] 

B) You are in effect moving things in and out of "Do ASAP" and "Do Soon" action status by using Stars. Also interesting. Personally (like many people) I have been using Stars for a "Do Today" action focus. BUT if stars are already in use, how then do you flag things up for "do today"? 

i.e. How do I create a list of stuff that I am actually going to do today, and ideally sort it into the order in which I'm going to execute it?

Overall I do like what you are describing SRhyse. It sounds like your entire life is pretty much sitting on a hierarchy of folders and Projects. i.e. In effect a giant mind-map, which is good for me as I do like mind-maps (and/or less hierachical concept maps). BUT some questions:

a) How do you show *relative* priorities? I mean within a project I guess you move Actions that need to be completed sooner nearer the top. But how do you decide the Priorities between different Projects? Do you move entire projects relative to each other? (Or do you use fields like Importance and Urgency at tall??)  

b) Where to you put small stand-alone tasks in your hierarchies so that they don't get visually swammped by larger projects? 

c) Do you use Next Actions views much? If so have you worked out a way of showing more than one (but less than all) Action(s) within each project? e.g. Either showing next say 3 Actions for each project or have a way to do a "Forced Next" whereby individual actions can be manually made to appear on the Next One actions list? 

J

[SRhyse]

For the first part on AoR, you can easily click on any folder and hit 'zoom in'. This will instantly filter what you see in the outline and associated task lists to be only within that folder. In this way, you can do what you're after in a single click if you use folders, drilling down as narrowly as you'd like at any time.

For the second part on David's lists, those aren't his next actions lists, which is what we're discussing here. The kinds of lists you're referring to are reference material. His @phone list is a list of things to do when near a phone, but I'm assuming you're not focusing on that as a talking point because you can easily do that in MLO by assigning an @phone context if you'd like. MLO can still handle reference lists well enough, but I don't recommend you have them show up in your todo views, and keeping those in their own folders. Him and the new President Mike Williams make heavy use of Checklists and Reference lists, but those aren't what they use for next actions. Mixing them together too tightly is usually a recipe for disaster. MLO does handle all that well.

MLO has a general concept of a task being 'active'. This means it doesn't start out in the future, hasn't been hidden from todo views, isn't dependent on another task, and isn't a task further down in a sequential list. If a task falls into any of those categories, it doesn't appear on active lists until the right conditions are met, and only takes a click to step in some cases for any task. In one form or another, that's how other apps you're referring to operate as well. You an even set times for contexts, meaning you won't see @evening tasks when it isn't within a designated time range, but I don't personally use that. You may be able to have other contexts 'include' each other as I recall, but I don't use that much either. Useful, I just haven't needed it enough to use it.

The issue you're running into with your 'someday' and 'active' distinction is trying to handle it entirely with contexts it would seem. Deferring something out with start dates and dependencies is one way. It being further down in a sequential project is another. And it being in a folder for things you might get to someday that is turned off in todo views is a third way. There are others, but these are all very easy ways of handling that in MLO.

As for reviewing Someday/Maybe things, MLO does have a review feature, but an easier way is to do a weekly review. Every week, simply review your outline. Within each folder setup you have, you can have a folder called 'Someday Maybe' if you'd like that is turned off in todo views. Since you're reviewing your outline anyway, it won't be hard to find these folders, but you can always set up a quick view that shows all folders called 'Someday Maybe' if you wanted them aggregated together. You likely wouldn't have to though since you should be reviewing the whole outline anyway, if even you don't drill down into each folder all the time. I used to assign a someday ish context, but the point of those is to review them weekly, so I stopped. For projects you can put them 'on hold' and 'in progress', which does the same thing on that level.

I used stars to do what you described in B. You can manually reorder tasks in a view called Active Starred to set the order if you'd like. If a task is active -- meaning not deferred to the future or hidden from todo views or further down in a sequence I haven't completed -- and it has a star, it shows up there. Works pretty well. I still use due dates at times if they're real and not imagined, but they're mostly to give me things to pick from when it comes to starring additional things, and from computed scores in MLO. Your assessment of how I organize things in MLO as akin to a mindmap is correct, as I love them as well. I'll often brainstorm in there as well if it's for something I'm planning to do as it does it well enough for many things. For other things, I use iThoughts, but I always treat those mindmaps as disposable.

MLO handles relative priority for me, as well as my own decision making when reviewing my actions. I check importance and urgency on tasks from time to time in order to help with that, as well as sparingly using due dates, and assigning priorities to larger area of focus folders. For most tasks I do not change their importance or urgency, leaving them at the default. Using this, MLO does a great job of handling relative things for me in narrowing it all down. You'll still have to use your own judgement when deciding, but it works really damn well. I won't often want to 'do' things higher on the lists, but they are arguably well organized according to urgency and importance. You can assign things like 'weekly or monthly goals' as well, but I personally haven't found an effective way to make use of this that projects don't already handle for me. Big projects often have sub projects, and if each has urgency and importance assigned within other things that do as well, coupled with due dates, it all gets calculated on the fly by MLO.

