Newbie question: How well would MLO match my requirements? (list provided)

[John Smith]

Hello 

I am new to GTD and to MLO.  I have been using a web-only app called GTDNext. But I am frustrated that there is no mobile app version.  I am looking for a tool to automate GTD lists (David Allen)

I am looking for a tool with the following features: 

1. Extremely easy/fast data entry (using lots of hotkeys and only minimal use of the mouse)

2. Multi-levels of Projects and Actions (i.e. sub-projects and/or sub-action )

3. Ease of changing an item between Projects and Actions (and back).

4. Next Actions - i.e. the ability to generate a queue of future Next Actions for a Project, but with the ability to just show one Next Action per Project.  And as soon as you tick off an action as being complete, then the  next action in the queue immediately pops up as the official "Next Action" for the Project.

5. The ability to send emails into the "In Basket" for processing (ideally with tags embedded in the title).

6. Ability to put Projects (and Actions) into some sort of priority that is can be sorted/reported on and which is clearly visible with colour.

i.e. I want to be able to see a screenful of items and without actually needing to read anything, to see which are the most urgent (about 4 levels of priority/color would be fine).

7. "Focus" mark-up.
i.e. Separate from "priority" to have some bright colour mechanism for showing "has focus" (i.e. I have decided to do this item today)

8. The ability do move projects up and down the list of projects FAST using hotkeys. i.e. To change the sort order of both Projects and Actions within projects very easily

9. Either a good web or PC application...

10. ...that syncs well with a mobile app... that works off-line (as well as on-line).

11. Excellent security/encryption of all my project data

12. A development team that has a history if being responsive to user requests.

In your opinion, how well does MLO match up?

Many thanks

J

[Joel Azaria]

With the exception of #'s 1, 6, 11 and 12 MLO should match up.

Re #1, MLO has this Rapid Task Entry box which works decently well on the PC app (though could be much improved imo).  On Android there's no analog except for some sort of widget but these also leave something to be desired.  On iOS there's no choice  but to fully launch the app and go on. It's perhaps faster than some other apps but it's far from as fast or efficient as apps I've used in the past.  To much clicking and moving about.

#6 should be achievable (or some variation thereof) with some tweaking/customizing of the autoformat rules.  It may take some doing to get right but you should be able to find a happy place.

#11 MLO has stated to some extent what security or encryption they may use but nothing solid that I can point to.  You'll have to take them at their word that the transport encryption they use is solid and well implemented.  I don't believe there is any local encryption of the MLO file(s)

#12  Spend an hour or too reading through this forum/board and see how many requests are open, long standing, repeats etc.  Then note how often the devs feel compelled to respond.  Then note which items the devs DO feel compelled to respond to.  Responsiveness is NOT their middle name.  So much so I've pretty much given up on reporting or asking for anything.  It just feels like a waste of time.  There is a User Voice community but that too is disheveled and an apparent waste of time as decent feature requests get lost in a barrage of ME TOO's to overarching requests like "iPad app!".  There is no one curating the User Voice so it's just a free for all and useless imho.  There is [apparently] a Jira bug tracker but that is not for the unwashed masses.  You'll have to get selected to be a member of the beta team (which apparently requires quite a bit of involvement - 4+ hrs a week at last check) to have access.  The rest of get to wait with baited breath.  The devs do NOT share timelines, dev milestones, roadmaps/future plans nor anything else till it's released.  Recently, in the face of MANY MANY requests they caved and produced a few screenshots of the coming 2.0 Android app.  It looks just like the iOS 2.0 app and it took much much much too long to get that little bit out.  If responsive dev is important to you this might be a deal breaker.  It should've been to me but I rushed into my purchase and now I'll just live with it.  With any luck this dev team will get with the 21st century at some point.  Then again I'm no longer holding my breath.

J.

[John Smith]

OK thanks Joel for your honest answers.  :)

I must say that #12 does sound deeply worrying. In the big picture, it is becoming increasingly clear that ALL businesses will need to seriously listen and respond to their customers if they are to survive for long in the coming few years of the 21st century.

And the fact the MLO has a history of being not good at this, doesn't just mean that it is "inconvenient" for us users that our entirely sensible suggestions get ignored... it's worse than that because means that MLO will most probably be bust within a 2 or 3 years. (Either that or their competition will have progressed so much faster that anyone sensible will want to abandon them even if they are not actually bust.)

From what I can see MLO started in 2004 was it? And it is pretty clear that they have lost momentum.

As I see it, with my fresh eyes, the central problem MLO faces is that it has become "bloatware". i.e. They have comprehensively failed to execute Lean Startup methodology. And really and truly they should re-write the whole interface from scratch. 

The reason for this is that although early adopters are happy to tolerate lots of complexity and difficulties of use, mainstream users absolutely are NOT. 

But I was thinking about this problem. One answer would be to have a 'Novice mode', with a greatly simplified interface, but also to keep the full existing what you might call 'Expert mode'. And then, over time one could experiment to see how many additional features one could incorporate before the system become too confusing for newbies to use. And they could do this without ruining the interface for advanced users.

Mainstream users simply will not tolerate things being pretty obvious as to how to use them.

One trivial example is that the use of the Enter key in MLO is odd and is something that new users actually have to learn. i.e. in other systems hitting enter creates a carriage return - i.e. a new line. So if I want to break the text of an Action a link into two lines (2 tasks) then... I can't!

Another example is that if I want to indent I can't just hit the Tab key to intent the current line. Instead the user is required to remember to hit something I have never seen in any other system "Shift/Alt/Right". Personally I don't mind this hugely, but only because having now tried about 10 GTD tools and pretty much hated them all I am *desperate* to find something I can use. 

So I don't really mind, but don't be deceived. The mainstream user will not tolerate having to learn such stupid keys. Basically everything should work as closely as possible to all the standards that we know - e.g. in this case for editing text in a text editor.

To recap, Enter should create a new line from wherever the cursor is.
Tab should indent the current line.
Shift Tab should Outdent the current line.

Oh well.

J


P.S. Is there any way to manually configure the Enter and Tab  (and Shift/Tab) keys to work differently from how they work by default in MLO?

[John Smith]

PS.

Please can you tell me about the "moderation" that happens here.
How strict / Big Brother-ish is it?

And how long does it normally take for approval to happen?

On Tuesday, November 25, 2014 7:03:52 PM UTC, Joel Azaria wrote:

[Dwight Arthur]

Hi, John. My answers are a little different from Joel's. 

Just to get it out of the way, I will start with #12. I'd like to break it into three parts: Listening to users and being guided by user requests, quick turnaround on requested enhancements, and communicating plans and status back to users.

In my opinion (others may disagree) a substantial amount of the development of MLO since I got involved with it a few years ago has been based on, and guided by user requests. There are some long-standing requests that have not been addressed but I do believe that the development team deserves credit for giving serious consideration to user requests.

MLO seems to have a longer development cycle than many other apps. I won't speculate as to why, but I will say that it's not uncommon for the time between releases to be quite long, and for users to become quite impatient with the wait for features that have been promised but not yet delivered. I don't view this as unresponsiveness, it's a different issue.

Finally, MLO developers are not good at keeping users posted about what's on the way and when to expect it. We have seen several attempts to make this better but as of today the problem remains.

Moving on to your other items

1. It would help to know what mobile platform you intend to use. On Windows the Rapid Task Entry (RTE) window is fairly effective. Unlike Joel I find the Add-Task widget on Android to be more effective than RTE. I can open a new task in one to two taps, type the task name and then save it in one tap. If I want to set priorities, categories, schedules etc one more tap brings up the full task properties menu. I don't know anything about what happens on Apple, though.

2. Subprojects and subtasks are solid features.

3. You can toggle project status with a single click or the hotkey Ctrl-Shift-P. Note that you can find lots of hotkeys (and redefine them if you like) in tools>options>general>hotkeys. There are also a number of users who exchange scripts for MLO under AHK (AutoHotKey) in this forum.

4. The built-in Next Actions view should provide what you want.

5. if you sign up for cloud sync (an extra-cost service) you will be able to set up an email address for your tasks at the cloud server. Any email you forward to this address will be added to the cloud copy of your tasks. The next time you sync, the task will appear in your task list. There is a scheme for encoding parameters like context, importance, etc into the name of the task when using RTE; if you turn on the Parse option RTE will decode the parameters and apply them to the task. (the parsing syntax is a little obscure especially with respect to dates but once you get the hang of it, it works well.) There's no parsing in the email to cloud service, but once the task is in your profile you can select it an hot some hotkey (I don't use this so I'm not sure of the hotkey, maybe it's alt-enter?) and MLO will parse and apply the parameters at that time.

6. You can set importance and urgency separately. There's also something called computed-score which takes importance, urgency, schedule issues, the tasks' parents and other stuff and creates an overall priority. Computed score is written up in the User Guide - I don't use it because it's too complex, but some people really like it. You can use autoformat rules to do the highlighting and formatting that you seek. It involves creating rules like "if importance is greater than 100 and less than 150 and task is not completed then font color is orange." There's a bit of a learning curve to this stuff but it's worth it because it's very powerful.

7. In MLO there are often many ways to do one thing and you should chose the one that's easiest and most effective for you. (Which might be different from the one that's easiest and most effective for me). I would use the "star" which can be turned on with a single click or by hitting ctrl-shift-s. Other people might define a flag called "inFocus" and associate an appropriate icon.

8.OK, it's time to talk about position-in-outline versus position-in-report. Every task has a position somewhere in the outline, alongside of its siblings, above any subtasks, subfolders or sub-folders (collectively "children") and (unless it's at the root) its parent and grandparent etc items (each of which can be a task, folder or project). Position in the outline is helpful for finding a task and it matters for "complete tasks in order" and has a big effect on the calculation of computer-score. But position in the outline is not necessarily related at all to what tasks to do next. A view showing all tasks in their hierarchical structure is an outline view, a view showing a selected subset (eg tasks in a certain context) in their hierarchical structure is a filtered outline. People often find it helpful to work in the outline when analysing and designing their projects. When actually getting things done, many people prefer to work in a to-do list, which is a flat (no hierarchy) filtered and sorted view of things to be done. Sometimes there is a legitimate need to move a task around in the outline, but usually when people ask about this, they are wanting to move a task up or down in a sorted list. Again, there are a lot of methods - my favorite is to sort the list by importance then, click on the importance slider and hold down the left arrow or the right arrow on the keyboard. The slider starts to move and the importance numbers start to climb or dive. At the same time, the task jumps up or down the listing as its position in the sort order changes. When the task has landed where I want it, I let go of the arrow.

9. You must be familiar with the PC application program by now. There's no web program at this point.

10. mobile and desktop apps can sync by either wifi or cloud sync facilities. Wifi syncs between two devices on the same IP subnet. If your mobile device is out of range of the wifi then sync will have to wait till it's back in range. If there are more than two devices (eg a desktop, phone and tablet) you have to set up sync between two of them (say, the desktop and phone) and then exclude the phone and reconfigure the desktop to sync with the tablet. It's free and the data never leaves your subnet so security is less of an issue. With cloud sync, each device syncs separately with a cloud server. There is a monthly charge for the service. You can sync any device whenever you want. Conflict resolution is nicely implemented on windows-to-cloud syncs but is a bit more primitive on the Android side. You can have lots of devices syncing (and sharing) the same task list. You can email a task to the cloud server and it will show up on all of your devices. Security entails the use of standard SSL for communications to and from the cloud server. Databases on Android and Windows are encrypted only if the user has set up some sort of encrypted volume using OS utilities, MLO remains unaware of any such protections. At this point there does not seem to be any way to cause the cloud database to be encrypted. The cloud service is apparently hosted at Amazon, which has better than average security as compared to other unencrypted cloud databases. This was clearly an acceptable level of security for nearly everyone when the cloud sync was implemented but the number of people seeking improvements such as encryption of cloud data are increasing.

