Having trouble putting tasks into "Someday/Never", if I use Start Date a lot.

[John Smith]

Hi 

I'm having trouble putting things into (and out of) Someday/Never.

Background

I've made my "Someday/Never" file a folder, which for which I have ticked "Hide Branch in To-Do". This means that it doesn't appear in my Active tasks views - all good so far.

I am also putting more an more stuff into the future using Start Date (e.g. if someone hasnt got back to me in say 5 days, then give chase). This works fine so long as I live mostly in the Active Tasks view, however if I move to All Task view, then things become irritatingly cluttered up with stuff I definitely don't want to see yet !  

So the problem is that if I want to move a task into my Someday/Never folder, the only way I even see this folder is to go to the "All Tasks" view. But that view is now is horribly cluttered up with future stuff. And because I am moving task up around with mostly with hotkeys (e.g. Shift/Alt/arrow-key), all these things for the future a mighty pain.

Any suggestions?

J

[Daniel Sekera]

do you use contexts?  I make exactly what you do work by using them

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[Dwight Arthur]

Hi, John.

 

I’m going to assume that this is for Windows, ok?

 

Go to the all tasks view, zoom in to the Someday/Never folder, save the current view as Someday, and assign it to a tab.

 

When you open an MLO session start by clicking the Someday tab then hit F3 to create a helper window showing the contents of the Someday folder. You can minimize it if you like. Notice that “Someday” now shows up as a separate item in your taskbar.

 

Back to the main window – switch to whatever other tab you want to use to do your work. When you encounter a task that needs to go to “someday”, click and drag the task(s) to the taskbar, and hover over the “someday” item. The someday window will open. Continue dragging the task(s) to the someday window and drop them there. If you had a someday context assigned to the folder itself and you have the settings set correctly, the tasks will inherit the someday context.

 

Done.

-Dwight

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[J Smith]

@Daniel

Interesting... please can you say a little more about what you actually do. I'm guessing you have a context called "@Someday-maybe" or "~Someday-Maybe". I can see that assigning that Context to a task is dead easy. But when you are working in your Active Tasks workspaces (e.g. doing a daily or weekly review etc) are you also filtering out your Someday-Maybe contexts?

Also when you come to review your Someday-Maybes - do you put them on a dedicated Tab that filters to select just the "Someday-Maybe" contexts. (Confession: I'm not very good at using Contexts yet...) 

@Dwight

Yes I'm using Windows. Yes, I see your plan. It's a slight pain to set up every time you go into MLO but that broadly works, although you do then need to decide where exactly within the Someday-Maybe folder you will put the Task in question... Either way, what do you think of Daniel's solution? I mean if you JUST use Contexts you could avoid using that whole F3 drag and drop thing? 

Many thanks

J

[Dwight Arthur]

Hi, John. Yes,  Daniel's approach is great. The best thing about MLO is that there are usually several equally valid ways to do anything,  and you can pick the one that feels the most comfortable.  Btw, to address two questions you asked Daniel, you can easily hide your Someday tasks from your to-do lists by marking the Someday context hours to be Always Closed and ensuring that your to-do views exclude closed contexts. And you can easily make a Someday view by starting with Active Tasks by Context,  changing the context filter to *include* closed contexts,  and zooming in on the Someday context, then saving the view.

This approach isn't comfortsble to me because once I put a task into Someday I don't want to see it or think about it for at least six months. I do weekly reviews by area of focus (=folder) and this approach would likely result in Someday tasks popping up for consideration during my reviews. So I would rather have them all sequestered into a folder of their own.
-Dwight
Mlo betazoid on Android sgn2

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[Daniel Sekera]

In retrospect my way of doing things is probably viewed by many as convoluted but it works so well for me and honestly it took a long time to evolve to what it is that I am hesitant to change.  It is probably best described as mostly GTD with horizon principles.  I'm old I grew up with filing cabinets.  To this day I still use windows explorer in "tree" view format and my outlook is also a tree  / folder format.  It is what I am comfortable with.  So in my brain hierarchy  folders just flows for me.