For small things, I either have a 'One Off' type folder in each Area of Focus or project area, or have them float within the larger folder. I haven't run into any issue with that, and many truly small things never make it out of the inbox because I can do them right there in less than a few minutes. Most of these one off folders have a context assigned so that any time I make or move a task in there, it's automatically assigned that context.

I use next action views. Active Starred is my true focus list, but I look at things organized by context and project views all the time, even dates. For projects, if it's a parallel project (the default), all the tasks in that which aren't deferred or something show up under the project, or on their context lists. For sequential projects, I enjoy seeing the top next action per project so I can focus on that, check it off, and be immediately presented with the next thing to do there. I mix and match larger things with parallel and sequential subprojects, so if I can do more than one thing next that will show up, and if I can't, only the next thing will. Most things for me in project form are sequential, however.

Let me know if that makes sense.

[David Timpe]

John,

For me a task is either active or not. MLO handles this automatically based on dates, hierarchy, and dependence. If my list of active tasks is to big or I need to go dark and focus on something hot at the moment I will star tasks and bang them out before going back to my lists. I rarely go to the outline except during reviews of to get inbox to zero. Filtered lists are your friends.

[John . Smith]

Hi SRhyse 

> For the first part on AoR, you can easily click on any folder and hit 'zoom in'. 

Okay but that only works on the tab (workspace) you are working in.

Could you explain further how use tabs? I find it very easy to get confused in MLO and wind up doing a large number of mouse clicks in order to achieve basic things.

What other views do you regularly use and how do you swap between them?

e.g. How for example do you change from filtered view to filtered view - do you:
 

A) Set up a tab for each of them? 

or

B)  Save a view for each of them, that you fire up from the same tab?

or

C) Click on Filter (bottom left) and then click on each filter in turn? (again from the same tab)

> MLO has a general concept of a task being 'active'. This means it doesn't start out in the future,
>  hasn't been hidden from todo views, isn't dependent on another task, and 

> isn't a task further down in a sequential list. 

Yes, although surely that blue bit is only true if you are in a Show Next Actions view.

Do you use Show Next Actions as your default view then?

> The issue you're running into with your 'someday' and 'active' distinction is trying to
> handle it entirely with contexts it would seem. 

No, this is incorrect. I have tried everything Flags, Contexts, Directories, you name it!

> Deferring something out with start dates and dependencies is one way.

Yes I defer with start dates but intellectually that is something completely different!

I use start dates for stuff I am definitely already doing but is waiting for someone/something to happen.

Personally I found dependencies too fussy and pedantic/time consuming to set up so I have never experimented properly with them.

What I seek is a convenient way to put stuff into a list that won't clutter up my Active screen but which can be reviewed later as a possible task to do ASAP.

> It being further down in a sequential project is another. 

You mean a task is not the Next Action within a Project?

I find that slightly clunky because I need a way to push more than one Next Action forward, but without having all the Actions within that project suddenly appearing at once. 

> And it being in a folder for things you might get to someday that is turned off in todo views is a third way. 

This works quite well but again it's slightly clunky because you need to create an entire folder each time you have a screen full of tasks some of which you want to put into the SomedayMaybe action status.

It would be nice to be able to move stuff to Someday at a single click or single hotkeys interaction. 

Also if you make the entire SomedayMaybe folder invisible, how do you move tasks into it from the Active tasks view?!

My other problem is I want to have a Soon/Later action status that allows me to quickly switch stuff on and off doing literally As Soon As Possible but without having that stuff get lost amongst stuff that is on a more long-term "possibly do at some point" list.

>  Every week, simply review your outline. 

Yes agreed. And this is an important habit.

> For projects you can put them 'on hold' and 'in progress', which does the same thing on that level. 

Yes, projects can be of status:

   "Not Started"

   "In progress"

   "Suspended"

   "Completed"

TBH, I had slightly forgotten about that. How do you use those statuses?

> For other things, I use iThoughts, but I always treat those mindmaps as disposable. 

I thought iThoughts is Mac Only. Are you on a Mac? I didn't think that there was a Mac version of MLO(??)

> MLO handles relative priority for me, as well as my own decision making when reviewing my actions.

To get clear are you using Importance and Urgency only on a very few tasks?
And do you achieve most of relative priority by manually changing the sort orders of everything?

e.g. Moving projects past each other

e.g. Moving actions withing projects past each other. 

If so within a project are you assigning Importance and Urgency at the level of of the Project or at the level of the task?  And either way are you using a hierarchical view? And what are you sorting that view by? 

>  Most of these one off folders have a context assigned so that any time I make or move a 

> task in there, it's automatically assigned that context. 

I am confused by this. Are you saying that for each Area of Life (Area of Focus) that you have multiple "one off" folders within each of your Context tags?