11. security was discussed in item 10 above

12 dealt with at the top. As others have noted, communication is somewhat better with those who apply for and are accepted into the beta program, which entails committing to spend some serious time testing beta versions of MLO. Full disclosure: I'm a moderator in the Android and Windows beta teams.

Best of luck to you.

Dwight

[John Smith]

Dwight - excellent. Lots of useful pointers.

A couple of points:

What is this Ad-Task widget on Android of which you speak? Is this part of the MLO app or something I need to download separately.

As anyone has read and liked the (excellent)  "The Lean Startup" by Eric Ries will tell you, slow iteration cycles are tempting for developers (to make sure everything is robust) but in the long run are generally a huge mistake for the business. 

I only half understand your comments on Point 8. It all seems rather painfully fiddly for any normal user, but I shall experiment and revert.

Meanwhile I have one more question.

When you are looking at the Active Actions (in the To Do views) is there any way to go directly back to the Project of the Action?

Many thanks

J

[John Smith]

PS. Re Point 8... Is there any hotkey way to give focus to the Importance and/or Urgency sliders on a task?
This is an IMPORTANT requirement for me... !  

J

[Richard C]

Hi John

Shift+Alt+Cursor key is used in all the Microsoft products (Word, Excel, OneNote) for promoting, demoting, moving up and moving down items (paragraphs, rows, columns).   Not widely known, I know - but try it!

I agree that Tab/Shift Tab would also be good (I use this in One Note a lot)

There is (as far as I know),  no way of splitting an Item title in MLO so the use of Enter in this circumstance seems fine (and consistent with, say, Excel where you complete your entry into a cell using Enter)

With regard to responsiveness,   I would observe that Andrey does monitor this group (and the beta group) very closely and stuff does happen - its just that we rarely know about it in advance!    I certainly have found that long wished for major improvements (eg the ability to open multiple windows on a single file) and minor fixes (there was one recently which I now can't remember that was driving me crazy) will suddenly get done.

Re your long list of requirements, others have responded in some detail, but in general I would say that pretty well anything is doable in MLO - which is why I have stuck with it.     I think to some extent its selling point should be 'If you have hit barriers with other To Do products then look at MLO - it can do pretty well everything you want (and often in lots of different ways).   If you want easy to use, then look elsewhere.   If you want powerful, flexible and quick to use, then this is the product for you"

Hope this helps

Richard

[Richard C]

Moderation is very lightweight as far as I am aware.  And this is generally a very friendly group - another reason why I stay with MLO.    I feel that I have many like minded friend here.  We don't always agree (there are pro and anti calendar factions but the discussions are always conducted in a spirit of trying to find a good solution that works for everybody - or at least, a solution which not going to cause problems for those that don't want it)

Richard

[Joel Azaria]

I can't say for sure but I know that I've had posts take as much as 5 or 6 days to show up from moderation though more often it was 24 hours-ish. 

I'm not sure if my posts are moderated anymore or not but I don't actually care.  My participation in this board is relative to my level of patience for BS.  I enjoy helping other users (here and many other fora) and I'd like to have input into what I get out of MLO but most times it feels like I'm speaking into a vacuum so I rarely bother anymore.

[Joel Azaria]

With all due respect to you Dwight (and I do respect your tenacity and contributions here), I'd posit that you are precisely the " early adopters are happy to tolerate lots of complexity and difficulties of use" John refers to.  

If you would look past that horizon you would see tremendous sense in what he's saying about mainstream users.  In fact he's said pretty much the same as I have many times past (though perhaps more eloquently than I've ever managed to muddle through my frustrations and anger.)

I also suspect that as a beta tester your perception of being a "regular" user is somewhat skewed.  In particular your view of how effective the feedback loop to the devs is.  Frankly it's way to invovled for an average user to bother navigating.  As an ex-IT pro and one still involved in technology for a living I think I rate above the average user and I too am frustrated by the feedback loop to the point that I won't bother engaging with it.  I think that's a very important point for Andrey and co. to take from this though who can tell if they'll find reason to bother.

@Andrey - if you do take time to read this post, reread John Smith's post above many times.  In particular pay close attention to the parts about momentum and the rate's at which MLO competitors are growing/gaining visilbility and ask yourself why exactly it is that even with the major rewrite that was MLO 4 why there's still no momentum gain and this product, as fine as it is on a TECHNICAL level, remains an also-ran on the Productivity/GTD playing field.

Joel.

[Alec Stewart]

Obviously because I am new... that means in part I have no idea what I am talking about. But partly it makes me a real expert in the NEW user experience.

The thing is I develop/managed websites for a living and I too would regard myself as 'above average' technically and I also have a strong sense of how users work.  

To be honest, I do feel for the MLO team. Given where they are, it will not be easy to get to where they need to get to in order to get anything close to adoption by the mainstream audience. 

I am being extremely persistent here because I have a fairly short time-window in which to get my entire life onto MLO... or give the heck up.

I am also being persistent because there is MUCH wrong with all the competition that I have seen so far. But that won't last (see below). 

What do I like about MLO?

Well, on the up-side, there is a plethora of hotkeys on MLO, many of which you can configure yourself is great and it is dead-easy to whiz items things up and down multi-level Project Trees and also it's also trivial to switch items between being an action and being a Projects. [These aspects are astonishingly rare in the obvious competing product that I have tried but I LOVE them in MLO!] Moreover you can have something called a "Folder" which is neither a Project nor an Action. It's a subject area. (Brilliant! But again, v rare in other apps...).

On the down-side this has to be up there as being one of the hardest apps to 'learn how to drive' that I have ever, EVER come across. [And that's even after I have spent quite a lot of time reading up on GTD theory - and after I have even listened to an entire 2-day seminar by David Allen!]

BUT I can't think of a single social or business friend who would put up with this level of difficulty of learning that I have experienced with MLO. Yes, some techies might well go for it... but any normal human being - Absolutely no chance!

And it's no use saying "but it's very powerful and configurable". Life is short. We are aren't here for the fun of using your software... Ultimately we are only using these tools in order to save us time!  

[Aside: MLO reminds me of the PC database software dBase clone called Clipper - anyone here old enough to remember that? It was indeed incredibly powerful and configurable but the learning curve to get anything useful out of it was about 3 months. Management were NOT happy. And commercially it simply died as hugely powerful and highly configurable as it was.]

Now, after all the work the you good people at MLO have put into this your extremely powerful tool, this is bad news indeed.

If you want a 'quick win' you could regain a lot of usability points at a stroke simply by doing a couple of explainer videos. A quick short high level one for total newbies selling the whole concept (max 1-2 mins) and a more detailed one for the converts telling us how to use the system (8-12 mins). And then if you get a chance do another 5 or 10 and slap them onto YouTube. And do them in English.

Having built this video the next thing you need to do is 'Primary Customer Research' - newbie user trials ! What you need is need about 8-10 users who are not particularly technical sit them down in front of the software and WATCH. Get them to talk their thoughts out loud. Video them.

Then show them the video and watch again. You will be appalled, I promise you.

Honestly, you chaps have built a fantastic engine. But if you want to appeal to Mainstream users (rather than Early Adopters) then frankly you people need to stop all developments until you have done both of the above.

To get clear Early Adopters have a very different psychology from Mainstream users. Early Adopters like to be the first. They are generally pretty clever. They like learning news stuff. They tolerate complexity, mistakes, errors and even bugs to a significant extent.

BUT there aren't all that many of them. And if your product appears to be going nowhere and is not longer "cutting edge", then they will feel like idiots for wasting their time with you and they are off!

MAINSTREAM users are different. They value their time very highly. They just want to get the job done. And fast. They do NOT want to waste any more time than necessary learning stuff. So they want everything to be easy to learn and obvious. They like simplicity. They HATE complexity. They want to get the job done and they want everything to work.

Frankly as things stand, MLO is a total nightmare for Mainstream users. But don't just take my/Joel's word for it. Do some serious trials with newbie users! Try some less intelligent / 'ditsy' and/or 'arty' new users. Even try some slightly drunk or extremely tired users. You need a random spectrum of users to trail. They will run screaming I guarantee you.

[Aside: Another top top - if you are short of time &/or money and want to do a 'quick and dirty'/'better than nothing' user trial, then consider using Feedback Army and asking the reviewers to so something specific. The clever thing is that you can keep rejecting their responses until you are happy with the level of work that they have done. Brilliant! But actually you at MLO also need to do proper face-to-face user trials I suspect as well]

If you want further proof of what I am saying take the number of really important keyboard shortcuts that are completely missing from your official Keyboard Shortcuts page. e.g.

Control/PgUp  ==> to change tab
Control/PgDn  ==> to change tab
Control/Enter   ==> to parse the title of an item
Control/Shift/Insert ==> to add a new folder
Control/Shift/S ==> to add a star
Control/M ==> to move a task

...} all missing !     (er I think...!)

If you had done in depth user trials then surely this would have been picked up. 

One word of caution. Beware of *some* of your most loyal customers. There is no subtext to this - I am not having a go anyone whatsoever. But it's an established fact that in order to appeal to Mainstream customers you will almost certainly get terrible advice from some of your customers. But they are dangerous. They are far too close to your product to see it through the eyes of anyone else. And over time they can bankrupt you.

Finally you need to know that much though I am trying to help MLO in what probably seems like a whirlwind of input, please know that I am not happy. And I have been keeping a list of competing software in case I find that I genuinely can not get MLO to work for me (This is still not clear either way...!) . And believe me there is a LOT of competition. My spreadsheet for this purpose has well over 100 competitors !