so my all task view is a virtual filing cabinet of folders that contain tasks.  I have various "drawers" (also a folder) that I use for my own sorting purposes.  I do a periodic review manually, I have not started using the built in "review" thing yet as that forces a review and honestly most of the stuff stored in my system does not need a forced review.  It is either actionable or it is not and if it is not then I have the time to review it manually to decide on what is next to work on I do not need a nagging reminder to remind me to review the stuff I know needs my attention someday otherwise I would have never kept it in the first place.

my simplest flow is simply using contexts.  I have a "folder" named @office so I can find it in my tree easily.  it is marked as a folder and has the context assigned to it @office.  it is set so all subtasks inherit that context.  I use this folder for things I immediately plan to do my current horizon.  the things that I want to accomplish before I worry about anything else.  If anything in this folder is higher priority than the others I'll use a reminder to annoy myself but basically this is a 20ish task folder at any given time so quickly glancing at the list is not a big deal.  I do this tree method in my all tasks view because I did not like the confusion of an unorganized list even though according to strict GTD methodology I should really ever be "in" this view anyway its just storage. 

my normal everyday working view is called by context and I have it set as follows:

I use the filter

then

under general I have

show actions active

show hierarchy yes

show completed no

under contexts my operation is set to no

and then at the top of the task list where you can change the view I use

*by context also>>

I leave my filter always displayed  so when I am in my by context view and i want to see a different context I just click on it in the filter section.  I only see the active tasks for each context this way.  If I am at my desk I click @office and now see everything I want to work on including the folder where it came from because my tasks are short only a few words, i don't use the notes section too much as its very limited anyway and usually the "folder" is my mental trigger what that task relates to.  so by seeing the task and the folder it resides in I usually know everything I need to know about it in case it spawns future thoughts or tasks or ideas.

getting back to my all task view and my collection system  here is my system for dealing with the items that I deem are over the horizon:

I have a folder named someday maybe.  This folder represents a virtual AND a real filing cabinet drawer where I store things that I may work on someday.  The real drawer has a folder system that is alphabetical (go figure) so naturally my virtual someday maybe folder also has 26 sub folders alphabetically

all these folders are marked to accept the context of the master folder (someday maybe storage) and all are set to hide sub-tasks.  using my method above I cannot see these in my by context view no matter what because by definition they are not active tasks.  They are over the horizon tasks and are greyed out for a reason which is to keep me from worrying about them.  I know I have them but I do not want to "review" them.  they are over the horizon.

when I do get to something in this folder that I decided its time to act on I move it to an actionable folder that makes it a active task with an appropriate context that I know I'll see in my by context view.  I can still set reminders and due dates and start dates on these hidden tasks if I want but nothing will make them active until I manually do it.  By adding start or due dates to items in this folder it would force me to review the folder periodically which defeats my purpose for it in the first place  The cumbersome part of it is that regardless of start or due or reminder the only way to make the task "active" to where it can be seen in my by context view is to move it or to un-check the hide sub-tasks box on every folder in the hierarchy until it gets to the parent folder.  I guess that's ok in the short term but long term it really defeats the purpose of the whole someday maybe over the horizon system I use.

after all that painful typing as I have been working on this for 3 hours with interruptions I think I just read an elegant solution in my email using closed hours and a view for someday maybe that might work well for you. I am in no way recommending my system.  It currently works for me.

as an aside about this time every year I look around to see what can make me more productive.  I am concurrently using xmind and asana and mlo and one note and outlook. I wish there was one comprehensive platform that seamlessly included ALL of them and you could just drag and drop at will but oh well.  I cannot believe how powerful and flexibleMLO is so I cannot see not using it for task management.  I shake my head often because so many are using this their own way that is totally different than everyone else and they find a way to make it work for them.  There are many features I just have not explored yet.    I just wish it was everything I mentioned that I use now along with smartsheet and smartdraw combined....lol   oh and I want it all for under 100 bucks....ha

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[Stéph]

Hello John,

 

Another way you could do it, if you like your Someday/Maybe stuff to be in its own folder:  Set up your "All Tasks" view (which I presume you've got in a tab) with a filter - Under the Advanced Filter button you can add a filter for TopLevelFolder does not contain "Someday/Maybe".  You might want to change the View name to something like "All Tasks Not Deferred", to remind yourself about the filter.