For projects do you literally create a new "Project" for any task that cant be done in one go?

e.g. say "Clean up kitchen" might involve 3 things that you didn't have time to do all in one go:

- Do washing up 

- Wash floor

- Wash dish cloths

==> Would you change its name to the desired outcome "Kitchen is clean"?

And would you you change it's status to become a MLO project?

And would you make it sequential or parallel?

(Wait, how to do you make a project parallel in MLO??)

Many thanks

J

[John . Smith]

> If a task falls into any of those categories, it doesn't appear on active lists until the right 

> conditions are met, and only takes a click to step in some cases for any task. In one form
> or another, that's how other apps you're referring to operate as well. 

I have to disagree with you on this. The apps I mentioned have a dedicated database field for action status. This is a completely different way of working - which I contend is much more effective (hence this thread!).

i.e. If you want a task to be changed to the action status of SomedayMaybe, then you just change it directly to that status and BANG it disappears from the Active view and appears on the SomedayMaybe view. 

In both the apps (GTDNext and Nirvana) it's clever enough so that if you can move an entire project and all its actions in this trivial way too. [Fwiw, irritatingly GTDNext does not have a Soon/Later action status but Nirvana does.]

Moreover on both apps if you add a task to a project that is as SomedayMaybe project, the system is clever enough to make the new task inherit that SomedayMaybe status. 

And on both the apps I mention, you can move the entire project into being Active at a single click. There is no need to mess about creating Start Dates, Dependencies, Project sequences, nor moving tasks around hierarchies etc.

J

[SRhyse]

I'll see if I can get around to replying to your post some other time, but as a short version:

If you hit 'hide in todo' on any task or project, it'll instantly not show in those todo views. If you wanted to make a view called 'Someday Maybe' from there that showed all those tasks with that checked, it'd be a single click. MLO handles keeping things out of sight based on their reason for being out of sight, like date or sequence or dependency, but you can also use that as a Someday button.

I don't use more than In Progress or Not Started for projects on the status front in most cases. The views I use most often are actually built in, like projects and active starred and next actions by project. Projects are parallel by default. Hitting 'complete tasks in order' makes anything, project or not, sequential.

If you're cleaning the kitchen, you're likely better off writing 'clean kitchen', and if you see that item on the list, continue working on it until you're satisfied. Work like that defines itself. You can still break it down into every stroke of the sponge if you'd like, but breaking things like that down in my experience had no utility. 'Clean up around the place' is usually what I put in now for things like that, going around and tidying and cleaning. I've tried listing out specific things to do before, but it's all readily obvious from the environment. If there's something special to be aware of, like 'Be sure to dust under the couch!', you can write that in the note.

Feel free to post your task list or something similar if you wanted concrete advice. This all being abstract likely isn't helping anybody.

[SRhyse]

As I had recalled but not messed with in a while as well, you can set certain contexts not to show in todo views and always be 'closed/inactive', alongside having one contexts include one another. You can also assign a hotkey to them, making that a single click.

I personally like some contexts still showing in todo views even if they're something I'm say 'waiting on' because they make it readily apparent to me that there's a bottleneck in something, reminding me on the spot of that. I also can't recall any instances when a project in the MLO sense would have some parts of it being a 'someday maybe' thing with others being active in my planning and usage of things. Usually, if I'm deciding something might happen later, if ever, it's on a project or outcome basis, not a task basis.

It's also easy enough to select a task in any todo view, then hit other views like Outline to see it there. I do that a lot to see the fuller picture of what I'm working on if it warrants it.

And yes, I don't assign urgency or importance to the grand majority of my tasks, which defaults them to 'average'. If something's really not urgent or important I slide it down, if it's very urgent or important I slide it up. The biggest bang for the buck on that is having those assigned higher up in the hierarchy, at least for me, which doesn't change often.

[John . Smith]

> I'll see if I can get around to replying to your post some other time, but as a short version:

> 

> If you hit 'hide in todo' on any task or project, it'll instantly not show in those todo views. If you wanted to make a view called 'Someday Maybe'
> from there that showed all those tasks with that checked, it'd be a single click.

Ah-ha, I hadn't realized that "hide branch in To-do" could work on individual tasks as well as branched. Yes, interesting!

However I still can't quite visualize how you would do this.  Would this be an MLO View in the LH column, and if so what would be in that filter?

And if a View, how would you not lose place when you click on that view name in the LH column?  As it's irritating when stuff flies around up and down the screen and you potentially lose your place!

Also I still don't understand your basic setup of how you are using tabs & views & filters dynamically.

In particular how are you visiting each of your different Contexts in turn?

What I find irritating/frustrating about MLO is that often tends to be no easy way to build on your filtering decisions within one session, because as soon as you change view or work area, you lose your latest filtering decisions.

I mean if I am filtering on say any given Context filter (e.g. @Errands  or @Reflective_Mood etc), and I now want to see those tasks that are in reality in my SomedayMaybe list that match the Context-tag I have chosen, then if I have to change my entire View (or Workarea/Tab) to one that isn't filtering to show just the Active tasks, then as soon as I change View (or Workarea/Tab) I have to re-set up whatever filtering I had in place in my previous view.