For completeness here they are:
2Do
5PM
Achieve Planner
ActionComplete
Action Method
ActiveInBox
Ajour
Apigio
Asana
Assembla Tickets
Astrid List/Task Manager
Blue Smiley Organizer
Bonsai
Bontq
Central Desktop
Clear (Realmac Software)
ClearContext
Conqu
d-cubed
DoIt.im
Do It Tomorrow
do-Organizer
DropTask
Due Today
EasyTask Manager
eProductivity
EssentialPIM Pro
EverNote (+The Secret Weapon)
FacileThings
Facio Tasks
Feng Office
Flashpoint
Flow
Frictionless
GeeTeeDee
germ.io
Get Stuff Done
Getitdoneapp
Ghost Action
Gmail Tasks
GoalsOnTrack
Google Tasks
GTD TiddlyWiki Plus
GTDAgenda
GTDFree
GTDNext
gtd-php
Harmony PIM
HiTask
iGTD
IQTell
Jello Dashboard
KOI
KonoLive
Lifeballanced
LifeTopix
LiquidPlanner
Lists Manager?
MasterList Professional
mGSD
MindManager
MindOnTrack
MyLifeOrganized
Nach
Nepture
Next Action, Personal Ed
Nexty
Nirvana
Nitro
Nozbe
Omnifocus
OneNote
OnePlace
Online Task List
Oprius
Organitask
Org-Mode
Outlook 2010
Papirus
Pimki
Plancake
PocketInformant
Priacta
Producteev
propelr
Psoda
Redmill
Relenta
Remember The Milk (RTM)
RexDesktop
SimpleNote
SandGlaz
Smart To-Do List
SmartSheet
Smartytask
Smthngs
Task Coach
Task Toy
TaskFreak
TaskPad.jp
Tasks/Tasks Pro
TaskStep
TaskTask (iOS only?)
TaskUnifier
Taskwarrior
Tasque
The Now Organiser
Things (iOS only?) (by Cultured Code)
ThinkingRock
Thymer
TickTick
TiDy
TimeGT
TimeManagementNinja.com
Timetpnote
Tjeklist
ToDo
To-Do DeskList
ToDo.txt
ToDo Exchange
ToDo Matrix
Todo Pro
ToDoIst
ToDoList
ToDoMoo
Toodledo
TomBoy
TouchDown w Exchange Tasks
TaskUnifier
Tracks
Tracks.tra.in
Treedolist
Ultimate ToDo
Upvise
VIP Task Manager
VitalList
Voo2doo
What To Do
WhatsNext (not ready?)
Week Plan
Wieldy
Workflowy
Wunderlist
Zendone
Zoho CRM
Zoot

OK many of they above may not be direct competitors, (e.g. many don't run on Windows and many are more list managers than GTD tools as such ) but I promise you that as a normal/average user, this is the number of tools we have to wade through on-line, competing with your listings.

Why are there quite so many competitors? Because they all think that the existing market leaders aren't doing a good enough job!  They are trying to steal your lunch and there are a LOT of them out there.

Conclusion:
You have SERIOUS competition and you need to raise your game. You need dramatically improved usability.

Finally:
Please don't think I'm saying you need to work harder. Nor write better code. What I'm saying is you need to work differently. VERY differently.

J

P.S. If anyone from MLO is still reading and appreciating my input please let me know.

Alternatively, if I am simply wasting my breath please do let me know too!

[Dwight Arthur]

It was my mistake to call "add task" a widget, its actually a shortcut. But you find it in the widgets section of the task drawer. Unfortunately it is named "shortcut MLO" so if you are looking at an alphabetical listing you have to look under "s".
-Dwight
Mlo betazoid on Android sgn2

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[Dwight Arthur]

Any item that has uncompleted subtasks is considered inactive, so you won't see a project's title in the active actions list until you have completed all of its tasks. So, to see the project I'd recommend switching to the outline.  My favorite quick way to get there would be to double-click on the task line. I imagine that you would prefer a keyboard solution rather than double-clicking. I don't know one though, anyone else have a solution?

-Dwight
Mlo betazoid on Android sgn2

On Nov 29, 2014, John Smith <shi...@gmail.com> wrote:

Meanwhile I have one more question.When you are looking at the Active Actions (in the To Do views) is there any way to go directly back to the Project of the Action?
Many thanks
J

[Dwight Arthur]

I'm not aware of any hotkey that would bring you directly to the importance/urgency sliders, but ALT-2 will bring you to the "General" section of task properties and <tab> navigates around within the section, so <alt>2, <tab> will bring you to importance and <alt>2, <tab>, <tab> will bring you to urgency.

[John Smith]

Got it. Yes slightly clunky but it works :)

Many thanks Dwight.

BTW, I am am trying hard to follow the GTD methon but I am having a slight 'existential crisis' in how the heck to set things up on MLO. Is there anywhere with a gallery of completely different ways of doing things, hosted somewhere?  

Priority is a good example. I mean given how many Projects it seems that David Allen likes us to create... (I forget the exact quote but you set up a Project for anything that takes more than a couple of minutes an which involves more than 2 or 3 sittings is it?)... I think most GTD users end up with something between say 60 and 120 live "Projects" at once... And it quickly becomes overwhelming unless diced/sliced/ordered somehow.

I have found that if you're not careful with quite so many Projects, it's extremely easy to find yourself NOT doing the most important stuff just in order to tick off some nice tasks on list.

I know that in GTD we are supposed to keep doing both our 1-2 hours weekly reviews plus our daily reviews (done many times per day??)... and I know that filtering by Context does help a fair bit. But with quite so many Next Actions (one per project) it's still extremely hard to manage such a large number (and this is made worse by my being moderately dyslexic). Either way with such a large number of Projects I am fully expecting my projects to shift in their priority (i.e Urgency and/or Importance) a LOT. 

But how best to manage these shifts in MLO. I was planning to do this at the Project level using the Importance and Urgency slider fields supplied. And I was intending to do so at the Project level because it seemed to me that it was (mostly) the priority of the entire project that was shifting. But now it seems that this is difficult, possibly impossible to set up and manage easily in MLO.

So I am curious about how everyone else does priority round here.

I was talking off-line to an MLO expert user who if I understood him correctly recommended just using the manual sorting through the Outline. But that would rather screw up the way I was planning to use folders for my GTD Areas of Focus... And fwiw, he also had a completely different way of implementing Context using Flags rather than tags, which was interesting...

All v confusing. Has anyone ever pulled together like a gallery showing the completely  different ways that people implement GTD on their MLO ?

Either way I would love to hear from any seasoned MLO expert user who has actually tried implementing GTD (or v similar) on MLO using different philosophies... and what the crunch issues are in practice.

Many thanx

J

[Riaan Eloff]

Joel, who are the competitors for MLO?  And do they compare?  I ask this because I am where John is...VERY DESPERATE, TRIED MANY - my situation is also one of:  there's nothing else even close out there, so I'll have to settle for MLO.  Don't mistake this to mean it is bad.  It does have EXTREMELY handy functions and comes so close to being exactly what the GTD method requires.  But, I am also at:  wayyy too fiddley and messy and invoplved to learn.  SO, please suggest any others, I'd love to try them out before buybing Pro.

To comment on support:  I mailed support with three questions.

The first question was "How would it affect me if I had the PRO version of Android vs the FREE version of Desktop, considering Cloudsync needs to synce between them, and they have different levels of functionality (ie:  dependencies, recurrence, etc etc etc)".  Bear in mind, I had downloaded Android version, purchased pro.  Their respondes:  "There is no free version of desktop, and please read on the website the differences between Standard and Pro". MY GOODNESS!!! WHAT AN IDIOTIC RESPONSE!?!?  I have already read the differences, THAT'S WHY I AM ASKING.  Second, they do not go ahead and answer the question, they just remain with:  there is no free one.  Obviously I must be on a "free trial" version.  This response just seems like some lazy, not-feeling-like-doing-any-work response?!

Second question was: "I have a context:  Work, with open and closed hours, then I have a context:  Calls, with no hours, as I often use this for personal call to-dos also.  When including a work-call in both these contexts, it shows up the whole weekend.  How do I solve this?".  Their response:  Ask the users on the forum. (Nicer words, very "PC", but that's what they said.  Ask the users on the forum.

Third question:  "Am I able to disable ONLY location-based reminders on Android?  I want to have reminders active, but I do NOT want location based active.  There is only an option for "enable/disable reminders", but this is for all reminders".   No response as yet.  Fair enough, it's only been two days, and they were quite quick on the other two.  But...yaaaa....not the greatest experience.

[Dwight Arthur]

Hi, Riann. I'm sorry to hear that you are having a hard time with Support and I hope it gets better for you. MLO can be frustrating because it is often missing just one tiny thing that would make it perfect for my needs, and the development cycles seem quite long without enough communication. But the product is far more powerful that anything else I've found and I've come to rely on it heavily.

I hope that between Nick and myself, we have answered your second question. I'd like to point out that Support's suggestion to ask on the forum was probably a very good one. While the developers obviously know more than anyone else about how the program is coded and what each function actually does, the user community have accomplished many things that the developers have never had a chance to try. For example, the trick about adding a special filter for tasks that have both "work" and "calls" contexts is not one I would have expected the developers to have ever tried. So I think Support did the right thing steering that question tot he forum.

I don't use reminders so I cannot comment on your third question. I would like to help with your first but I am not really sure that I know what you are asking. Let me share this one fact: There are a number of functions that cannot be set up on Android but that the Android version will still process. For example, the Android can create a task that's due every other week but not one due every other day. However, if you create a task on Windows that's due every other day Android will process that just fine. You can't set the hours that a context is open on Android but once you set it on Windows and synch to Android, Android will honor the new schedule. There are limits to this (Flags set on Windows are not propagated to Android) but this is generally how it works. If this is not what you wanted to know, please writeback and clarify the question.

-Dwight

[chrisleeuk]

This is more a reply to the comments from John Smith.

 

I regard myself as a techie, which according to your comments suggests I don't fit into the definition of a normal human being :) 

I'm not sure if that makes me some kind of super human, or a weird tech geek, either way, I take it as a compliment.

 

I'm sorry that you find the learning curve for MLO so challenging.

I agree that MLO could probably benefit from a little more in the help department and it always better to make software accessible.

 

MLO is definitely powerful and configurable and no doubt learning all the features does take time.

 

Personally I found that with MLO I could start small. I could learn to use the basic task functionality without much issue. Gradually I learned the more advanced functionality, but MLO did a good job of hiding all this stuff away until I was ready.

 

I've tried probably half of the software and services on your list of competition. Many were easy to use and no doubt would appeal more to a wider public. However in every case I found them either too limiting or I had to bend my work flow and way of thinking to fit the product.

 

With MLO I can configure it to fit me.

 

Your argument is principally that MLO will fail due to lack of mass market appeal, or that it is inferior because it will be too difficult for the average person.  

 

It's a typically modern view that products must conform to the lowest common denominator in order appeal to the maximum audience. That’s the kind of thinking that, for example, results in big corporations creating some truly dreadful, but highly profitable TV shows.

 

MLO does require some investment of your time. It does require learning. It’s highly specialized, and won’t appeal to everyone.

 

MLO as a company is small but it’s sustained itself for 15 years so far.

 

Not every product needs to be all things to all people, but if you can't get on with MLO, you have a big list of other software that might meet your individual needs better.

 

MLO appeals to a niche market, and that’s fine by me.

[pottster]

Well said. I firmly believe that MLO should play to its strengths and continue to court the power user.

[J Smith]

chrisleeuk

As previously discussed MLO is much more of a platform and less of an application.  All I am saying is that the confusing and cluttered nature of the inteface this is holding back sales dramatically. And that this is completely unnecesssary and a shame.

Personally I have wasted countless hours trying to get MLO to do what I seek. Through pure bloody-mindedness I have tried using all sorts of dramatically different configurations.

Out of interest did you ever try GTDNext. I have my eye on them because unlike MLO they are incredibly responsive to customers. They are an extremely small team however they listen to all feedback and reply to it all - usually pretty swiftly (often within a day or two). They will give reasons where they don't implement stuff.  And they also release things in the modern way with lots of small incremental changes, which further encourages users to get involved and to give more feedback. In short they clearly seem to have read Eric Ries's best selling book "The Lean Startup" and seem to be putting into practice. MLO have a lot to learn from GTDNext.

Yes MLO is find for geeks, but it is not fine for mainstream users.  And I simply can not imagine any of my non-geekfriends using it because the learning curve is too steep and the interface too cluttered/confusing.

Which is a shame because it is superb in so many ways...

On Wednesday, 18 November 2015 17:54:23 UTC, chrisleeuk wrote:

[Alan Grainger]

Hi J Smith

MLO is superb BECAUSE it only caters to the "techie" power user.

