Start dates and calendars

[Mark Levison]

7yrs after I departed I'm back. I no longer use MLO for business - my team uses StoryMaps and a Kanban board. (Don't ask we're searching for a better tool set on that front). I'm back using MLO for my personal tasks as I realized that I was abusing my gmail account and its snooze function as an ineffective task manager.  (For those who keep track I'm back using a Windows, at least until the dust settles on the Apple ARM platform - 5+ yrs).

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The actual question, since I've been gone calendar view/sync has popped up. (Thank You/Спасибо Andrey/Team).

However the calendar also gets the start date, not just the due date. In the past I have used start dates as a way of ignoring something until a specific moment. With start dates syncing to the calendar, I see tasks anytime I look into the future in the calendar.

Example I have to buy my daughter a new paper notebook. The due date is Saturday, however I could get one anytime i'm out of the house. So I set the start date to today. Of course now it appears in my calendar for the next few days.

I looked for calendar sync options and I can't find any.

What are my options:

- stop using start dates?

- ….

Cheers

Mark

[Andrey Tkachuk (MLO)]

Hi Mark,

Welcome back! Nice to see your in the group again :)

Yes for now start/due date/time of the tasks are synced to the calendar as start/due date/time as well. What would be your proposition? An option to not sync start date and use mlo due as start and due for the calendar? I.e. create an appointment with zero length?

Thanks,

Andrey. 

[Mark Levison]

Andrey - thanks.

My naive leaning would be just give me an option not to sync start dates with the calendar at all. The challenge is that when I use start dates even my most trivial tasks appear in the calendar.

I think the bigger issue is that I have over used dates at all in MLO. I notice that I plan a number of tasks for a weekend. Maybe half of them get done and then I have to spend time rescheduling them for the next weekend. Really the weekend task list is a queue, get some stuff done around the house/garden until we have either achieved something major or we've spent 4-5 hrs, then relax. In this world view I just want a well ordered queue. I was using dates as a quick and dirty way to force items to the top of the queue.

Much deeper issue - the challenge, I've always had with MLO, its an incredibly flexible tool that you can get lost in. In an ideal world you would pay some people to document their personal organization systems that they have created. Food for thought my wife: https://yourfinanciallaunchpad.com/ in the context of her business is helping women create systems to organize money (income -> spending -> investments). She sees me using MLO and asks should I share it with my group. Part of me wants to shout from the rooftops yes. The challenge is that these are normal people - not recovering software developers like myself. They would get lost.

I look forward to the MLO guides/stories/scenarios with enough depth to help people see how to use the app in real life.

(It is good to be back - don't think I will ever be forum moderator again)

Cheers

Mark

[Susannah]

Thanks for sharing your wife's link.

Here is how I handle the weekend queue where it actually works for me.   It's kind of my way of time blocking like tasks that aren't really huge projects.

I use this for my small annoying network issues that need to be fixed at work but aren't emergencies.  I have a parent task called Small Network issues.  In that I have subtasks of all the small network issues prioritized in whatever way according to what I want done first whether it is most important or time required.  I set that parent tasks to complete subtasks in order.  Then in my routines I make a task that reoccurs once or twice a week on a certain day with a link in the notes to this queue.  As new tasks come up I make sure that went I add to the queue they go in with the correct priority to the others already in there.  You could also hide the queue but I like the top one to show on my list in case I get a minute at another time during the week and want to finish something quick and easy.

I also see where that context closed hours would work great here and you wouldn't need the trigger task.  

I also use this for things like areas I want to declutter, website updates I want to make that are not time sensitive, improvements to my system, procedures I need to document - really any kind of long term maintenance or goal task.  I also use for learning - I'm trying to build out text expander so as I come across ideas of how people use it I add to the queue and then I have a trigger tasks for once a week.  I'm trying to use Evernote so I have the same thing for that with a queue of tasks of things I want to add to it or something I want to learn about it with a trigger of once a week.  I have one for bugs or broken links on our website or company database.  I have one for MLO - right now that context closed hours is the first thing in the queue.  I have these learning things each set to their own day and I try to move each one forward one day each week.  At some point Text Explander will be a team rollout and that will not go out in this list but be a full blown active project.  I hope that helps.

This works pretty well for me but I would love to hear some other ways people handle this. 

Thanks,

Susannah

[Mark Levison]

Thanks Susannah - you replied nearly two weeks ago and I haven't given you the courtesy of a thank you. 