All of the above is possible but it's lots of extra scrolling and clicking, no?

> MLO handles keeping things out of sight based on their reason for being out of sight, like date or sequence 

> or dependency, but you can also use that as a Someday button.

Like I say, using Date is has an entirely different semantic meaning from putting things into SomedayMaybe.

i.e. If the Date is in the future it means that I am definitely still doing it but just that I am not wanting to look at it for whatever reason for e.g. 3 days.

Whereas SomedayMaybe means that I am genuinely not sure if I am going to do this task/project at all.

Sequence & dependence are both different too as it means that it will still be done but only once other stuff has been done.

Either way I would still like to be able to keep two versions of my SomedayMaybe list

A) things I want to see again soon (at weekly reviews - possibly earlier)

B) A bigger list of things that I want to see again when doing long term strategic thinking (e.g. in weekly reviews only if I have time, probably more like Monthly reviews - although they may potentially happen at any time of course)

J

[SRhyse]

You could easily make a view that shows 'All' things with 'Don't show in Todo'. It'd take 20 seconds if you were being slow.

I tend to look at contexts on my next action by context list. It shows all next actions grouped by context. Pretty sure that's the name of it, but it's a default view.

If I 'filter', it's usually through a zoom on a folder or project, and that holds across all views. If you select a task and move between views as well, that task stays selected.

If you only want to review things at intervals, there is a review area. You can still easily have a folder or number of them as relevant in different areas for 'someday' items, and/or combine that with 'hide branch in todo' items. If you wanted a bit view of all that, make a view for 'hide in todo' and whatever else makes the folder contents show up.

This all more or less came back around to 'I want a database field that has a someday status'. If that's the only way you're willing to do it, then nothing else is going to satisfy you. That seems to be the larger issue, which is one I outlined a long time ago when you started talking about MLO and people felt awkward about it.

Again, I'd love custom task attributes, and it seems like a good fit for MLO. Doesn't seem to be the issue here, however.

Take care John! And good luck tasking and stuff.

[John . Smith]

Hi SRhyse 

I have learned a lot from your input in this thread, and I thank you. 

However it sounds like your tone has shifted and that you are thinking I am being more dogmatic than in fact I am. 

To get clear, I have invested many, many hours of my life in MLO and would dearly love to find a way to get it to work reasonably well for something approaching GTD.

In truth it has been a mighty odyssey, but I think with your help I am now getting close to a what I consider to be something genuinely usable for GTD. i.e. Something that is much better than paper (paper IS useful!) doesn't end up getting in the way of doing GTD. 

The one thing I still can't work out how to do is create an action status of "Later/Soon" in addition to "Someday/Maybe", but I guess you can't have it all and maybe that is stop too far.

Taking your points in turn:

1. Yes, I like your idea of creating a SomedayMaybe list using the "Hide the branch in To-Do" field, and then creating a view using the Advanced Filter to show Hide in To-Do is true. Fantastic.

2. When I zoom in it only applies to the tab I am in but I see that you can sync tabs and zoom with the first tab. OK yes, that's useful too. 

> If you only want to review things at intervals, there is a 

> review area. 

What do you mean by "review area"?

Do you mean the fields: 

- Next review

- Review ever [n] weeks

- Mark Reivewed

Personally I have yet to find a useful way to use these fields, but maybe by clever use of advanced rules something something akin to a SomedayMaybe or Later action status could be set up ...(??) 

> You can still easily have a folder or number 

> of them as relevant in different areas for 'someday' items,

>  and/or combine that with 'hide branch in todo' items. 

Sorry but I don't understand what you mean by this.

Do you mean that one could create a folder called say "Review later" and drag things into it?

If so, then I suppose yes you could do this but it feels irritatingly clunky as the act of moving tasks into such folders it would interfere with using the order that tasks are in, which as discussed is a helpful way to reflect their priority.

For now I have moved my life onto Nirvana and am also ToDoList (from AbstractSpoon) for some stuff. 

I have report that Nirvana's intuitively obvious ,intelligently designed dashboard and attractive 'modern' appearance and is fa blessed relief compared to MLO Windows!

Not having multi-level projects/task hierarchies is a challenge but given that GTD is "supposed to be flat" according to some is a good exercise for me - rather like using paper.  But it is of course nothing like as configurable as MLO, and when I get time I shall do some further experiments on MLO and if all goes well I will move back onto MLO. 

> Again, I'd love custom task attributes, and it seems like a 
> good fit for MLO. 

I am curious - what would you personally use it for?

And what do you think are the chances of MLO building them into the system any time soon?

Also do you agree that it would be useful for the user to be able to fully configure which fields are inherited from a new child task's parent task at the time of the child's creation?

For to me, this would be particularly useful to go hand-in-hand with custom task attributes.