I have tried every other GTD and task management software out there. I've been trying to find the perfect system for around 4 years. Last year I discovered MLO and it absolutely changed my life.

There are a plethora of user-friendly, simplistic, "mainstream" options out there.

There is only one MLO. My only regret was not finding it earlier!!

[John . Smith]

Hi Alan

> MLO is superb BECAUSE it only caters to the "techie" power user.

My central thesis is that it should do BOTH. 

To be honest when I first signed up I was appalled by various things particularly lack of explainer videos (now being gradually resolved) and various things about the help manual. From memory various things were simply wrong or out-of-date and it was missing various crucial things including various hotkeys. Even though MLO are a small company there is no excuse for not doing more user testing with new users.

J

P.S. Reminder: I have updated this wiki which now has the full list of keyboard shortcuts here:

http://www.shortcutworld.com/en/win/MyLifeOrganized.html

[John . Smith]

Riaan Eloff

Did you ever get any resolution to this? 

In the end, having tried MLO in about 10 different ways, and having spent countless hours fiddling and configuring MLO, I eventually found MLO to be unusable for GTD if you have fairly large numbers of tasks (e.g. 200+).

In particular the lack of a field that could be used as a Status field (that unlike flags would 'inherit' sensibly) was a deal breaker.  It was a huge shame because MLO is astonishingly powerful in so many ways... but there you go. 

So Riaan, are you still with MLO or did you go elsewhere?

J

[SRhyse]

I still think you’re fiddling around with things and unsatisfied because you’re unconsciously avoiding doing your work, which I think everyone can relate to. GTD was developed for analog systems to work as a series of flat lists that you regularly review and update. To call anything with a text editor unusable for GTD sounds like a reference to something that isn’t actually GTD.

[David Timpe]

John,

I can understand the desire to have a development team listen to your suggestions and quickly implement them but honestly how often does this happen?  Not very often.  Also, don't assume what you think MLO should be (for you) is what the developers think their product should be.  Perhaps, MLO is exactly what they want it to be and it just isn't the right product for you.  

I have implemented the GTD philosophy in MLO and routinely manage over 2,000 tasks and over 100 projects without issue on 2 windows boxes, an android phone, and an iphone.  Before I found MLO I spent several years trying every task manager I could find without success.  Is there functionality that I'd like added?  Sure.  I can even get it in other products but I'd have to give up so much that the trade-off isn't even worth thinking about.   

[Elizabeth Lindsay]

I see a couple of other folks have replied prior to be seeing this, but I felt the need to chime in as well. I've been using MLO for many years, am a BETA tester, and follow GTD. From my perspective:

1. Only a project needs a status, and MLO has that.
2. All tasks availability can be managed either:
1. Using an "@Someday" context to show it is not for now (and I have MLO automatically format them in a color that appears greyed out)
2. Linked to another tasks that has to be done first and therefore this particular task is not active
3. The child of another tasks, therefore this one has to be done first and not the parent
4. In a list of tasks that are checked to be "completed in order"
5. Adding a start date to not show things prior to a particular date/time

In all those cases, my list of active tasks is showing me what is available to me. Then I use contexts to provide my GTD contexts.

As David replied, I too manage hundreds plus of tasks on Android and Windows and follow the GTD system.

I've even added my own custom icons to make it quick for my eyes to see various types of activities.

I wish you all the best!

Elizabeth

[Wallace Gilbraith]

Dear all

 

For me, if a task has a Due Date - when that date comes round, it’ll either

• get completed, or
• get deferred to a future date, or
• have its Due Date removed

 

If a task doesn’t have a Due Date - it’s not time-critical, and is therefore a Someday task

 

I still don’t use automatic sorting - figuring out how it works is a Someday task

 

My Outline has some 2,000 active tasks (of about 20,000 in total)

Each year I manage 4 or 5 large projects of some 500 tasks each, plus dozens of smaller projects and routines

 

I love that MLO lets me organise my life the way I want to, and doesn’t force me to work to someone else’s plan

 

Regards

 

Wol

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[Christoph Zwerschke]

Am 30.12.2017 um 22:31 schrieb Wallace Gilbraith:
> If a task doesn’t have a Due Date - it’s not time-critical, and is
> therefore a Someday task

Additionally, you can set "goal" to week, month or year, if you don't
have a fixed due date but still wont to indicate that you want to get it
done in the specified time frame. So for me, everything that has no
start/due date and no goal is automatically a "someday/maybe" task.
Using the review date it's possible to re-examine such tasks, whether
they should be deleted, keep being "someday/maybe", or should be
realized by setting a date or goal.

> I still don’t use automatic sorting - figuring out how it works is a
> Someday task

The automatic sorting ("computed score priority") is one of the few
things that really need to be improved/changed in MLO because. The
problem is that it equates tasks without date (i.e. my "someday/maybe")
with tasks that are due today (my most important tasks). In my view, the
computed score should interpret "no date" as "date = infinity" instead
of "date = today". I really would like to see this changed or made
configurable so that automatic sorting becomes more usable.

-- Christoph

[John . Smith]

From a GTD point of view, using Tags to control a task's "List" (i.e its actionable status such as @Someday @Later @Waiting  etc) is unacceptable for a combination of reasons

1. I want to use Tags to control Context  and if one starts using Tags to control both Context *and* List, things start to get very messy! 

e.g. When one is trying to view all your Tasks grouped by Contexts, then then Tags such as @Someday @Later @Waiting immediately start cluttering up your views.

2. It's also rather a pain to change the actionable status of and entire project as you need to select all the tasks  at once within a project before making the change

3. Obviously it's also possible to have any given Task appear in multiple GTD lists at once (e.g. @Someday @Later @Waiting), so moving between GTD Lists is stupidly clumsy.

4. When view tasks and wanting to change between different Contexts, the Tag names are also cluttered up with tag names like @Someday 

Sadly Flags don't work well either for Controlling GTD status list either because (unlike Tags) they don't inherit their values from parent tasks when being created.

The long and short of it is that MLO needs separate fields for the "Status" and Context of a task, and when the user tries to do these sort of workarounds, there are always various unintended consequences.

With thanks

J

PS I have had a quick look at the Windows MLO Version 5 beta video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvwcHwF0yXs

and from what I can see there is no sign of any improvement in this problem.  :^(

[SRhyse]

It’s kinda hard to fix a problem that’s user generated. You’re making distinctions that don’t actually exist in GTD. GTD as written is using a series of flat lists that are concrete and distinct when it comes to task management. You group them in whatever way makes it easiest for you to work with them, and then you work down your lists while adding to or subtracting from them to keep them current with your present reality and decision making so you don’t have to store all of that in your head.

You can set things up in a hierarchy however you’d like in MLO—which is not a GTD thing because it adds overhead and mixes tasks with project planning—and then tag them to appear on stand alone generated lists or across multiple lists. Or you can make flat lists in MLO and move tasks between them however you’d like. You’ve created an aspect of GTD that does not exist, and one which no program can deal with because it’s entirely made up, convoluted, and already accomplished by any program featuring text entry.

There are all manner of things I’d love MLO to be developed to do or handle, but that does not appear to be your issue. I remember before you joined the beta team, I said it sounds like you’re futzing around with programs to avoid doing your work or properly dealing with your commitments. It still sounds like you’re doing that. It’s a problem everyone can relate to, but that does seem to be the problem.

[Dwight]

Hi, John. I feel like we are going over an issue that has already been thoroughly and exhaustively discussed. If your point is that the addition of the new "tags" field does not help you with your issue about "GTD Lists" because tags are not inherited, then ok, I take your point. I'm pretty satisfied with the way my tasks are being managed without the availability of a tags field, so I expect somebody other than me or you to figure out how tags can best be used. Regarding youe overarching issue of how MLO does not support your lists concept, I must say that I have read many words that you have written on this subject and I still don't understand why you don't just make three contexts named @someday @later @Waiting etc. I get that if you have a view that groups by context, that the entries for these groups would be unwelcome; but it would be maybe a ten second job for me and probably under five minutes for anyone with a basic grasp of filter-writing, to exclude these contexts from your particular view. I would consider this a minor annoyance to be resolved with a minor tweak. I could imagine that there could be other, similar minor annoyances and tweaks and maybe that's a serious problem for you. If there is some actual larger issue that these annoyances and tweaks, I haven't yet caught on to what it might be.

[John . Smith]

Since SRhyse your are attacking me personally, I shall put some personal perspective here:

1. I do not pretend to be attempting to set up a "purist" GTD system. I am semi-dyslexic and I read extremely slowly I find the flat-earth system of GTD unusable. I need shape, hierarchy and colour - only then do I become productive.

2. I used MLO for about 12 months last year. During that time I was pretty disciplined whereby I had phases where I would get on with stuff and phases where I would attempt to build something usable using the MLO platform.

3. In hind-sight overall yes I have spent too much time fiddling with the system. But only in phases. 

4. I haven't fiddle with the system for several months now. Instead, I have been using some completely different software. But that software has its own limitations that are starting to grate. Given that MLO Windows (finally!) has a new version about to appear thought it would be worth a second look. 

5. Yes, I shouldn't have spent so much time on MLO, I should have abandoned it much earlier. My problem was that it was so powerful - there was so much to like, and it just kept feeling like I was just about to crack the problem. 

 Over that time every couple of months or so I tried to get it to handle changes in task status in a different manner. In the end I came up with about 6 completely different ways (using flags, tags, dragging tasks between folders, moving between folders, various types of markup... various types of Advanced filtering.... you name it I tried it)

But with each new way of working came some irritating unintended consequence.

6. During my time away from MLO, I have come across a number of people who heartily agree with my take on MLO. In fact, a two different people were so frustrated with MLO (and other existing tools) that they are both writing their own tools from scratch.

> You’ve created an aspect of GTD that does not exist,

Maybe, maybe not No. I just want to:
a) Create a hierarchy of task by subject
b) For both individual tasks and whole projects, I want an easy way to move them between different statuses.
c) The ability to extract these tasks into flat lists. These lists need to be separated by
- Area of Life, and by
- Status and by
- Context.
d) The ability to mark up individual tasks into "do today" flat lists which I can manually sort.

PLUS IDEALLY:

e) Some way of marking up tasks that are urgent/very important. 

f) Some easy way of adding Context (ideally using hotkeys) to a task
g) Some way of using colour to show status. etc
h) Some way of only showing the next task (or ideally N tasks) per project.

Although several have come very close, I have yet to find any software tool that lets me accomplish the above.

> and one which no program can deal with because it’s entirely
> made up, convoluted, and already accomplished by any
> program featuring text entry. 

SRhyse I think you need to decide whether you are arguing whether what I seek is impossible or already accomplished by any program with text entry.

> I said it sounds like you’re futzing around with programs to
> avoid doing your work or properly dealing with your commitments

Absolutely not. I have spent many months now just doing execution of my commitments.
TBH, the personal attack contained in your comments sound borderline hysterical. It's almost as if the existing feature set of MLO is practically a religion - a holy cow that can never be criticised.
And any nail that sticks up discussing constructive suggestions is hammered down by the keyboard warriors.
 
