An Eureka moment and idea - The True MLO Tool!

[Patricio Carranza]

Hi MLO Community!

I hope this message finds you well. Today, I'd like to share an insight that recently crystallized for me, something that has been on my mind and challenging me for quite some time. I believe I've finally managed to articulate a fundamental aspect of personal task management that we could all benefit from discussing.

At its core, managing personal tasks is fundamentally about managing our most precious resources: time (and energy, health and money too...). However, for the purposes of this discussion, let's focus on time management.

Many of us use tools like MyLifeOrganized (MLO) to manage our tasks. MLO, for example, offers an impressive array of features that enable the creation and management of a sophisticated system for tracking tasks, to-do items, and even entire projects. It allows for the specification of task duration, priority, urgency, and supports an almost limitless hierarchy of task categorization.

Despite these capabilities, a crucial question arises: what real value do these features offer if they don't simplify critical aspects of time management? Specifically:

Time Allocation Across Life's Roles and Areas: How can we easily visualize and adjust our time distribution across different areas of our lives, roles, projects, or goals to ensure it aligns with our current ambitions and priorities?

Planning Our Time Effectively: How can we plan our days, weeks, and months in a way that is realistic and flexible, ensuring that we don't overload ourselves with more tasks than we can handle in the available time?

Adherence to Planned Time: What mechanisms do we have to track our actual time spent on tasks compared to our plans, enabling a thorough plan vs. action analysis?

While there are workarounds and methods to achieve some of these objectives within existing applications, they often feel like makeshift solutions rather than integrated, purpose-built features.

I believe there's an opportunity for us to discuss and perhaps envision enhancements or new tools that more directly address these fundamental aspects of personal task management. How can we better integrate time management into our task management applications to truly support our goals and improve our productivity and satisfaction?

I'm eager to hear your thoughts and any experiences you might share on this topic. Together, we can explore ways to make our task management tools work even harder for us.

Patricio.

[Dwight Arthur]

Hi, Patricio

I believe that you are describing project management tools. Project management tools and task management tools have many similarities. Project management tools are more powerful and take more time to set up and maintain. If you can afford to hire someone to track your time, update every task every day to reflect additional time spent, revise estimated resources per task as needed, and research and code all the inter-task dependencies then you may be ready for a project management tool. Maybe you can do all of that yourself in which case I salute you. I tried it before I found MLO and I found that I was spending more time on managing my projects than I was spending on getting them done.

One of the things that a good project management tool will do for you is to identify the critical path, which is to say, out of all of the tasks available for you to work on right now, which is the one that is most holding up other tasks? The idea is that by throwing resources at the tasks on the critical path you can complete your project sooner.

Here is a helpful guide to some current project management tools:
https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-project-management-software

I have not tried any of these tools, my experience was with a prior generation. Maybe today's tools are enough better that what you want to do is feasible with them. But for me, a task management tool is what I need. More powerful is not always better. Managing tasks with a project manager sometimes felt to me like trying to spread jam on my toast using a chain saw.
-Dwight

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[Patricio Carranza]

Hi Dwight,

Thanks a lot for taking the time to share your thoughts. 

Interesting enough Project Management tools (which I've been using for more than 3 decades) don't really align to what I'm describing here. Let me explain it.

See, the paradigm I'm describing is about enabling you to work at the intersection of your available time and your areas of life and/or roles and the goals & projects under them. In practical terms (hope this helps gets the idea), you would be able to do the following:

Time Allocation Across Life's Roles and Areas

1. set the areas of your life and/or roles (more or less supported by MLO)
2. set goals and/or projects and tasks to achieve those goals (totally supported by MLO)
3. provide the ability to place any of your tasks of your backlog in a calendar view (like you would do in Google calendar or Outlook). Editing the task start date/time and end date/time in the calendar will in turn adjust that info in your backlog (supported by MLO through sync with Google calendar)
4. Show you (ideally a visual) report where you can see at least the following views:
1. % of the total time allocated by areas of life, roles, goals/projects, etc. For example, 40 hours allocated in total, 30% to personal stuff, 30% to professional related stuff, 40% to family
2. % of the total time available for a given window of time you select (for example look at the next week, or look at the next month, or look at the next 3 months) by similar dimensions. 
3. similar to 1 and 2 but in amount of hours (instead of %)
4. Remaining effort of tasks/projects vs allocated time 
5. Now I can look at the info in #4 and check: 
1. am I allocating my time in the way I really want in alignment with my personal goals? For example, I want to be 30% in professional development not 10%, etc
2. identify projects / tasks that I should simply put on hold since I don't still have enough time to allocate (at the current pace it would take me forever to complete, etc)
   
6. Repeat 3, 4 and 5 until it's 'optimal enough'

Planning Our Time Effectively

Now, I can simply use the standard functionality of a calendar, like Google calendar (leveraging that MLO sync up with Google Calendar), and do some basic checks:

1. Do the following days, weeks, months, etc, etc look realistic in terms of being able to do what I just planned for? Should I do any adjustment? Then I can adjust from the calendar view which in turn will adjust my tasks (current functionality in MLO through sync with Google Calendar)

Not to mention the potential benefits of introducing the ability (e.g. if the calendar view functionality existed within the app e.g. MLO) to filter the calendar view by tasks attributes (e.g. context, flags, etc, etc) So for example I could apply a filter to only see those tasks in my calendar related with area of life ABC or project XYZ, etc, etc.

Adherence to Planned Time 

Finally, and a bit more 'nice to have' and of course at the expense of tracking what tasks you are working on at any point in time, or at minimum mark if you work or not in a plan task: introduce the ability to do comparison between plan vs actual.

This is all about answering the question, am I executing in accordance with my plan? Am I planning too aggressively? etc, etc

I'm not saying these capabilities fall or not in the scope of a task management tool, I'm not debating that, not looking to have a theoretical debate of what type of tool should support this. What I'm simply saying is that I think we work with sophisticated yet really 'disconnected' tools which IMHO really miss the key point we need support for which is true time and goals achievement management in a connected fashion. 

Simply put, I think we have great task management / ToDos management tools, we have good enough calendar management tools (like Outlook calendar or Google calendar) but we really lack functionality (I'm talking in general not just MLO or any other tool) that connects and centers on their intersection enabling people to intelligently manage their time. 

Supporting what I describe here doesn't necessarily imply sophisticated capabilities. As with anything, there could be a basic version or MVP, a more complete one, an advanced one, etc, etc.

Thanks again!

Patricio.

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[H Gr]

Hello Patricio,

maybe you want to check this app out regarding your requirements.

https://www.abstractspoon.com/    -> Abstractspoon ToDoList

It features lot of field you are thinking of, has different view, a calender etc.

If you like it, a feedback would very much appreciated...

Regards HG

[Mark R]

Hi Patricio, 

It sounds like you're kind of referring to time blocking - but not exactly. I don't think there's any tool that addresses exactly what you're talking about in the time-life-productivity balance problem because, let's face it, it's an abstract problem that's just not easily solved. Although, I've come across a tool called "ManicTime" that is really helping me track where my time goes through the day - but it's really just a historical view of what already happened.

I've recently been thinking through the research that says we only do "focus work" about 3 hours per day. Focus work is defined as producing something. So not email, surfing, calls, etc. That means a great deal more of our time is spent on things that would not necessarily be considered productive as is being spent on things that are productive. The way I've come to look at it is we have a lot of busy-work that's necessary before we can get to the focus work. But the focus work is all that really matters.

[A. W.]

This is interesting :).

As i had - years ago - the same "desire" i have researched the market and did not find anything that would go into this at desired depth.

So i built a solution based on MS-Access to be able to analyze exactly your ideas with a resolution of 10min timeslots ;).

And i have managed my life for many years on that level of precision.

To me it was fun as i integrated within the tool into the goal and time aspects all needed information aspects like files and links needed, ...

The most important thing this does is to increase your self-awareness and -effectives to any desired degree..... but....

i did notice some funny things - i will start only on surface level, but we could go to any depth here as desired ;).