J

[John . Smith]

SRhyse 

I need to create something half way between "Someday/Maybe" and "Active" (Do ASAP).

i.e. I need what Nirvana calls a "Later" action status.

Do you have any suggestions?

To explain, by having Later (i.e. Soon) this allows all your Active actions to literally be "Do ASAP" because it allows you to park stuff on a temporary basis, without it getting lost in a sea of "Someday/Maybe" tasks.

Also I am slightly unclear about how you handle priority. 

I mean in a "flat" system (i.e. without a hierarchy) relative priority can easily be handled by using a manual sort.

But in a system where you have what is effectively a mindmap by subject, then this isn't really possible if the hierarchy is still visible.

Obviously one could use the Importance and Urgency fields but that always seems to get messy and becomes hard to manage. (I think the reason is because one needs relative not absolute priority!)

Cheers

J

[Dwight]

John,
I handle the "soon" situation by scheduling the task for tomorrow. My
discipline for myself id that if I have done that twice for a particular
task I will not do it a third time - the task is obviously set up wrong
and should loose its star, or get a lower importance, or change to a
different more accurate context, or get a real start date assigned or
something else like that.

For a task that has no start date or has today's start date this is a
single click on the "next day" link in the timing and reminder section
of task details. For a task that already has a start date a while in the
past, it could take several clicks on "next day" or "next week"

Because it is more clicks on Android I use a different procedure: I have
a task called Wait For Tomorrow with a start date of tomorrow. If I need
to postpone a task for a day I set it to be dependent on "wait for
tomorrow". Every morning the wait for tomorrow task is at the top of my
to-do list: I duplicate it, complete the first copy and set the second
copy to be due tomorrow. Four clicks on MLO/Windows.

-Dwight

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[pottster]

Hi Dwight,

Regarding dating/re-dating tasks on desktop...

KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS

CONTROL + (=) for next day

CONTROL + (-) for previous day

CONTROL + ALT + (=) for next week

CONTROL + ALT + (-) for previous week

[With all the above keep tapping =/- keys to keep adding/reducing]

MOUSE SHORTCUTS

Display the Due Date column and right on the task due date for a much more useful context menu for dating.

> <mailto:mylifeorganized+unsub...@googlegroups.com>.

[John . Smith]

Hi Pottster

That's actually a different issue. We were looking at ways to move the 'action status' of a task into a new category so as to be able to create a new list that is somewhere between "Active/Do ASAP" and  "Someday/Maybe".

Moving the Start Date into the future is semantically different. It means "yes I'm going to do it but won't start yet". Where as "Soon/Later" list means "I need to look at this again soon to decide whether I want to do it or not, but I dont want to lose it in amongst all my Someday/Maybe tasks" !

Re changing the MLO Start Date, pPersonally I'm happy with:

Alt/S followed by a number followed by D for days or H for hours

e.g

   Alt/S 3 D

Gives you a start date 3 days into the future

e.g. Alt/S 5 D

Gives you a start date 5 hours into the future

As this helps me think more clearly about exactly when. 

Btw, are you aware of this page?

https://www.shortcutworld.com/shortcuts.php?l=en&p=win&application=MyLifeOrganized 

It was a while ago but I think I created it. Either way feel free to edit it!

Cheers

J

[John . Smith]

OK it seems to me that several of the advanced users of MLO are in favour of this request. 

It sounds like we would all be extra task fields (AKA "Custom Task Attributes") for our own different purposes but a number of people are now saying that this would be extremely useful.   

I also don't think such that think should trouble the heads of naive users as it could be buried deep within the more complex menus etc, but I for one would find having 2 or 3 such fields to be utterly transformative, particularly if: 

A) the user could also control which fields inherit their values from parents.  

B) the user could control if it is not just plain text, what type of list each field was.

ToDoList from Abstract Spoon has the following options for their extra trask fields ("Custom Task Attributes"):

- Not a list (just plain text) 

- Dynamic Data, single selection

- Fixed Data, single selection

- Dynamic Data, multi-selection

- Fixed Data, multi-selection

And for where the data is "Fixed" they provide a multi-line text box.

Is anyone with me on this?

If so would anyone like to officially submit it to MLO (as I believe that no longer can!)

Cheers 

J

 

 

 

On Monday, September 5, 2016 at 12:07:33 PM UTC+1, John . Smith wrote:

Hello

I have recently been spending time with an MLO competitor which has a feature that they call "Custom Task Attributes", which I consider to be a total game-changer.

In effect these are task fields that you can add for yourself, and name them to whatever suits you, and then have them show up everywhere as if they were standard task data fields. And fwiw, you seem to be allowed to add a large number (e.g. 10?) of such "Custom Task Attributes" if you want.

Moreover you can even chose whether each new field is plain text, or is a list. And if the field is to be a list, is it multi-selection or single selection. (And even whether data can be added to it by the user).

To me this is jaw-droppingly powerful and takes the configurability of the system to a whole new level. 

Any takers?

