Quirk: "Next Action by Folder" happening in "Next Action by Project" view.

[John Smith]

Hi 

[ASIDE: OK I am still smarting... but apologies are accepted where given. From my side I am happy to apologise for my the tone of some of my earlier remarks. OK let's move on.]

I have discovered a rather fundamental "weirdness" of the system. [Fwiw, in order to confirm this weirdness I have started again with an empty dataset.]

So if you have a collection of tasks in the root directory, to which you have not yet had time to allocated into any Project yet, then if you go to the standard "Next Action by Project" you will see those tasks listed at the top of the page, where it calls them "Projects: (none)".  

Ah but not so fast, this only works in the root directory. And if those Tasks are moved into a directory of any sort, guess what? They all disappear from this "Next Action by Project" view! 

WTF?

At least most of them disappear. Because it turns out the the first task with the folder does stay visible after all. But only the first in that directory - all the others disappear.

So it's almost as if MLO is treating a Folder as if it were a Project. i.e. MLO is 'filtering in' the Next Action within the Folder as if it were finding the Next Action within a Project. Now, if I had ticked the "This is a project" box on the directory then that would make perfect sense. However the "This is a project" box is emphatically not ticked!

For reasons of diplomacy I shall resist the urge to call this a "bug", but surely it is pretty unexpected.

Background:

As we all know, one of the core GTD concepts "Next Action". And so this "Next Action by Project" is likely to be one of the most important screens to anyone trying to implement GTD. I certainly intend to spend a lot of time there. 

Either way, surely we don't want to see "Next Action by Folder" because the folders are just supposed to be merely containers for subject areas and they do not indicate that something is actually a live Project!

I find this to be quite a fundamental problem. I mean if you use folders a lot and you have a lot of one-off type Actions to which you have not yet bothered to put into projects, then whenever you try to work from the "Next Action by Project" view of the world, all your Actions will disappear - All except one per folder!

P.S. Now there is a solution to this anomaly which is, similar to what I mentioned in another thread, which is that if you convert your Actions without projects into Projects then they are 'forced' to appear in this "Next Actions by Project" review. But this is definitely a fudge because in GTD theory you need to work tasks very differently if they are an action compared to if they are a project.

Surely this "Next Action by Folder" cant be something anyone designed into the system on purpose. And surely it is unwanted, no?

Either way, I am curious. Has nobody else discovered this 'quirk' ? 

And if so, how to you get around it?

[Dwight Arthur]

I believe that the behavior you are describing is documented in the User Manual section on Next Actions which says “Note: If there are Active Tasks without parent project then only first task for each root task is selected.” The wording is a little stiff but it is completely consistent with the observed behaviour making me believe that it’s all intentional. There’s just one glitch which is this: I believe the statement should have been “Note: If there are Active Tasks without parent project then only first task for each root item is selected.” It’s my opinion that rules like this apply equally to tasks, projects and filters, but the word “task” does not communicate this quite as clearly as “item”.

 

I recognize that this is a case where MLO’s out-of-the-box function differs from what you would prefer. In the long run, that doesn’t matter, what matters is whether you can use the power of MLO to make a view that does what you want. Usually that’s the case though the jury is still out for your version of next actions by project.

 

As an aside, there are MLO users who try to adhere to GTD orthodoxy. And there are those who do something entirely unrelated to GTD. A lot of us, though, use something personal and idiosyncratic that’s inspired by GTD. So when you find a case where MLO’s default action differs from your understanding of GTD orthodoxy, that does not necessarily justify changing MLO’s action to be more nearly compliant. That’s because there are some users out there who are counting on the existing functionality. I have been stung several times (and the developers I’m sure have been stung even more) by proposing clear improvements in MLO functionality only to face a chorus of angry protests from fans of the prior functionality.

 

So the better question to ask is, how can MLO provide any tools you need but don’t have that will let you build your dream view.

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[Lisa]

I have discovered a rather fundamental "weirdness" of the system.

 

Depends on what is normal, though. To me it's a feature..I'll explain. (though to be fair I haven't looked at the behavior at the toplevel. My toplevel is static).  

 

So it's almost as if MLO is treating a Folder as if it were a Project. i.e. MLO is 'filtering in' the Next Action within the Folder as if it were finding the Next Action within a Project. Now, if I had ticked the "This is a project" box on the directory then that would make perfect sense. However the "This is a project" box is emphatically not ticked!

Yes.  You probably can find a way to modify the view using ProjectName <> empty if you need it more restricted.

 

MLO is not a direct implementation of GTD, it's multi-methodology. Granted it's confusing because some of the terms were adopted and expanded.  Next action I believe was a term adopted from GTD, but it is not a concept used only by those following GTD.