• the insights are cool - however not really useful - as to get things done you simply need to do them.
  • there come up some interesting ratios like:
    • % of sleep by day on average... same for any other basic "infrastructure activities of life"
    • % of value added activities viewed by any slicing through the goal dimensions of life and by any time resolution
• one is anabled to precisely "plan" how to use "time" efficiently, and perhaps even effectively
  
  • However this becomes hard to consistently "implement" as there is the rest of world
    • if the others in your various circles of influence are not used to manage their time with same precision levels .... spending time on this kind of planning simply is a waste of time ;)
• to me in the end this boils down to the need to have some specific ideas implemented in a simple yet spophisticated enough way to be able to:
  • properly define your energy distribution by day
  • have a clear view on the target state
  • direct your energy accordingly
  • AND hope for the help of "universe" that your intentions are supported ;)

to close my thoughts.... MLO is currently the best tool in the market i am aware of that enables to get MLO right... - based on my experiences.

So my vote to the MLO team would be ... continue as of now - great :).

One tiny little thing nevertheless would be cool to add to this dimension of usage.

The time groupings - to have them either self-configurable in terms of durations or add more groups for more distant todos - like Month, Quarter, Half-Year, Year, 3 or 5 Years, 10*x Years... ;)

cheers -Alexander

Patricio Carranza schrieb am Sonntag, 11. Februar 2024 um 02:08:16 UTC+1:

[Patricio Carranza]

thanks for sharing Mark.Yes, I agree with you in the end it's mainly or mostly about the focus time / work.

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[Patricio Carranza]

Wow Alexander, thank you so much for sharing your findings and experience with the group. I find them really helpful.

In alignment to what you mention, it seems that in the absence of a 'simple' capability that would allow to cross check tasks priorities vs how time / calendar slots are allocated to backlog items/tasks...it's basically about:

1. Know what your top priorities are...basically a prioritized and healthy backlog of outcomes/tasks, etc
2. Block calendar slots for focus time
3. When you are in one of those focus time slot, pick the outcome/task at the top of your prioritized backlog and get it done, or get progress as much as possible.

Still, I'd think that having a simple implementation of the capabilities I've describing on my prior emails would be really helpful. In any case, I hear you, you have implemented them (or most of them) and they didn't really make a difference on getting things done.

Finally, I totally agree with your comment / learning that one can attempt to be really organized but if those in one's circle are not, then the final effect or outcome of being so well organized is really reduced. In particular when we are talking team work / collaboration.

thank you!

Patricio.

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[Patricio Carranza]

thanks for sharing HG. Sure, I'll give it a try.

Patricio.

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[A. W.]

In Summary - about the greatness of MLO to get MLO right:

The views-filtering feature and a good purposeful set of views which support your personal "way of flow" are the key to "greatness" IMHO.

If you still want to study time aspect - export in XLS format and pivot - would be my recommendation.

I did abandon my MS-access thing after enough time/activity/outcome slicing and dicing studies.

And reduced the resolution of control on three basic elements ;):

1- listening to yourself about what you really need

2- using MLO for control of energy flow - which is defined by two elements a) decisions on what to do next and b) a clear activity with a well defined "direction" and "time"

3- enough faith in universe to support my energy flows ;)

My current implementation ;):

1. Know what your top priorities are...basically a prioritized and healthy backlog of outcomes/tasks, etc

1. 1. various views in MLO which is a great feature with the logical filtering implemented
   2. adding two dashboards and you have the complete overview of the active backlog

1. Block calendar slots for focus time

1. 1. outlook ;)

1. When you are in one of those focus time slot, pick the outcome/task at the top of your prioritized backlog and get it done, or get progress as much as possible.

1. 1. just do it
   2. as the order can not be planned consistently with reasonable efforts including mitigations for interruptions ;)
   3. AND as long as the daily work-set is completed in any order - all good

Only missing piece - @MLO team to repeat again - is the a bit more sophisticated grouping of time based attributes :).

Cheers -Alexander