J

PS If you are a follower of GTD method, please note that the above allows you to add fields like "Area of Responsibility" and action status (e.g. "Waiting", "Sometime-Maybe", "Active", "Later" etc), and even a "Waiting For" user field... without resorting to messy workarounds.

[John . Smith]

PS 

Windows Only?

It occurs to me that getting these Extra Fields to sync to the cloud shouldn't be too difficult and that this would help users with multiple computers.

However incorporating them into the Android/iOS mobile apps would potentially be a lot of work - not to mention unwanted clutter - for the MLO development team.

So what I suggest is that, in accordance with Lean Startup best practice, that in the first instance these fields are simply not used by the mobile apps, and that we see exactly how useful or not they are in the Windows application first. 

After all, stand alone Windows applications clearly have their place.  And if the project is made too large & expensive from the off, it will simply never happen. Moreover if very few users wind up using these new Extra Fields the developers could quietly forget about developing them further.

What think you?

J

[Dwight Arthur]

Your suggestion makes sense, however as a person who does almost all MLO work on mobile I would not be a user of a feature that's only available on Windows. So please don't count me among your supporters.

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[John . Smith]

Oh dear. My concern is that if we do include mobile apps... do you think this project would be too large to ever, ever happen?  

J

[Nick Clark]

There's already too many features that are Windows only and I wouldn't want to see more.
In addition to adding these fields you are also requiring that the custom view engine be updated to include them. If the mobile apps couldn't use them then Views transferred to them wouldn't work either.
So I agree with Dwight, it needs to include the mobile apps to be supported.

[John . Smith]

> There's already too many features that are Windows only and I wouldn't want to see more.

I have looked long and hard at MLO. Compared to almost all other task management applications it is already overwhelmingly complex but highly configurable - so much so that most advanced users of MLO seem to agree that in truth it is more of a task management platform than a task management application. 

In short the "not too many features" battle is already lost a long time ago. 

My complaint is that despite trying about 10 different ways of doing things, nothing I can do really gets it to do what I need it to do. Personally I am trying to do a slightly modified GTD method and I need an "Area of Life" field and an "actionable status" (for what of a better phrase), both of which would need to inherit from parent task whenever any new task is created.  But my feeling is that every user will probably have their own requirements and that this would be utterly transformative to how useful the MLO task management application is.

For any users like Dwight who are mainly using the mobile apps yes, it would be critical to have some way of implementing these fields on the apps.  The big problem is that I fear that this will never ever happen as the project becomes much more expensive. The other big problem is that within any mobile phone app, clutter does become a big problem and so exactly how this should best be implemented is not clear. 

My latest thought is that 3 such customisable fields is all that would be required.

Dwight, SRhyse do you have any thought about this?

- Exactly how useful would such fields really be to you (on a scale 0 - 10)

- What would you use them for?

- How & where would you imaging that they might be added to the MLO mobile apps?

- What do you think the chances are of MLO doing any of the above would be? (on a scale 0 - 10)

J

PS The other solution would be for MLO to actually build a field called "Area of Life" and another one called "Actionable Status" (or similar names) ... but if hardcoded I can hear the squeals of protest of "clutter" and of them not being the names that other users want for their own purposes. 

My tentative solution to the "clutter" / "bloatware" complaint is that they should be buried somewhere and only switched on as advanced settings for advanced users.

[Dwight]

Just to clarify

I am not opposing the development of a Windows-only solution such as you
are discussing. I understand and respect Nick's reasons for opposing
this but for me, it's more like the question of developing a Mac
version. It is irrelevant to me, and I won't use it. It may have enough
value for others to warrant developing it, and it may not; the people
who will experience the benefit should go ahead and make their case and
I will sit this one out.

-Dwight

On 10/22/2016 5:54 AM, John . Smith wrote:
>
>> There's already too many features that are Windows only and I wouldn't
> want to see more.

> I have looked long and hard at MLO. Compared to almost all other task
> management applications it is already overwhelmingly complex but highly
> configurable - so much so that most advanced users of MLO seem to agree

> that in truth it is more of a task management /*platform */than a task
> management /*application*/.
>
> In short the "not too many features" battle is *already lost* a long

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[Smith, John]

To get clear Dwight, how useful or not would it be to you to have a mobile version of what is being proposed here implemented?

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[Dwight]

John, if Android supported added fields that would be either supported
by or at a minimum not damaged by Windows MLO, there is something like a
70% chance that I would use it. Mu use case would be for comtact
information. If I could just type in a contact name that would be good
but to be great it would be tied through my address book to Google
Contacts, so that by typing the first three or so letters in a name I
could search and select in the address book, so that the address would
populate a map view and perhaps location alarms, and the phone number
would appear as a clickable link.