J
 

[John . Smith]

Hi Dwight

Good to hear from you. As ever you are the Voice of Reason - good to see you haven't lost your touch!  :^)

Your suggestion is clearly a workaround. And as such it is clearly slightly messy, with the names of said contexts popping up everywhere. But your suggestion is a good one. And it may be that it in the absence of a separate field that can be used for Status (that can be inherited in any sense) is the best way that MLO can be used.  

[Aside: From memory the Advanced Filtering also runs out of steam at the critical moment but at face value you suggestion seems sensible.]

Precisely because I haven't been "futzing around" in MLO of late, I confess that I am slightly rusty on MLO, and I shall now do some further experimentation and revert. 

Cheers

J

[SRhyse]

Hi John,

I made no personal attack on you, I was addressing the issues you brought forth to the best of your ability to articulate them over what’s now been around a 4 year period. Namely, you saying that it was not possible to use MLO for GTD, and your repeated claims about its inability to handle “GTD Lists.” Your post to me here has completely ignored all of that in its entirety, instead changing the goalposts to different things and calling me hysterical for responding to you. Which is as odd as it is fine. But the ever changing and obscure nature of your issues in any other context would reveal that the real issues you are having are occurring on another level that exists outside of any program, which is what my post was about, and what this new posting is about.

As Dwight outlined to you, other than color coding things—which may or may not be possible right now, I have no idea—MLO already does seemingly all of what you just outlined to me in your post to me, said post seemingly having nothing to do with the post you made prior about “GTD Lists.” I feel like many people have spent a good deal of time trying to tell you that from the beginning. No one is batting down constructive suggestions here, though there has been a lot of time spent trying to understand what it is you’ve been going on about for 4 years now. There’s been a lot of attempts to mine constructive suggestions from you that have thus far borne no fruit.

I am not insulting or attacking you John. Nor do I think MLO is perfect and should remain forever unchanged. I would love it if MLO did all manner of things it currently doesn’t. I’ve suggested many things I’d like it to do myself. I was and am genuinely reaching out to you in hopes you might end your multi year quest to do ambiguous things unknown, and maybe help you out of the rabbit hole you’ve found yourself dug into.

If not, enjoy your stay, and Happy New Year.

[John . Smith]

> It’s kinda hard to fix a problem that’s user-generated.

"User generated problems" sounds like a clear personal attack on me.

> the real issues you are having are occurring on another 

> level that exists outside of any program

"Nothing person"?!

SRhyse if you cant see that you are attacking me personally there is no point in continuing this otherwise constructive dialogue.

> I was addressing the issues you brought forth to the 

> best of your ability to articulate them

You are implying that you did not understand how I articulated them, which is probably true. 

 

> move tasks between them however you’d like. 

Yes, of course, it's POSSIBLE in MLO to move tasks between lists but I have yet to find an easy, efficient way of doing so when dealing with hundreds of tasks in the system.

> not possible to use MLO for GTD

No. Again you misunderstand me. Of course it's POSSIBLE to do GTD in MLO. One of the strengths of GTD is that it is about principles and you could do GTD with a stick writing on sand on the seashore of you wanted to, but it wouldn't be very efficient. 

In fact, you would be much better off using paper. And using pen and paper is where I have several times been driven to. Note for anyone who hasn't tried it, paper is a surprisingly good way to do GTD and builds sound GTD habits. 

But the whole point of MLO is that it needs to overall work BETTER than paper. 

But the objective fact remains that I have come across a number of users outside of the hallowed grounds of this forum have frequently described MLO as requiring a number of "silly workarounds" in order to execute GTD _efficiently_. For example, since you push me, GTDNext.com was born out if this exact frustration by an MLO user.

My central point is that given that GTD is one of the major if not THE major task & time management method on the planet, that MLO really needs to work better - particularly when users have several hundred tasks on the go - and do so with fewer "silly workarounds". 

I know that despite some support from other MLO users (e.g. Richard C and [tentatively] Dwight) for the ability to add custom fields, it still appears to be a battle that has been lost. 

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/mylifeorganized/john$20smith$20tags$20someday%7Csort:date/mylifeorganized/aHvLaU7lGuE/mGJf0W5JAwAJ

Either way like I said above I am - like most GTD users - not attempting to execute a purist version of GTD, just something that I find usable given the constraints that I have taken to trouble to list.

> As Dwight outlined to you, other than color coding 

> things—which may or may not be possible right now, 

> I have no idea—MLO already does seemingly all of what 

> you just outlined to me in your post to me, said post

> seemingly having nothing to do with the post you made 

> prior about “GTD Lists.

I have read that sentence three times now but whether or not it is grammatically valid, I only have a vague sense of what you are trying to communicate.  

OK, SRhyse I think we're done here. No more war of words. If you choose to attack me again it shall find something better to do with my time than respond. 

Dwight, calm & rational as ever, was good enough to address my issues constructively and I am road-testing his suggestions. They are clearly workarounds, and there are some unintending consequences but maybe I can live with them. 

Inspired by both Dwight, and New Year zeal, yesterday I decided to start again from scratch and I looked at all the default templates that MLO supplies to see if any of the suggested ways of doing GTD would work reasonably efficiently for me (or any other user with large numbers of tasks). 

Some of the suggested conventions in the templates have been quite useful. However, in the absence of a field for status MLO's templates are using MOVING of tasks to change status. This becomes works brilliantly with small numbers of tasks but becomes very clunky once one has hundreds of task as lots of scrolling becomes necessary.

So I am back to Dwight suggestion of conflating Context with Status. Although I tried it several months ago I can't now recall quite what the issues were, and although it's messy, with a few subtle tweaks, I may be able to live with it this time around. 

Enough!

So, thank you again Dwight.

I shall revert once I have added more data.

J

[SRhyse]

Hi John,

I’m still not seeing where I’ve attacked you. If you take someone asking you if you’ve tried looking at the way you’re using the program as a personal attack worthy of multiple punctuation marks in reply, then maybe public discourse is not for you. I will, however, concede that you have become hysterical, and suggest that you save you exclamation points for something serious. This is a public forum about an app, John. You raised an issue and people responded to you. If I somehow struck a cord in what I wrote, which was written and reads as an entirely calm and calculated response to your issue, it’s probably because there is some truth to what I said.

Using contexts to see tasks in various views was one of the first things ever suggested to you when you started using MLO, which was 4 or more years ago as I recall. It’s also something repeatedly suggested to you in the time since. I’m not sure why it’s taken you that long to try it, or how that’s considered a “silly workaround” to anything. You can tag things with contexts to have them appear on their own in flat lists, or in the hierarchy they were written in. You can also arrange them within those views however you’d like. The default views do exactly that. They even named the context field after the GTD concept. There’s a GTD default template within MLO Windows too that you’re asked to pick from when you first start the program.

Summing up what you said you have only a vague sense of in my previous reply: you made a bunch of posts stating what you would like MLO to do, and how you would like things in MLO to be organized and arranged. MLO already does all of that. Now you’re replacing your concept of “GTD Lists” with “doing GTD efficiently,” which sounds like another McGuffin.

As I said regarding custom fields in MLO before, I think it’d be a wonderful addition and would love to have it, but that it also seemed not to address any of your problems in the slightest. Reading you go on about your issues, that appears to remain correct. I’m also not sure it’s possible for someone to agree with your frustrations with MLO because you’ve never successfully articulated them, and they seem to change based on the weather.

It sounds like you’re just mismanaging your work, or frustrated with your work, potentially both. There’s not an app for that. If anything, MLO might make things worse because you can now mismanage your work on multiple levels, and are now given constant reminders of the work you’re frustrated about.

Good luck with your GTD Lists, and have a good evening, morning, or afternoon, depending on where you’re at.

Best,

S

[John . Smith]

SRhyse 

 

I don't know if you are missing my slightly subtle points deliberately - points which as I have stated are only valid when several hundreds of tasks are involved - but either way, I find your tone to be pompous, supercilious and offensive... So much so that frankly it is unworthy of a reply.

But while I'm here, if you can't see that using a field that is clearly labelled "Context" for two utterly different functional purposes [Context and Status] isn't "a workaround" there is no point in continuing this discussion.

Regarding custom fields, they would only be useful as a potential Status field if some form of "inheritance" of properties [much like how Contexts already work] was involved, but I don't have the energy to repeat the details here again. Nonetheless, yes such a thing would completely & totally solve my Status field requirements. If you can't see that there is no point discussing that further either. 

Also for the record, the reason I have had to describe my position a number of times is simply because people like you seem to be serially incapable of understanding the points I have raised - and still don't!

If you can't see that accusing me of being "mismanaging" my work is attacking me personally, rather than addressing the issues I raise you are clearly playing dumb deliberately.

Suggestion: Please can we stick to the technical facts and drop the opinions.

Bored now.

J

[SRhyse]

Hi John,

Seeing as you replied to me, apparently you do not think that. I did read what you wrote, and have read what you’ve written for going on 4 or more years now. The issue for anyone following along seems to be that we do understand your position, but we’re not sure you do. This does not appear to be a technical issue, nor have I ever seen you make use of any technical facts.

Getting back to your issues: “Status” sounds like another McGuffin. You’ve gone from being unable to do “GTD Lists” to “Unable to do GTD Efficiently” to trying to do something that’s adamantly against GTD. Which is fine, I’m not concerned with GTD or whatever it is you think you’re referencing with that at this point, but your issues keep skirting around many things only held together by you using the program, and emotional frustration. That’s the only through-line to them. Everything else about them changes but that. You seem to have tried everything else for 4 or more years, likely more outside of MLO, so I suggest you reflectively consider whether that is the problem.

If you mean ‘status’ in the sense that something will either appear on a todo list as something you can actively ‘do’, MLO already handles that across seemingly all of the possible parameters you could have for that. If you don’t want to see or do something until a certain date, you can use start dates and due dates to have it appear in todo views beginning only on that date. If you only want it to appear on some lists and not others, you can use the contexts feature. Within contexts, you can even set it only to appear during certain times of day and days of the week, or not at all, even nesting it within other contexts. If you’d only like it to appear when one or more things have already been checked off, you can use dependencies. If you only want it to appear when things further up the hierarchy preceding it are done in sequential fashion, you can do that too, and it’ll appear in real time once those are done. If you’d like to control that on a task by task basis, you can do that too by clicking the button to not have it be in a todo view, which can be inherited or not based on how you set it up. If you just want to mark something as “in progress,” “focus on this,” or similar things, you can use any of the above features, and/or star or flag something with a single press. You can also mix and match these things and more to have the status change in complex ways, like only after X date when Y things have been completed and Z tasks are done.

If you mean ‘status’ as a special designation you yourself have created for your tasks, that’s what contexts are for. You use contexts in GTD and otherwise to segment your lists however you’d like. If this is what you mean by status, this is not a workaround, you just seem attached to calling some contexts “status” for reasons unknown. Context isn’t limited to physical locations or tools, it’s whatever you want it to be based on your decided needs.

If you had a custom field you could call “status,” you’re still going to have to click something. With contexts, you’ll have to click something. And if you just mean you’d like something in a todo view or not, there’s already a button there you can click for that, alongside many others that also require you to click them.

I hope you have a nice long weekend John, and it’s not raining where you’re at. Unless you like the rain, in which case you’re welcome to take our rain as well.

