How to handle my roadblocks on MLO

[Damo Skees]

I love MLO, and keep coming back to it, whatever else I try, but wonder if anyone has any tips on how to address my remaining process issues.

As a quick background, I only use the iPhone app as I moved from Windows to MacOS. Most of my time is spent throwing tasks into the inbox from email triage via the email parser, or via the pop-out Add to Inbox button.

Issues with short-term handling: As new urgent tasks come in, I don’t trust MLO to help me fit them into my day. I think this is because if I quickly add them to my inbox, i may not review and file tasks in my inbox on a busy day until well after the task was due. Also, if I DO file it, I again am almost certain it’ll disappear into a big backlog of overdue forgotten tasks, and again, I won’t complete it in time. So how can I keep ‘new, current tasks’ in view and still trust in GTD?

Issues with high-level view: I can’t really get a sense of the overall progress and forecast effort of a project, or all my projects. Yes, I know there’s a project type, and a progress bar, but that’s just for one project. I’d really like to be able to look top-down at my work/life/personal development/admin folders and see for my projects for the week/month/year, where I am and where I have to go. I do also appreciate there are Goals, and I do use them and find them effective, but only at a tactical level, not at a high-level planning/accomplishment view.

No month-by-month goals: I do use goals, but it’s notable that the “month” goal is only for the current month. I would love a way to view the monthly goals for the previous and upcoming months - both for planning, and for tracking/achievement. I’ve thought about using a mind map view with a parent node per month in something like MindMeister/Meisertask, or Asana/Trello Kanban boards, one per month. It’s like having 13 of the 43 folders - one per month. As before, MLO is very tactically focused, and doesn’t have a top-down view.

Planned vs due date: I’m currently using SkedPal, and it does have a “plan for today/tomorrow/etc” setting AS WELL AS due date. Many task managers do, these days. So how do people do this in MLO?

Clunky date setting: I find that I can’t really use due dates proactively, such as setting which day I will do the task on in order to use the calendar view in the iPhone app for ‘loading’ each day, because it’s relatively slow and clunky to set due dates (compared to many apps having a “defer until tomorrow/next week/etc) quick button. I therefore find that if I did try setting due dates for, say, 20 tasks, and the times start to blow out, I now have to spend time going through each one of 20 tasks and manually try to move the date back to a realistic timeframe, for every one of those tasks. Granted, it is easier to do this visually with the Gcal sync, using the calendar to drag and drop - MUCH easier, in fact - but it’s still an effort that’s increases with however many tasks you have dates for, in each daily review. How do others handle this?
Many thanks,


Damo

[Andrei Bacean]

Hi

Regarding your first question. Here is a simple trick which i use.

All tasks which have to be done today/tomorrow/asap are marked with STAR. 

Then in the starred view, i can rearange them.The tasks which require my imediate attention i put to the top of the list.

When a new urgent task appears, i just add it in the starred view directly to the top of the list.

(to do that: go to the starred view, select a task which is at the top of the list, tap + button, enter the task name. save. your new task will have the second position from top. just move it to become first. that's all).

br

Andrew

Issues with short-term handling:  As new urgent tasks come in, I don’t trust MLO to help me fit them into my day. I think this is because if I quickly add them to my inbox, i may not review and file tasks in my inbox on a busy day until well after the task was due. Also, if I DO file it, I again am almost certain it’ll disappear into a big backlog of overdue forgotten tasks, and again, I won’t complete it in time. So how can I keep ‘new, current tasks’ in view and still trust in GTD? 

среда, 5 сентября 2018 г., 9:39:58 UTC+3 пользователь Damo Skees написал:

[Damo Skees]

Thanks Andrew,

That's assuring, that is pretty similar to what I do....

D