This would possibly be as high as number seven on my wishlist, which
would go something like this:
1. Ability to change open/closed hours per context on Android
2. Ability to set any recurrence patterns (eg every second month) that
can be set on Windows
3. push sync across all platforms that I can set and forget
4. synchronize view definitions when doing cloud sync
5. browser interface to (secured) task data on MLO cloud sync
6. integration with appls like ifttt
7. custom fields


-Dwight

On 10/24/2016 6:31 AM, Smith, John wrote:
> To get clear Dwight, how useful or not would it be to you to have a
> mobile version of what is being proposed here implemented?
>
> On 22 October 2016 at 14:50, Dwight <m...@dwightarthur.us

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[John . Smith]

OK thanks Dwight. So definitely useful, but not VERY useful to Dwight...

So, overall where are we with this?

Do any of you folks want to submit it as a formal enhancement request to MLO?

Pottster? 

J

[Adam Byers]

Hi John, 

I saw that you posted this request on the user voice forum. I voted it too, although it looks like it's way behind in the polls.... I think that is the official enhancement request media, but I could be wrong. 

If you don't mind me asking, what is the competitive product that you mentioned earlier in the post? I have looked at several, and the only thing I can find that has this feature is Asana, but if you want those features, you have to pay for a subscription for a team of 5 people at a steep $45 a month or so.    

[SRhyse]

I'd rate the desirability of it as a 10, and the usefulness of it as a 5. Mainly because I'm well aware that wanting a feature is different than needing one, and because MLO already accomplishes quite a bit, including exactly what you seem to be after in requesting this feature. I would personally use it for time estimates and time logging, and experimenting with custom project status's at the very least if it allowed it. I would not use them if I couldn't use them on the mobile apps, as they are my primarily usage of MLO. The chances of MLO doing any of the above strike me as a 2, not as an insult to MLO, but because I see many other features as lower hanging fruit for them to work on before then, such as more robust Calendar/Date integration and displaying features, formatted notes via Markdown or other means, etc. The iOS apps at present lack robust repeat functionality as far as creating them goes, for example.

Again, I'd love to see this, but if you wanted specifics, the above is my response. I don't think they'd clutter MLO at all because they wouldn't appear if users didn't take the time to make them appear, much like custom views.

[John . Smith]

Adam 

I was under the impression that the user voice forum was pretty much dead/ignored. One of the big problems with User Voice is that a lot of the voices are from a long time ago and no longer relevant. This puts new users off as the impact of new stuff is pretty much drowned.  

Moreover because MLO have a very slow development cycle and seem pretty unresponsive to their users this further discourages user participation. 

Yes I have found a way to run a Someday list, pretty much like SRhyse suggests, however I still find it clunky and don't like it very much. What I have yet to find is a way to run other 'actionable status' lists such as Later or Soon.  (Definitely, and do it soon, to but don't do ASAP and don't lose it amongst the Someday stuff. )  

Personally I would like the ability to do a long term archive using the same fields (i.e. "Make this stuff disappear but let me review it in say 3 or 6 months") 

And I would like all this stuff to inherit their statuses from parent tasks.

Given that MLO Windows has such 'way out there' data fields as: 

- Review frequency

- Effort including min time and max time

- Dependencies including delay 

- Goal for week/month/year

- Importance + Urgency

- Recurrence

- Project % completion

- Starred date 

- Last reviewed date 

(etc.)

... I find it strange to argue that something as powerful as this should be banned on the grounds of "no additional clutter". Clutter for me is a battle that MLO has lost a very long time ago! No, in my opinion, MLO - particularly the Windows version needs to be seen as a task management platform of great power that people use after they have exhausted/out-grown all other options not a ready to go application. 

But interesting to get your opinions. So it sounds like something of a dead duck for the next year or so I guess.   :^(

Adam Byers - I'd be happy to tell you which application I was talking about but the thread is now so long that I can't find the relevant part of the thread that you are talking about!

J

[Adam Byers]

Hi John,

I was referring to the very first post you made in this thread, where you mentioned spending some some time with a competitor that allows adding custom attributes such Someday Maybe, Waiting for, etc. These additional fields would help MLO fit the GTD methodology a little better,in my opinion. Do you remember the software you were spending time with?

Adam

[Adam Byers]

John,

 

I was referring to your original post in this thread (quoted below). Just today, I just checked out IQTELL and it has some of the features you are discussing, but some of the functionality is quite counter-intuitive. It does have some really neat features such as email integration, though and I'm still reviewing it.

Hello

I have recently been spending time with an MLO competitor which has a feature that they call "Custom Task Attributes", which I consider to be a total game-changer.

In effect these are task fields that you can add for yourself, and name them to whatever suits you, and then have them show up everywhere as if they were standard task data fields. And fwiw, you seem to be allowed to add a large number (e.g. 10?) of such "Custom Task Attributes" if you want.

Moreover you can even chose whether each new field is plain text, or is a list. And if the field is to be a list, is it multi-selection or single selection. (And even whether data can be added to it by the user). 

To me this is jaw-droppingly powerful and takes the configurability of the system to a whole new level. 

Any takers?