Best,

S

[Dwight]

I would like to touch once again on the concept of contexts. I
understand that the original GTD concept involved the type of work being
done. You would group calls together because when you finish a call and
still have the phone in your hand that's a good time to make another
call. Type of work being done is a kind of vague concept and it's
subject to getting extended and modified. As always in such matters
there's a predictable reaction that the mods have gone too far, with
calls to return to a more orthodox interpretation. The way such things
usually work out is that if there is a lot of utility to a particular
mod it will become popular and the calls for orthodoxy will fall away,
while if there is limited utility the discussion will fade away.

Two mods currently under discussion involve the use of context for GTD
status (active, waiting, someday etc) and the use of context for
delegation. Both have produced criticism for diverging from the orthodox
interpretation of context. I would like to point out that the truly
orthodox interpretation is long gone. Two examples: the fact that MLO
allows each context to have a schedule of open and closed hours gives
rise to contexts whose only characteristic is the schedule, like
#weekend, and #weekday-morning and so on. This is clearly not a type of
work but it has great utility so it is widely accepted. A second is
location where a point on the Earth's surface and a circle of specified
diameter around the point can be associated with a context. This gives
rise to events that to me a clearly outside of the original vision of
GTD, for example, I am driving home from a client meeting when my phone
alerts me to the fact that I am within a half mile of my friend's house
and I need to drop in and pick up the tools he had borrowed from me.
This has nothing to do with any idea that client consultations and
friends returning tools are in any way the same type of work but it has
utility so nobody is complaining.

In my personal opinion, the GTD status has no utility because I don't
use it but if someone does, I don't see that there is anything wrong
with putting it in the context field. Yes, it makes the context list
just a tiny bit longer but as long as you use different initial
characters to group >calls versus *someday in different parts of the
list, I don't see that as a big deal.

In my personal opinion, delegation has a lot of utility and I will go
into my thoughts on that elsewhere. I think that MLO could do more to
support delegation, I just don't see why that requires a different
field, rather than just a new use of context.

Last point: I have recently been accused of being defensive. That's true
but it is not because I want MLO functionality frozen where it is today.
I am defensive of space on the screen. When a new field is created, for
example delayed dependency, that does not require a dedicated column in
any task list, I have no problem. When a new field like text tag appears
which seems likely to want its own inch of column space in the task
list, then that means that everything else has to shrink an inch, which
probably translates to even more severely truncated task names. For that
reason I will probably not be using text tags unless some incredibly
high utility use case is devised by someone. And for this same reason,
whatever enhancements are needed for delegation, I would rather see them
implemented in context rather than allocating another new column.

-Dwight

[Christoph Zwerschke]

Dwight, I agree that contexts are a good way to express a status like
"waiting". I don't need a "someday" status - everything that has no date
and no goal is implicitly "someday". I also don't need "active" because
MLO already has an implicit concept of "active", "available", "next
action" that is e.g. used in the action filter (search for "action
filter" in the Windows help file). If you want to emphasize certain
tasks more, you can still use the star, flags, contexts (and text tags
in the upcoming version) for that purpose. And for projects, MLO already
has a dedicated "Status" field.

Contexts are also a good way to express the "energy level". Actually in
GTD you select your tasks based on context, available time and energy
level, and then on importance and urgency. In MLO, you can use the "max
time", but there is no "energy" property. But you can easily create
low/med/high energy contexts and contexts for short/med/long tasks if
you prefer that over entering max time. I have prefixed
location/people/time/energy/status related contexts with different
characters, which makes them easier to enter and the context list
clearly arranged.

One problem with contexts is that despite their importance in MLO they
are somewhat difficult to enter. When you use the keyboard shortcut to
go to the Context field, its context is selected, and if you forget to
press Right-Arrow before typing, you can easily overwrite the existing
context when you usually just want to add another one. When you click
the "..." button, the window with the context list is pretty small so
that I need to scroll. So there are still areas of improvement here.
-- Christoph

[Dwight]

Suggestion: Use your mouse to grab the top border of the little context
popup and drag it up, grab the bottom border and drag it down. Bonus:
MLO will remember the enlarged popup and keep it large for you from now on.
-Dwight

[Christoph Zwerschke]

Am 11.01.2018 um 20:48 schrieb Dwight:
> Suggestion: Use your mouse to grab the top border of the little
> context popup and drag it up, grab the bottom border and drag it
> down. Bonus: MLO will remember the enlarged popup and keep it large
> for you from now on.

Oh, sweet, that works. Thanks for this great tip, Dwight.
And I noticed I can even pop it up using Alt-L and then have some
limited keyboard support (searching for the first letter, arrow keys).

-- Christoph

[SRhyse]

The original language of GTD is loose enough that ‘context’ is just a distinction you make between different types of tasks to make your lists smaller and easier so you don’t feel overwhelmed, and to put similar things in the same space so you can do one after another if they have similar requirements to get down. The way the David Allen company has continued coaching it is entirely in line with that too. ‘Waiting For’ and ‘Someday Maybe’ are both used as contexts to them. I’m not concerned with what is or isn’t GTD, but if you’re going to talk about GTD, it’s always been that way, and they’ve always been open about that. If you’re not using entirely separate flat lists, ‘context’ is just a tag meant to organize data on another level that isn’t hierarchy. Plenty of people now use energy levels and time as contexts as mentioned.

I personal don’t find it hard to enter contexts because I keep their names short, and their numbers few. You can have a context that for you means “things I would like to considering doing someday,” or “things I would only like to do when I’m tired,” but you don’t have to name them in that way. I’ve varied over the years, but I tag things I’m waiting for with ‘@w’ or just a ‘w’. If it’s something that won’t take any brain power to do, I consider it shallow work and use @s or s. All of my contexts work like that, and I don’t have too many because that usually serves as ways of hiding things so I don’t see them, which is the opposite of effectively managing and making decisions on them. I also don’t do ‘someday’ in contexts because anything not on a todo view or with a context is a pipe dream, and if it isn’t, I’ll just tag it and have it show up when it should based on date or sequence or dependency. I’ve actually found it better to store that stuff outside of MLO because at that point it’s just reference notes and past thinking, though MLO’s Markdown support and potential for a ‘note’ designation may bring it back in for me. Having contexts parse out as things are typed is simple in this case, as is clicking on a context to assign it to one or more tasks. Moving it under an existing task with that context also works, and in the very off chance it doesn’t, you just change the context of that task.

And to Dwight: I wouldn’t consider you trying to discuss things with people as defensive. If people bring up issues and requests on a public forum, discussing them is kind of the point. That is the only point of a forum. That is what a forum is. Discussing something doesn’t mean blindly agreeing with it or leaving it unexamined. If someone said they’d like MLO to have a field for ‘dogs’ in it, the best response probably wouldn’t be “sure thing! We’ll add it to the list,” particularly not if that user went on for 4 or more years saying MLO was silly and unacceptable and stupidly clumsy for not having implemented the ‘dog’ feature that made no sense and had no real utility, and was requested by a user that by their own admission no longer used the program. If that user wasn’t willing to take half a second to tag something with ‘dog’, they also apparently don’t value their desired ‘dog’ functionality very much. Bending the development team over backwards to add in dog-like functionality seems like a waste of resources, and trying to discuss that first would appear to be the more fruitful course of action than burning more time and money.

Best,

S

[Daniel Sekera]

I like your response.  I have no animosity of people wanting things to be a certain way.  I may not understand it, and certainly not from their perspective, but I do not mind them wanting it.  I'd like to have personal programming done for me also.  However I do get agitated when some really bash the program, probably more so for just it being one more stream of negativity into my day than anything else.  However I am a MLO loyalist.  I think some are just unwilling to bend or adapt.  I understand it, I manage 43 people in a multi-million dollar business.  I am sometimes the fire breathing personification of  I want things the way I want them and since I am paying you to provide me with a service its unacceptable that I cannot have what i want!  (that is directed at vendors, but every once in a while an employee as well )  However the scale is much different.  This is  piece of software that cost me less than 100 dollars US and requires pocket change to upkeep.  I do not have the right to demand more from Andrey and CO.  He offered a product, I purchased, I received the value of what I bought.  I'm happy with it, I want more people to love it and use it.  Beyond that...to the ones that do not like it, that is ok, wish you the best, hope something else works out for you.  In the meantime I'm going back to work.

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[John . Smith]

Dwight - which popup are you talking about?

The popup that appears when you start typing in the Context field (in the Properties pane on the right of the scree) is irritatingly small on my (4K) screen, but I cant find a way to enlarge it.

If you meant just the Alt-L popup, thanks I have adjusted.

Christoph - have you considered putting Context tags into Hotkeys?

They are a great way to remove as well as add tags.

Personally I only ever use the Context field to add new Context - a rare event.

I prefer hotkeys or to right-click on the Context column which I have added to the main area of the screen.

SRhyse - I have read but I disagree with much of what you say. I have no stomach for further ideological debate with you however.

Daniel - Just to say that the reality is that we users quickly invest a vast amount of our TIME in learning, customising and entering data into their task management software e.g. MLO.  If you value your time, time equates to money and given how much customisation is possible (and arguably required!) to set up MLO, most MLO users are huge investors in MLO and the actual money price paid for the software soon becomes irrelevant in comparison. Moreover, unless you actually want to Spring Clean occasionally, the personal cost of jumping ship is likely to be significant. 

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[Dwight Arthur]

I refer you the window which opens when you hit the three-dot icon to the right of the Context field in the Properties pane. I'm not certain but I believe that may be the same as the Alt/L popup.

On January 12, 2018 07:43:16 "John . Smith" <shi...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dwight - which popup are you talking about?

The popup that appears when you start typing in the Context field (in the Properties pane on the right of the scree) is irritatingly small on my (4K) screen, but I cant find a way to enlarge it.

If you meant just the Alt-L popup, thanks I have adjusted.

Christoph - have you considered putting Context tags into Hotkeys?

They are a great way to remove as well as add tags.

Personally I only ever use the Context field to add new Context - a rare event.

I prefer hotkeys or to right-click on the Context column which I have added to the main area of the screen.

SRhyse - I have read but I disagree with much of what you say. I have no stomach for further ideological debate with you however.

Daniel - Just to say that the reality is that we users quickly invest a vast amount of our TIME in learning, customising and entering data into their task management software e.g. MLO.  If you value your time, time equates to money and given how much customisation is possible (and arguably required!) to set up MLO, most MLO users are huge investors in MLO and the actual money price paid for the software soon becomes irrelevant in comparison. Moreover, unless you actually want to Spring Clean occasionally, the personal cost of jumping ship is likely to be significant. 

On Thursday, January 11, 2018 at 10:42:52 PM UTC, daniel wrote:

I like your response.  I have no animosity of people wanting things to be a certain way.  I may not understand it, and certainly not from their perspective, but I do not mind them wanting it.  I'd like to have personal programming done for me also  However I do get agitated when some really bash the program, probably more so for just it being one more stream of negativity into my day than anything else.  However I am a MLO loyalist.  I think some are just unwilling to bend or adapt.  I understand it, I manage 43 people in a multi-million dollar business.  I am sometimes the fire breathing personification of  I want things the way I want them and since I am paying you to provide me with a service its unacceptable that I cannot have what i want!  (that is directed at vendors, but every once in a while an employee as well )  However the scale is much different.  This is  piece of software that cost me less than 100 dollars US and requires pocket change to upkeep.  I do not have the right to demand more from Andrey and CO.  He offered a product, I purchased, I received the value of what I bought.  I'm happy with it, I want more people to love it and use it.  Beyond that...to the ones that do not like it, that is ok, wish you the best, hope something else works out for you.  In the meantime I'm going back to work.

