Best practice for ToDo views and prioritization approach

[John Hochwalt]

Dear Forum,

My question is regarding the ‘best practices’ or setting up To-Do views to manage your prioritized or upcoming tasks.  I am a GTD follower & have used MLO off & on since 2015.  I recently am moving back to it from Todoist as I think some of the pros which have been outlined in this forum make it more suitable to a GTD approach. 

 

However, while the outline feature is amazing, I struggle with how to best manage and sort my upcoming tasks.  Part of the issue is the flexibility and that there is just an endless amount of options and methods to use within MLO.  I would be appreciative if any of the long-time MLO users could provide which views they use & stick with (with what filters & grouping is used if you can) in order to monitor & manage your prioritized tasks to identify tasks for this week & today.  One of my biggest hangups on Todoist is that it was heavily structured around the Due Date concept, which eventually pushed me to stop using it as I had to move-forward my un-completed tasks every day, which really kills your motivation after awhile

 

My current plan is to leverage goal to identify the time horizon & Star to identify items for today.  I would then like to optionally use Due Date (for items that really require it) and Start Date in my views for this week/today in order to pull these tasks in (regardless of goal/star).  One feature that I do like is to be able to plan for tasks for a weekend or a particular day when I know I will have some time with my kids occupied & have bandwidth to e.g., run errands or complete specific tasks.  My folder structure already is split by areas of focus / role with projects underneath.  I have never had much need to use Context in the GTD-sense for location tracking as my folders already give me this sense & my ‘work’ can be accomplished at work or home via my laptop. 

 

I’d like to understand from others if there are pros/cons that you have seen of using Start Date, Due Date, Flag, Context for the purpose of prioritizing upcoming tasks?  Also, do people actually use the MLO prioritization algorithm for prioritizing tasks or typically go with custom defined views?  

Also, I am not clear from the help material on how the google calendar sync works.  Is it required that I maintain both a start & end date in order for my tasks to sync into google calendar?

 

Thanks for any assistance you can give on this topic,

 

John

[Elizabeth Lindsay]

Greetings,

I have been using GTD and MLO in combination for many years. I avoid attempting to identify daily tasks, as I feel that does not fit with the GTD model. Instead, as I end one task, I update MLO, complete the task (if appropriate), and ensure the next action for that project is identified. Then I use the various views to determine what to work on next focusing on context, due date (true due dates), energy, etc.

The views I find most helpful are:

• By Due Date - sorting tasks by due date - I attempt to have due dates be either a hard date (following GTD model) or a soft date (one I am attempting to enforce, but I try and avoid those)
• Projects - view of my projects, sorted by their status and the active tasks
• Waiting For - I have a context @waitingfor that shows items I've delegated or need something from another. This view is very help (especially at work) for ensuring I'm following up
• Starred - I use stars to identify items that I consider a priority but don't have a due date
• Someday - I have a context @someday that I use to identify items to consider for later. This way I can review them periodically and enable them if desired. I use the conditional formatting of MLO to gray those out in the outline
• Modified recently - this shows items that have been updated in the last 24 hours - very helpful for "what did I do earlier today" and "why did that task appear to move dates" - helps to reset something if I didn't mean to change it

I hope this is helpful,

Elizabeth

[SRhyse]

Hi there!

I’ve used many approaches over the years. The one I used the most was the ‘Active Starred’ view, which acted as a ‘today’ view. Now that MLO has the Forecast view on iOS, however, I have over time come to use that, which is more intuitive and efficient for me.

In the latter view, I can simply go to a day and make a new task, and it’s now ‘due’ on that day and listed there. Any tasks with due dates will show up on that day. For larger projects with more general due dates that would require me working on them ahead of time, if I need to do something on a specific day or would like to, I simply set tasks within that project as due on different days.

I personally like scheduling as little as possible because the further out I get the more useless it becomes because it blows up, but this current approach has been very nice for me. Most tasks that I decide I want to do on a certain day or would need to do on a certain day are things I’d fill in a week or two out. It’s very easy to go to that day in the Forecast view and simply make a task there without having to fiddle with setting the dates, seeing my appointments alongside that.

Now, I’m experimenting with reserving the star feature for things I’d like ready access to. Active starred was my go to for as long as I’ve been MLO’ing, but this new approach feels more intuitive.

Best,

S

[Huw Evans]

Here's how I've been using MLO and GTD:
Contexts: I use this for three things. Firstly, the usual @context for the location that makes sense, eg. @home @work. Then a two letter code if the task relates to one of my team members, eg. HE or JF. Then a +number for estimated time, I use these: +15 min, +30 min, +1 hr, +2 hr.
Flags: Again you can define these, there are seven you can set up. I use this to highlight what I'd like to achieve This Week, Next Week or Today.
Star: If something is really important I will Star it. Useful for that urgent task that comes in. All of my views show Starred items at the top - so I can't ignore them
Folder: You can setup any needed folders to keep tasks together or as separate as you'd like to. For example, I have a Family folder, a Bills folder and a Household folder. I also have a Later folder, which will hide tasks that are moved to it - until I proactively review them.
You can make any task a folder, and can nest as many tasks as you need to as sub-tasks (there may be a limit here, but I haven't hit it yet). You can make any task or folder a project. You can also make any task or folder a goal (I haven't used the goals function yet).

I then have several custom views setup:
Today - any starred tasks on top, then any with today flag set, then any with a due date today.
This week - Any starred tasks on top, then any with this week flag set, then any with a due date within 7 days.
- I have two versions of this, a flat one and one that shows the folder hierarchy for the task.
Next week - Any tasks with a next week flag set, and any with a due date next week.
@waiting for - any tasks with this context set
@shop - any tasks with this context set

[imajeff]

I've noticed some are puzzled why tasks can be grouped different ways that might seem redundant. Folders, subtasks, or contexts. Here is the simple difference I see:

Folders are for organizing when you are creating tasks. That helps you work on editing just the ones for family, work, etc.

Contexts are for seeing your tasks when you are out looking for what to complete next. So finding all @store will tell you what to get when shopping because you are shopping at the moment.

Subtasks are the simplest form of projects even when you don't distinguish it as a project. Ideally it means you knew you need to fix dinner but now that you have said that you can see that it's too abstract so you need to specify the steps. Subtasks in that could be 

- heat peas 20 minutes

- pizza in oven 12 minutes

- set table

- place drinks

When you look in the flat ToDo list that is for completing tasks not editing them. There's just items in the order you can do them so it lists subtasks first before it shows you "fix dinner" that you can check off because it's all done.