J

PS If you are a follower of GTD method, please note that the above allows you to add fields like "Area of Responsibility" and action status (e.g. "Waiting", "Sometime-Maybe", "Active", "Later" etc), and even a "Waiting For" user field... without resorting to messy workarounds.

[Adam Byers]

I've been using IQTell for a couple of days now, and despite a steep learning curve, I'm extremely impressed. It's a one-stop shop for web based and mobile device productivity. 

[Smith, John]

The product to which I refer is called ToDoList by AbstractSpoon.

Personally I would certainly consider the product to be 'a competitor' however if MLO don't see any need for Custom Task Attributes, perhaps MLO do not consider themselves to be competitors after all !

J

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I read a little bit about that product, but since it doesn't have a mobile companion app, I wasn't going to look too much deeper into it. I work in an environment where  our machines are locked down and we can't install third party software. The fact that MLO can be run off of a thumb drive is one of the biggest reasons I was considering it for work and home use. 

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[John . Smith]

I used to think the lack of a mobile app was a deal-breaker, but personally I am so intensely dissatisfied with all the task major management systems available (and I have asked around and tried all the leading tools) that I would now settle for anything that runs on Windows 10 , yes even stand alone software.  That said, the obvious way forward nowadays would be to have a web application that is customised to work reasonably well on a mobile interface.

 

Yes, I tried IQTell but found it rather pedantic. I particularly dislike the fact that as far as I could tell it forces you to decide whether something is a project or a standalone task right from the start (i.e. there is no easy say to move between a Project and multi-part task and a standalone task).   As such this simply isn't how the human brain works. Most of the time one thinks in terms of desired outcomes and stuff that needs to be done, without categorising it artificially into such things.

J

[Adam Byers]

John,

It's interesting you bring up the pedantic nature of IQTell. I am encountering the same limitations now that I've been trying it for a few days. I was excited about the tight integration with email, and cloud based services, but it is rather rigid. One of the things I love about MLO is the hierarchical structure it has. I have been looking for the past few years for a software program that supports this. I used to really love using Todomatrix on the Blackberry because of this feature. I think my brain works in this manner for sure. For me, the ability to see all of my projects and the related tasks that are required to complete them from a top down perspective is paramount. 

[John . Smith]

For me quick informal hierarchies are crucial.

Only today I added three thank-you letters that I need to write. And in MLO it was really nice to be able to, having entered each of them as a standalone task to quickly group them into "WRITE LETTERS" (I tend to use caps when something has children) in a matter of seconds.

GTDNext allows for something similar although it has no mobile phone app and after a blazing start about 18 months ago, it seems to have lost development momentum.

What drives me nuts about MLO however is the lack of a field for "actionable status".  (Do ASAP, Someday, Maybe, Waiting, Soon, Later, etc). [Hence this thread!]

Meanwhile, I have been having another look at Trello for using with the GTD-like method. With Trello you can set up a different List (of Cards) for each "actionable status" and because of the way lists are laid out vertically beside each other (i.e. Kanban system?), it's then trivially easy to move stuff between Lists of Cards. I haven't quite worked out how to do thing like Next [n] Tasks per Project... Nor how to create 'focus-on-this-today'... 

[r...@rcollings.co.uk]

I have long been arguing in the beta group for a List capability like
Trello.

The combination of a hierarchical task list and lists would be a killer
USP in my view.

Richard

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[Smith, John]

Is your thinking to use the different lists for different 'actionable statuses'? 

i.e. Is your thinking to facilitate a dead-easy movement of tasks between different statuses?

And would new child tasks added to a parent task that is in any given list, inherit the same list as the parent task?

If so then I would ABSOLUTELY agree!

J

PS Btw, is this the same thing as a Kanban method/view?

 

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[Richard C]

Not sure how child tasks should be handled TBH.     

But I have just noticed that in addition to custom fields,   Asana have now added boards:  http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2016/11/15/asana-moves-into-trello-turf-with-boards/#5f48535353b9

It is what people are looking for (and IME experience using Trello,  they are very helpful in visualising your work)

And boards are definitely part of Kanban (but there is a lot more to it - although I am not an expert)

Richard

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[Smith, John]

> Not sure how child tasks should be handled TBH. 

To me child tasks are self-evident. Which is that when you add a task to something that is in one of the board lists on a board, it self-evidently keeps both the Board and the List that has focus i.e. it's 'parent' - if there is a parent as such that is. 

One problem with MLO is that this is not true in MLO. i.e. From what I can see, the only properties a new Task in MLO inherits are:

A) The position in the folder(s) 

B) Any Context tags of any parent task

C) The Hide "Branch in to do" status of any parent task 

To get clear, in MLO if you try an use something like Flag to control something like 'actionable status' or 'Area of Responsibility', every single time that you create a new task, you need to manually set it's flag. And this needs to be done for each and every new task. And this soon becomes painful.  

Conclusion

Come on MLO - bring on the boards!

J

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[John Smith]

I've been away for a year or so. Did anything ever come of this suggestion?

J

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