On Thu, Jan 11, 2018 at 5:24 PM, SRhyse <srh...@gmail.com> wrote:

The original language of GTD is loose enough that ‘context’ is just a distinction you make between different types of tasks to make your lists smaller and easier so you don’t feel overwhelmed, and to put similar things in the same space so you can do one after another if they have similar requirements to get down. The way the David Allen company has continued coaching it is entirely in line with that too. ‘Waiting For’ and ‘Someday Maybe’ are both used as contexts to them. I’m not concerned with what is or isn’t GTD, but if you’re going to talk about GTD, it’s always been that way, and they’ve always been open about that. If you’re not using entirely separate flat lists, ‘context’ is just a tag meant to organize data on another level that isn’t hierarchy. Plenty of people now use energy levels and time as contexts as mentioned.

I personal don’t find it hard to enter contexts because I keep their names short, and their numbers few. You can have a context that for you means “things I would like to considering doing someday,” or “things I would only like to do when I’m tired,” but you don’t have to name them in that way. I’ve varied over the years, but I tag things I’m waiting for with ‘@w’ or just a ‘w’. If it’s something that won’t take any brain power to do, I consider it shallow work and use @s or s. All of my contexts work like that, and I don’t have too many because that usually serves as ways of hiding things so I don’t see them, which is the opposite of effectively managing and making decisions on them. I also don’t do ‘someday’ in contexts because anything not on a todo view or with a context is a pipe dream, and if it isn’t, I’ll just tag it and have it show up when it should based on date or sequence or dependency. I’ve actually found it better to store that stuff outside of MLO because at that point it’s just reference notes and past thinking, though MLO’s Markdown support and potential for a ‘note’ designation may bring it back in for me. Having contexts parse out as things are typed is simple in this case, as is clicking on a context to assign it to one or more tasks. Moving it under an existing task with that context also works, and in the very off chance it doesn’t, you just change the context of that task.

And to Dwight: I wouldn’t consider you trying to discuss things with people as defensive. If people bring up issues and requests on a public forum, discussing them is kind of the point. That is the only point of a forum. That is what a forum is. Discussing something doesn’t mean blindly agreeing with it or leaving it unexamined. If someone said they’d like MLO to have a field for ‘dogs’ in it, the best response probably wouldn’t be “sure thing! We’ll add it to the list,” particularly not if that user went on for 4 or more years saying MLO was silly and unacceptable and stupidly clumsy for not having implemented the ‘dog’ feature that made no sense and had no real utility, and was requested by a user that by their own admission no longer used the program. If that user wasn’t willing to take half a second to tag something with ‘dog’, they also apparently don’t value their desired ‘dog’ functionality very much. Bending the development team over backwards to add in dog-like functionality seems like a waste of resources, and trying to discuss that first would appear to be the more fruitful course of action than burning more time and money.

Best,

S

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[Christoph Zwerschke]

Am 12.01.2018 um 13:42 schrieb John . Smith:
> Christoph - have you considered putting Context tags into Hotkeys?
> They are a great way to remove as well as add tags. Personally I only
> ever use the Context field to add new Context - a rare event. I
> prefer hotkeys or to right-click on the Context column which I have
> added to the main area of the screen.

Thanks, these are both good ideas.

Regarding custom hotkeys, I always have the problem that every possible
key combination seems to be already used for something...

-- Christoph

[robisme (Olivier R)]

Actually, there is a "energy" field, but it's named "effort". Rather usefull indeed.
Olivier

[Christoph Zwerschke]

Am 12.01.2018 um 17:35 schrieb robisme (Olivier R):
> Actually, there is a "energy" field, but it's named "effort". Rather
usefull indeed.

You can certainly use it to describe the energy level.

But actually it's intended use in MLO is for something different -
according to the docs it "affects the dynamically calculated completion
percentage for a project" and "is different from time required for a
task parameter. For example if you just read a book, it would require
less effort than if you write MLO help documentation :-). It might take
you the same amount of the time to accomplish these tasks but the Effort
would be different."

In that regard it should have better been named "effect", "outcome" or
"impact", because the effort is not always proportional to the outcome
(this is the famous Pareto principle).

-- Christoph

[SRhyse]

I think the petulant negativity more than anything else is what I dislike. I’m self-employed, so I’m probably more aware of the value of a relationship, what goes into it, and that customers/clients can be both valuable or a hostile dependent according to the circumstances. It’s a business relationship, not taking on a child as a dependent forever-after if someone gives you some money in exchange for goods and services at a long ago point in time. I think everyone’s had experiences where they bent over backwards trying to hear someone out and make someone happy in entirely fruitless ways that only made their business worse and left no one any happier. And to have them bad-mouth you and your services for your trouble, and for years on end? I’ve ‘fired’ and let go plenty of clients, as I’m sure anyone in business has, and was usually better off for it. Apps and features aside, if someone acts like that, they are a problem. I don’t have a meal at a restaurant and spend 4 years after that ragging on the cooks for not adding a sauce I’d like to one of the dishes. That would be crazy, wouldn’t it?

I’ve suggested plenty of things over the years, plenty of which have become a reality, and plenty of which nothing ever came of. How I handled them is more how I would prefer suggestions to work:

With the Markdown feature in notes, I argued the benefits of it, how it could solve a lot of problems many people had raised in a lightweight way that scales, how it’s already pretty popular so there’d be little learning, would help with marketing because there’s a culture around that giving it some exposure, on and on, but I made a suggestion and made a case for it. I remember Dwight thought rich text or something else might be better, or generally being wary of it, and discussing it with him. Then not much was said or done about it for a very long while after that. There was no ill will or bad feelings. If nothing ever came of it, I’d have lost no sleep, and spent no time leaving MLO only to come back saying MLO was a ridiculous and stupid piece of clumsy crap for 4 years in hopes that directly insulting the app and its developers would somehow endear them to me and my desires.

And to John - If you valued your time very highly, I don’t think you’d have scoured the internet for years playing around with apps and whining about them at length. Before you came here, you were going around on other forums doing similar things, and among your replies were things similar to what I have said. Whatever amount of time you think you’d save by having a designated status feature that offered no additional functionality beyond what contexts currently provide, it pales in comparison to the time you’ve spent ragging on apps like MLO which took the time to hear you out on multiple occasions despite your continued childish treatment of them.

It’s been at least 4 years John. Your petulance will soon be starting Kindergarten.

[Dwight]

Just to be clear, the "dynamically calculated completion percentage"
referenced below is the progress bar that you see whenever you have a
partially completed project. You can also see that bar next to the label
"complete" in the project section of the task properties pane; also, to
be super-clear, a numerical completion percentage is shown to the right
of the bar in the project section.

This bar is showing what percent complete the project is. So, if a
project consists of ten items and three remain uncompleted, you will see
a completion percentage of 70. But this assumes that all tasks are
weighted the same. If one of your completed tasks requires much more
effort that the others, and that task is complete, you would like to see
your completion percentage higher than 70.

Let's walk through how this works. Create a project named "project" and
then create a subtask named "subtask". Mark the subtask complete and
look at the completion bar for Project. It shows 50% complete. That is
because there are two items, Project and Subtask, and one of them,
Subtask is complete. So one complete out of two total is 50%.

Now, look in the task properties for Project at the Effort. It should
show the default, which is 50. Now look at Effort for Suntask. It should
also be 50. Change the effort for subtask to 75 and you should see the
completion percentage change to 60. That's because one task has effort
of 50 and the other has effort of 75 for a total of 125, so your
completion is 75 out of 125 or 60%.

To use this as accurately as possible, set the effort for your largest
task to 100 and set each other task (including the Project) to a number
representing the task's effort as a fraction of the biggest task's
effort. For example, if your biggest task will take 8 hours and your
smallest task will take 2 hours, set the largest task's effort to 100
and your smallest task's effort to 25 because 2 hours is 25% of 8 hours.
If you do not want the project entry to count as any effort, go ahead
and set it to zero.

-Dwight

[John . Smith]

Btw, if anyone else is interested in how Custom Fields might possibly be implemented in MLO, I recommend you have a look at how ToDoList by AstractSpoon has implemented them. Anyone familiar with MLO will quickly become frustrated by ToDoList's clunkly interface, so I don't recommend anyone use the software in any serious way for personal productivity/task management, but how it does Custom Fields is interesting. If you right-click on the title row you will find something called "Custom Task Attributes" and it is extremely powerful. You can choose whether the field is single-selection or multi-selection as well as whether it is dynamic or static, Alignment, the field's column title, etc etc.  From memory there is also some way of controlling how default values work, which to my way of thinking would be crucial.

SRhyse - I'm not going to bother to defend myself against your criticisms because I think this has descended into a war of words that will help absolutely no one. 

Going forward let's try and focus on the facts & features of MLO.

J

[MOK | MATSURU]

Hi John,

  While reading your post, it suddenly reminds me of a database app called memento, which u can customize everything.

  The downside is, it is a database app, so you need to build your own database from scratch. 

  maybe u can take a look to see if it fits your needs → https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.luckydroid.droidbase&hl=en

  official web → https://mementodatabase.com/

  it also has desktop version. 

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[asi]

The automatic sorting ("computed score priority") is one of the few 
things that really need to be improved/changed in MLO because. The 
problem is that it equates tasks without date (i.e. my "someday/maybe") 
with tasks that are due today (my most important tasks). In my view, the 
computed score should interpret "no date" as "date = infinity" instead 
of "date = today". I really would like to see this changed or made 
configurable so that automatic sorting becomes more usable. 

Hi Christoph,

The score issue that task without dates is treated as task that due today is really a problem.

The outcome is that a task that due tomorrow and needs my attention today, ordered below a task with no due date... No sense at all.

Is there any planned change for this? Any user voice to vote?

Thank you

Asaf

On Sunday, December 31, 2017 at 2:22:29 AM UTC+2, Christoph wrote:

Am 30.12.2017 um 22:31 schrieb Wallace Gilbraith:
 > If a task doesn’t have a Due Date - it’s not time-critical, and is
 > therefore a Someday task

Additionally, you can set "goal" to week, month or year, if you don't
have a fixed due date but still wont to indicate that you want to get it
done in the specified time frame. So for me, everything that has no
start/due date and no goal is automatically a "someday/maybe" task.
Using the review date it's possible to re-examine such tasks, whether
they should be deleted, keep being "someday/maybe", or should be
realized by setting a date or goal.

 > I still don’t use automatic sorting - figuring out how it works is a
 > Someday task

The automatic sorting ("computed score priority") is one of the few
things that really need to be improved/changed in MLO because. The
problem is that it equates tasks without date (i.e. my "someday/maybe")
with tasks that are due today (my most important tasks). In my view, the
computed score should interpret "no date" as "date = infinity" instead
of "date = today". I really would like to see this changed or made
configurable so that automatic sorting becomes more usable.

-- Christoph

[Christoph Zwerschke]

Am 31.03.2018 um 13:27 schrieb asi:
> The score issue that task without dates is treated as task that due
> today is really a problem.
> The outcome is that a task that due tomorrow and needs my attention
> today, ordered below a task with no due date... No sense at all.
> Is there any planned change for this? Any user voice to vote?

The user voice issue is here:
https://mlo.uservoice.com/forums/9235-general/suggestions/6511892-calculate-tasks-with-no-due-date-as-lower-priority

Not sure if anybody Uservoice is still used for feedback though.

