On Friday, July 12, 2013 7:19:59 PM UTC-4, Philip wrote:
... A very simple, non-technical, step by step guide would be welcome. Thank you.
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Okay, Philip, I will give this a try.
-Dwight
For this exercise, I'm going to use the folder structure of the outline to denote domain, meaning personal versus professional. I'm using these terms instead of home and work to avoid ambiguity - work" could mean professional tasks or it could mean at the office - sometimes you do work tasks while you are at home! I'm going to use context to mean the location or tools needed to do the task. This is totally arbitrary, and you might be more comfortable with a totally different way of organizing your tasks, but this is how my example will work.
To keep it simple we will start with a new, blank profile.
1. From MLO's FILE menu select New. In the "new MyLifeOrganized File" popup, click the blue button for "New Blank File" - see attached fig.01
2. From MLO's FILE menu select Save. Enter a name for your file - see attached fig.02
3. Now we will create some contexts. From MLO's Tools menu select Manage Contexts. At the Manage Contexts popup hit the Ins key on your keyboard to bring up a "new context" field - See attached fig.03. Type the name of a context and hit Enter. Hit Ins to create the next context, type its name and hit Enter. Continue until you have created the contexts you need. Don't worry, you can add more later. I'm using five, @computer, @calls, @errands, @office, @home. See attached fig.04
4. Now we will create some hierarchy. From MLO's TASK menu select New Folder.You will see an entry with a folder icon and the name "New Task" - see fig.05 - and you should type your intended name for the first top-level folder. See fig.06.
5. Repeat step 4 for each top-level folder in your hierarchy. I created three, Professional, Personal, Other. See fig.07
6. Just to be sure that we have covered the basics, let's create some subfolders for the Professional folder, let's call them Recruiting, Compliance and Projects. The first one is a little more work because MLO does not have a "create subfolder" command, so highlight the Professional folder and select New Folder from the TASK menu, and type in the folder name Recruiting. This has now created a "sibling" folder at the same level in the hierarchy as your top-level folders. We need to demote the folder to be a child of the Professional folder. Clicking the right arrow on the toolbar will demote the selected item and make it the child of the item above it in the outline. See fig.08.
7. The next subfolder can be created by highlighting an existing subfolder (Recruiting,) selecting Create Folder in the TASKS menu, and entering a name. Let's call this second one Compliance. We will create the third subfolder differently, just to give a glimpse of the variety of available tools. Highlight the Professional folder and click the Create Subtask button, which is the second button on the toolbar. See fig.09. Type in a name for the new subtask, call it Projects. Now change your Projects subtask into a subfolder by goig to the Task Properties panel on the right and clicking the "Folder" checkbox, see fig.10
8. Now we will create some tasks. I will step you through the first one: Highlight the Compliance folder, click the Create Subtask button (second button on the toolbar, shown in fig.09). Enter the task name: "Check if permits were approved" Then click the box shown in fig.11 to bring up a menu of contexts. Check the box for @calls and click the OK button.
9. Let's change the view a little to make it easier. Find the header for the task list and find where it says "Due Date". If you are using a small window and don't see Due Date, maximize the window. Right click on Due Date (or any other header caption) to bring up a list of available fields. See fig.12. Click on Context - thew menu will clear and a context field will appear in your display. It should show @calls as the context for your first task.
10. Now create some more tasks. I'm not going to step you through each task, just make sure that each task is in an appropriate folder or subfolder and that each task has a context. See fig.13 for a listing of the tasks I created.
11. Let's make some workspaces. For several reasons that have been thoroughly discussed elsewhere, MLO works best if there is always an All Tasks outline view in the first workspace. At this point, you should have one workspace, called "my workspace" with an All Tasks view. First, rename the workspace by right-clicking on the tab, selecting "Set Up Workspace" and typing in a new name, like "Outline". Then, to make sure that this view stays in this tab, right click the tab and select "Set as default for this tab" then right click the tab again and select "Lock default in this tab". This will force this tab to always show an outline view of all of your tasks. Try changing to a different view and watch what happens.
12. Create a new workspace by clicking on the plus to the right of your tabs. Type "Personal" (or, if you prefer, "Home") into the New Workspace popup shown in fig.14 - if you lose the popup you can right click the tab and select "Set Up Workspace". Leave the sync settings clear for now. Highlight the Personal folder and zoom in by selecting "Zoom In" from the View menu. You now have a tab with a view of your personal tasks in an outline view. As you add subfolders and additional tasks, this tab will show them all. You can also switch to any other view, and the selected view will show only personal tasks.
13. Set a default view for your personal workspace. Bring up the view you always want to start with - for example, all tasks. right-click on the tab and select "Set as default for this view. Now change to some other view. Double-clicking the tab will bring you back to your default view.
14. Create another new tab by clicking on the plus to the right of your tabs. Type "Professional"(or, if you prefer, "Work") into the New Workspace popup. Select the Professional folder and zoom in by selecting Zoom In from the View menu. Bring up the Active by Context view. This shows just the tasks that are active (not completed, not waiting for any other tasks to complete, not set for a future start date, etc) and ready to be worked on, grouped by context. For example, under "@Calls" you will find all of your business phone calls. If you find that you use this view frequently, you could set up a tab just for professional active by context and lock the view as you did in step 11.
15. Other things to try: create start dates for tasks that you cannot work on until some time in the future. Create a project and click the "complete tasks in order" checkbox or create dependencies to bring tasks onto your Active list only when a predecessor task has been finished. Try making a repeating task that comes up every Wednesday or the 15th of every month. Change Importance or Urgency and watch the tasks re-order themselves in the to-do views (but not in the outline views).