 

But GTD did not originally define the term "project," clearly. (And uses it rather non-intuitively, I think). So one person's scope for the term project can be different from another's. I only mark a few things as a project - my big projects that I want to track separately from my other tasks. Some people mark every task that is broken down further as a project but I found that cumbersome.  Instead what has evolved for me is a system of Areas of Focus in my outline (and only Areas of focus).  My "top foci" for the moment get marked as projects when I want to separate them out into their own views, but they live under one of my main areas.

 

Here's my use model from two years ago.

http://stroyan.net/lisasblog/2012/mylifeorganized/ 

(I'm sad to admit it, but now I really am not following it ....let's see...I have...ack, 224 tasks in the Inbox. Even I didn't realize how bad it had gotten. I've been abusing my poor Active starred task view into the ground. (Partially because it's -- now this is a quirk IMO-- the only manually sorted active view that the sort order sync's to Android in v1). )

 

Either way, surely we don't want to see "Next Action by Folder" because the folders are just supposed to be merely containers for subject areas and they do not indicate that something is actually a live Project!

There is no requirement that folders be only for subject areas in MLO.  Is that an assumption or poor documentation? You certainly may choose to use them that way. My toplevel folders are full of unrelated tasks and projects.

 

Mainly I use folders for ongoing collections of tasks rather than finisha-ble collections of tasks. So for example, my Daily Routine never gets completed, even if all the tasks are completed for the day. (Ha. right.) It can have a "next action" if I order the tasks in the way I like to do them each day. Though for practicality, I usually just pick them off as I remember and do them.

 

Did you know something can be a folder and a project?  Not sure I've seen any use models that do that, though. 

 

Lisa

 

[John Smith]

Dwight: 

> how can MLO provide any tools you need

OK, I do find this quirk somewhat bizarre, particularly as Actions in the root directory it self (i.e. not in any folder) do cheerfully appear... but yes, I do hear you. 


I am poised ready to pivot. 

I need to simplify what I have so that I can actually get on and use it in the short term!

 
Here is my new plan:

1. No Folders 
I think I'm just going to get rid of folders completely - they just seem to get in the way. (Maybe I'll bring them back eventually I'm not sure). Scrapping Folders will also of course avoid the what I am not allowed to call 'stupid' quirk and allow Next Action by Project to show me both Next Action that do and do not have Projects. And designing new Views will be easier too. 

2. Physical Sort
Use the physical sort order to establish some sort of overall priority approximate (this is made possible by the lack of folders)

3. Flags
Use flags for Context.  I think any action can normally only have one Context. And an item can only have one Flag so that's a good fit. Radical I know, but blame pottster  ;)

4. Tags
Use the 'Context' tags to create any hierarchies that I need using the "Context includes Context" feature. 

5. Priority (Urgency/Importance etc)

a) Physical Sort  [recap I know!]

In the short run I shall use a physical sort to show me what I know I should be doing next

b) Highlight 

I shall also use Control/H so that the eyes can find things without reading 

c) Stars

This will be used for "has focus today" - The stuff I think I'm doing today (will try to keep down to c. 5 or so at any one moment)

d)  Important/Urgent fields
With this structure I should be free to experiment with using the dedicated Important & Urgent fields, plus the clever looking-but-I-only-half-understand-it "Computed-Score" priority.

I now cant yet decide how feasibly it will be to bother to enter both Importance and Urgency fields for everything. But with this structure I shall be free to find out!

I think it will be quite useful to simply allow the physical sort order on the Outline to flow through to some of my views.

How mad am I?

[Dwight Arthur]

Hi, John.

Sounds like a different and interesting way of managing tasks with MLO. I look forward to hearing more as you progress.

 

The only reason for importance and urgency is for use in sorting your tasks. If I understand correctly you will be manually sorting (ie physical sort) which would mean that neither of these fields matter, except insofar as the data is helpful to you yourself. My thoughts (drawn from life, not software) is that people tend to allocate too much energy to urgent tasks that may be unimportant and not enough to important tasks that are not urgent. Coding these separately help me keep track of this problem.

-Dwight

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[John Smith]

Dwight: 

I should explain that there is a school of thought (which I picked up from GTD forums elsewhere & possibly from David A himself) that you shouldn't sort AT ALL. ...And that priority should be something that comes purely from the human mind having repeated eye-balled everything you are currently trying to do ASAP.

I know that this won't work for me but I am trying to give myself room to experiment using various modes of establishing priority at once...

Lisa:

Did you know something can be a folder and a project?

Yes I spotted that. However ticking the Project box on a folder didn't seem to make any difference in my reports...(!)

Either way, for now, as above, I am planning to completely abandoning folders. It will be interesting to see how far I get without them. Watch this space...

A