-- Christoph

[John . Smith]

It's been a few months since I checked-in. 

Have there been any new developments in any of the areas (which I list below) when I sought back in 2014.

With thanks

J

On Monday, November 24, 2014 at 8:49:00 PM UTC, John . Smith wrote:

Hello 

I am new to GTD and to MLO.  I have been using a web-only app called GTDNext. But I am frustrated that there is no mobile app version.  I am looking for a tool to automate GTD lists (David Allen)

I am looking for a tool with the following features: 

1. Extremely easy/fast data entry (using lots of hotkeys and only minimal use of the mouse)

2. Multi-levels of Projects and Actions (i.e. sub-projects and/or sub-action )

3. Ease of changing an item between Projects and Actions (and back).

4. Next Actions - i.e. the ability to generate a queue of future Next Actions for a Project, but with the ability to just show one Next Action per Project.  And as soon as you tick off an action as being complete, then the  next action in the queue immediately pops up as the official "Next Action" for the Project.

5. The ability to send emails into the "In Basket" for processing (ideally with tags embedded in the title).

6. Ability to put Projects (and Actions) into some sort of priority that is can be sorted/reported on and which is clearly visible with colour.

i.e. I want to be able to see a screenful of items and without actually needing to read anything, to see which are the most urgent (about 4 levels of priority/color would be fine).

7. "Focus" mark-up.
i.e. Separate from "priority" to have some bright colour mechanism for showing "has focus" (i.e. I have decided to do this item today)

8. The ability do move projects up and down the list of projects FAST using hotkeys. i.e. To change the sort order of both Projects and Actions within projects very easily

9. Either a good web or PC application...

10. ...that syncs well with a mobile app... that works off-line (as well as on-line).

11. Excellent security/encryption of all my project data

12. A development team that has a history if being responsive to user requests.

In your opinion, how well does MLO match up?

Many thanks

J

[boatshed36]

I sent MLO a GTD template in February for them to look at and help make work. I sent them a follow up this week. I think it reinforces a few of your points because a strict GTD is not possible without some extra functionality. Some of your other requests are more general MLO capabilities e.g. project hierarchy, colour coding. I am sure many people would welcome them. Of course some may be doable now because the manual lacks examples of how to harness MLO's industrial strength and we rely on insights from peer users

Warm regards/gary

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[Stéph]

I don't think I agree about the comment on gtd, Gary. For its core lists, David Allen just proposes a list of tasks for each context and a project list - You can do this with a few sheets of paper, so you can definitely make your MLO lists match this "strict GTD" system. However, MLO adds a load of other (optional) task parameters, so you can use other systems (I use a combination of Stephen Covery's "7 Habits" and the GTD, to make a system that works for me). You can use as many or as few of the MLO parameters as you need. 

However, there is next to no scripting or inheritance for new or modified tasks, so each parameter has to be entered or changed manually. Each parameter you have to maintain means that you take longer managing your system, rather than getting on with your tasks, so I'd recommend keeping it as simple and using as few of the different parameters as you can.

Other than the flexibility of the task parameters, the great strength of MLO is its search and filtering functions, which mean that you can set up very many detailed, customised views of your task list, to help focus in on just what you need to see at any particular time. I haven't seen more flexible task management software, anywhere else, for this.

Regarding John's list of requests. Here are my thoughts on the current state of development (from the point of view of the desktop application, though the mobile ones are similar):

1. Extremely easy/fast data entry - PARTIALLY. There are quiet a lot of shortcut keys and customisable hotkeys. However, data entry is slowed down by the need to manually edit all of the parameters, rather than being able to set up any kind of inheritance.

2. Multi-levels of Projects and Actions - YES. The outline tree can be nested to almost infinite depth.

3. Ease of changing an item between Projects and Actions - YES. Hotkeys for toggling "project" and "folder" statuses, among other parameters.

4. Next Actions - YES, I think - I haven't used "complete actions in order" or dependencies much, but they're available. You can also set up custom filters to narrow down to the important next steps in each project.

5. The ability to send emails into the "In Basket" for processing (ideally with tags embedded in the title) - ?DON'T KNOW.

6. Ability to put Projects (and Actions) into some sort of priority that is can be sorted/reported on and which is clearly visible with colour.- YES. Importance, Urgency, star, due dates, etc, combined with customer filters, sorting and custom Automatic Formatting rules. 

7. "Focus" mark-up. - YES - I review my filtered and sorted task list and use the Star to tag items I want to focus on, for the day. Alternatives are flags or just relying on Importance, Urgency and Due Date to give an automatic Computed Score and sort the tasks into order.

8. The ability do move projects up and down the list of projects FAST using hotkeys - YES. I have the hotkeys set up as Ctrl+Alt+arrow keys. I have hotkey Ctrl+Alt+M set up for the more free-form Move function - In the pop-up Move window, you can select different views, so quickly change to a list of projects or folders (or any other view you like) to help find where to move your task. The F3 window is also very useful if you want to drag and drop a lot of tasks to different locations in your outline.

9. Either a good web or PC application... - YES, the PC-application is pretty good. NO for the web application.

10. ...that syncs well with a mobile app... that works off-line (as well as on-line) - YES (mostly). I use PC and iPhone app. However, WiFi sync has always been a bit of a pain to set up and maintain, unless you have a static IP address for your PC and a single WiFi network that you always use. WiFi sync no longer works for me, so I'm soon going to have to start a (cheap) server-sync subscription. Either way, the sync conflict resolution function and automated file backups are pretty thorough, though.

11. Excellent security/encryption of all my project data - PARTIAL. There are other discussion threads on the lack of transport security and the reliance on Amazon web server security for the server-side file. WiFi sync could be more secure, if your WiFi networks are kept private and secure and all the PCs and mobile devices are looked after.

12. A development team that has a history if being responsive to user requests - PARTIAL. Since Alyona was hired, she's worked to respond to questions and problems pretty quickly. Whenever I've had a significant problem, an email to support (or a post to the community) has got a pretty quick response. However, there are complaints that we don't get to see any development plans or timescales (probably because the team don't want to make any promises that they then can't achieve) and that many feature requests don't get a reply. I think we just have to be patient and accept that's how a lot of software companies work. MLO is much more communicative than Microsoft, for example!

I hope that some people find this helpful.

Stéphane 

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[lewy]

for No. 5, there is Task by e-mail using Cloud Sync, which MLO sync service let you to send email as tasks to your inbox, 

you can check it from:

https://blog.mylifeorganized.net/2012/02/task-by-email-released-on-mlo-cloud.html

Regards,

[boatshed36]

 As I have said on this forum many times people oversimplify GTD.  It took a 200 page book (now revised) to describe it. There are multiday GTD courses to look at making sense of all its features. 

We agree that MLO has many features which can be used for GTD. The problem is knowing which ones can be used and what is the best implementation. This takes me back to what I wrote. The MLO GTD template needs improvement and I have sent them my effort which attempts to preserve the MLO industrial strength e.g., the two part distinction between outline and list

Warm regards/gary

On 30 Mar 2020 at 7:39 am, Stéph <stephane...@gmail.com> wrote:

I don't think I agree about the comment on gtd, Gary. For its core lists, David Allen just proposes a list of tasks for each context and a project list - You can do this with a few sheets of paper, so you can definitely make your MLO lists match this "strict GTD" system. However, MLO adds a load of other (optional) task parameters, so you can use other systems (I use a combination of Stephen Covery's "7 Habits" and the GTD, to make a system that works for me). You can use as many or as few of the MLO parameters as you need. 

However, there is next to no scripting or inheritance for new or modified tasks, so each parameter has to be entered or changed manually. Each parameter you have to maintain means that you take longer managing your system, rather than getting on with your tasks, so I'd recommend keeping it as simple and using as few of the different parameters as you can.

Other than the flexibility of the task parameters, the great strength of MLO is its search and filtering functions, which mean that you can set up very many detailed, customised views of your task list, to help focus in on just what you need to see at any particular time. I haven't seen more flexible task management software, anywhere else, for this.

Regarding John's list of requests. Here are my thoughts on the current state of development (from the point of view of the desktop application, though the mobile ones are similar):

1. Extremely easy/fast data entry - PARTIALLY. There are quiet a lot of shortcut keys and customisable hotkeys. However, data entry is slowed down by the need to manually edit all of the parameters, rather than being able to set up any kind of inheritance.

2. Multi-levels of Projects and Actions - YES. The outline tree can be nested to almost infinite depth.

3. Ease of changing an item between Projects and Actions - YES. Hotkeys for toggling "project" and "folder" statuses, among other parameters.

4. Next Actions - YES, I think - I haven't used "complete actions in order" or dependencies much, but they're available. You can also set up custom filters to narrow down to the important next steps in each project.

5. The ability to send emails into the "In Basket" for processing (ideally with tags embedded in the title) - ?DON'T KNOW.

6. Ability to put Projects (and Actions) into some sort of priority that is can be sorted/reported on and which is clearly visible with colour.- YES. Importance, Urgency, star, due dates, etc, combined with customer filters, sorting and custom Automatic Formatting rules. 

7. "Focus" mark-up. - YES - I review my filtered and sorted task list and use the Star to tag items I want to focus on, for the day. Alternatives are flags or just relying on Importance, Urgency and Due Date to give an automatic Computed Score and sort the tasks into order.

8. The ability do move projects up and down the list of projects FAST using hotkeys - YES. I have the hotkeys set up as Ctrl+Alt+arrow keys. I have hotkey Ctrl+Alt+M set up for the more free-form Move function - In the pop-up Move window, you can select different views, so quickly change to a list of projects or folders (or any other view you like) to help find where to move your task. The F3 window is also very useful if you want to drag and drop a lot of tasks to different locations in your outline.

9. Either a good web or PC application... - YES, the PC-application is pretty good. NO for the web application.

10. ...that syncs well with a mobile app... that works off-line (as well as on-line) - YES (mostly). I use PC and iPhone app. However, WiFi sync has always been a bit of a pain to set up and maintain, unless you have a static IP address for your PC and a single WiFi network that you always use. WiFi sync no longer works for me, so I'm soon going to have to start a (cheap) server-sync subscription. Either way, the sync conflict resolution function and automated file backups are pretty thorough, though.

11. Excellent security/encryption of all my project data - PARTIAL. There are other discussion threads on the lack of transport security and the reliance on Amazon web server security for the server-side file. WiFi sync could be more secure, if your WiFi networks are kept private and secure and all the PCs and mobile devices are looked after.

12. A development team that has a history if being responsive to user requests - PARTIAL. Since Alyona was hired, she's worked to respond to questions and problems pretty quickly. Whenever I've had a significant problem, an email to support (or a post to the community) has got a pretty quick response. However, there are complaints that we don't get to see any development plans or timescales (probably because the team don't want to make any promises that they then can't achieve) and that many feature requests don't get a reply. I think we just have to be patient and accept that's how a lot of software companies work. MLO is much more communicative than Microsoft, for example!

I hope that some people find this helpful.

Stéphane 

On Sunday, 29 March 2020 17:17:10 UTC+1, boats...@gmail.com wrote:

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[Stéph]

Ah, now there, we definitely do agree - All of the templates provided with the app are not good examples of implementation of the various methodologies. At best, they are simple starters, to give the users ideas about how they would use the MLO features. 

It would be a good idea for us to start creating and curating our own example templates.

Stéphane

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