 

As Dwight says, there are lots of ways to do this, thanks to MLO's powerful filtering options.

 

Stéphane

[Simon Dodds]

Hi John,

Another idea: Since the Someday/Never folder is not one that you would look at every day, tag it for regular review (1 week, 1 month, whatever you're happy with). Then the folder will be visible in the Review view

Simon

[Elizabeth Lindsay]

I personally prefer my "someday" items to be a context, not a folder.  This way, I can keep my existing hierarchy and just toggle things "active" and "inactive".  What I mean by that is my normal tab shows all my stuff (as usual) and my "active" tabs exclude the "someday" context.  I then created a special tab with just "someday" items so that when I do my GTD review, I can easily see them.

[Riaan Eloff]

Hi Dwight,

I have a someday context.  I have gone into the context (F8) and selected "HIDE IN TODO LIST", yet, when going to todo list it shows up...what am I doing wrong?

[Dwight Arthur]

Hi, Riaan. Could you please be a little more specific about what you are doing when you "go to todo list"? Do you mean that you load a particular view? What view is it?

Hidden tasks are excluded from the Active Actions view. If you are seeing them in an unmodified Active Actions view, then we have some troubleshooting to do.

If you are using some other view then we need to see whether that view has a (HideInToDo is False) rule in the advanced filter - this is what makes the hidden tasks not appear.

[Riaan Eloff]

Hi Dwight, thanks for the reply.  Ok, so when I say "TODO", I mean the "TODO" icon in the left pane of MLO for windows.  It has several sub-icons:  Active by context, active by project, etc.  Mostly I use Active by Context.  Sometimes simply Active Tasks.  So, yes, that's the TODO I'm referring to.  So, the views I currently use are the default views with which MLO starts.  Please advise troubleshooting process?

[Dwight Arthur]

Hi, Riann. I read your post more carefully and I see that I misunderstood you.

"Hide branch in to-do" is a property of a branch, not a context. You turn this property on by selecting an item (task, folder or project) and ticking a checkbox in the right hand panel in the "general" section. Once you turn this on, the item and all of its descendants be considered inactive and will not appear in any list of active items, such as the to-do list.

But you are talking about setting a property of a context. I believe that you are referring to the property "hide this context in the to-do list filter." It sounds pretty similar but has a very different meaning. This property is turned on by selecting a context and then ticking a checkbox in the Properties tab of the Manage Contexts (f8) window. Then, if you go back to the task list and look at the right hand panel you should see the specifications for the filter of the current view. (If you see a list of views, click on the work "Views" at the top to switch to the filter specifications.) In the specifications you should see a section called Contexts. In that section among other things is a list of contexts and you can use it to restrict your view to show only tasks with the contexts you select.However, any context with "hide this context in the to-do list filter" turned on will be hidden from this list. So if you turned on this checkbox for context "someday", and you go into the view "Active Actions" you will be able to pick a context like @work and see only the active actions in the @work context, but you will not be able to create a list of active someday actions because the someday context has been hidden from this filter. Which sounds like it is not at all what you want.

Try this: go to the Manage Contexts window (f8), select the someday context, and click the "Hours" tab, then the "always closed" button and then close. Any task whose only context is someday will now vanish from the to-do lists because that context is (always) closed. Remember that if you give a task two contexts (for example someday and work) the task will be displayed in to-do lists so long as at least one context is open.