You raised enough interest points that I realized the problem is only dates in a very small way. The real problem is I don't have a good mental model for organizing, MLO. I didn't 7 yrs ago and the problem is worse not better with time :-)

I'm going to attempt to catalog what I just learned

- create folders or parent tasks for small issues to be completed in order

- a folder for routines that promotes you to look in other queues

- you give contexts different opening hours

All of these things really help accomplish an elegant goal. They allow you to have a deep/rich hierarchy with many items, yet your actions list is small.

For what I can tell my toolset contains:

- Contexts with open/closed hours

- Goals

- Due Dates

- Complete Tasks in order

- Projects

- Stars

I suspect my next challenge is to find ways people have used these tools to create order from chaos

Cheers

Mark

[Dwight Arthur]

Mark and Susannah - I suspect that you are not getting all of the benefit you could out of start dates. Mark mentions due dates - for me that represents the date a task need to be done or maybe the date when it will catch fire if it isnt yet done. But that should not be the criterion for a task to show up on my short task list or else my list will be perpetually enflamed.

Example of my use of start date: There are lots of things that I do that need to be checked on later. I order merchandise, it may or may not ever arrive. I send a bill, it may require a friendly call before its paid. Whenever I find that something needs to be checked, I create a task with context = >waiting and start date = when it should be checked. due date is blank unless there is a date when this will catch fire. I have a tab "waiting" that shows all uncompleted tasks with the >waiting context, sorted by start date. Once or twice per week I flip open that tab and mark completion for any of the tasks that have been satisfied. Ideally all the green ones (ie start date has arrived) get marked off. Any remaining green ones or, heaven help us, red ones warrant looking into. If some >waiting task cannot afford to be dealt with four to seven days after the start date, it gets an Importance value higher than 102 which causes it to appear on the short list one its start date has arrived.

Start date is a key for controlling what's on the short list.

-Dwight

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[Susannah]

Mark,

I forgot to mention in my routine trigger task that calls the various queues I use links in the notes field - Right click Insert Link to Task....   I also have a couple that link to files - for example my post to instagram routine opens an excel file where I list our customers and the date I posted their equipment for every post because I am trying to post as many customers as I can to build up our account without doing too many of the same customer and it is impossible to keep straight without a list.  

So as I said I have my highest level parents separated by routines and one times.  So in my routine I have an end of the month project to close the month's financials (monthly reoccuring project with a lot of subtasks).  In my one time folder I have a list that I continuously add to for issues that come up during the month usually with jobs b/c my part of this is to keep WIP up to date.  A lot of my list is this project manager said this job was done on July 5th so I add to my list make sure it was final invoiced (which someone else does) in July and therefore gets marked as complete.  Sorry too much detail there.  In my trigger task under Routines/Work/Financial/Close month (those are levels of folders) I have a task that says check jobs on the End of Month One Time List and in the notes of this task I have a link to the parent task of that list.  Since this is a routine you only set it up once and it is there every month.  When you get to that step you just click the link.  Run down the one time list check off any that were completed and followup on those that weren't and then it is ready for next month.  This list I do hide b/c I don't want to work on it before the routine calls for it even though I could work on it every day if I wanted.

Hope that wasn't too confusing but putting links in the notes is actually one thing that works very well for me in my system.

Susannah

[Susannah]

Thank you Dwight.  My list is always inflammed and I don't use start dates at all so I am going to implement this today.  I didn't understand them before but this makes it clear.   For the purchases I make I usually put the due date as the expected delivery but I can see where putting that in the start date that would be better since this year nothing gets here when it is expected and I am always having to reset the due date.  I use due dates and dependencies way more than I want to also.  I like the idea of a due date only being when it will catch fire.

I do have a lot of daily routines that get a due date automatically.  They aren't going to catch fire.  Would you let them keep the due date but just turn the importance level down.  For example if our autodesk software needs to be renewed on Jan 21 that is a catch fire date b/c it would cost twice as much to miss that date.  Where as a routine to post something on our company instagram that is more of a goal and if I miss it I just check it off and catch the next one.  How do you handle things like that as far as due dates or views or tabs?

Susannah  

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[Grant]

I star items I want at the top of my list - and use this for the same reason you say - a list of thing I want to work on but do not want to put a date on.  I use Sort and put Star as the first sort option.

What I want is a way to then integrate those tasks with Google Tasks, so I can see them next to the Calendar, which only has real appointments in it (eg not start and due dates for project like things)

Cheers,

Grant