Getting MLO to tell you what to do next...

[Marvin]

I've been using MLO for years. I'm one of those that migrated from Bonsai in the post Palm days. I've got a pretty good system setup managing everything in a single file with three main items, personal/hobby/work. But one of the things that I don't have MLO doing, is sorting out what I should be doing next. Could you share with me how you've got your MLO set up to tell you what is the higher priority or short list the things you need to do next.
I'm not talking about just next actions, although I'm sure that'll be a big part of it. I'm more interested in how you manage to organize your items to differentiate between the urgent/non-important and the non-urgent/important kind of items. Is there a way that your lists change as due dates get closer where non-important things get dumped? Do you have anything set up that factors in how much effort a particular item takes and is that factored in somehow? (larger projects started earlier, smaller ones left later...)
I've been using MLO to keep track of what needs to be done and sorting the information with due dates and such. I'm just wondering how much more I could be doing as far as getting MLO to suggest tasks in a slightly more complex manner based on the data that I've entered.

[Christoph Zwerschke]

Am 09.01.2018 um 18:05 schrieb Marvin:
> I've been using MLO for years. I'm one of those that migrated from
> Bonsai in the post Palm days. I've got a pretty good system setup
> managing everything in a single file with three main items,
> personal/hobby/work. But one of the things that I don't have MLO
> doing, is sorting out what I should be doing next. Could you share
> with me how you've got your MLO set up to tell you what is the higher
> priority or short list the things you need to do next. I'm not
> talking about just next actions, although I'm sure that'll be a big
> part of it. I'm more interested in how you manage to organize your
> items to differentiate between the urgent/non-important and the
> non-urgent/important kind of items.

Hi Marvin.

Theoretically the "To-Do" view should give you just that, a flattened
list of all the items, sorted by the notorious "computed score" that is
a pretty unique feature of MLO.

I say "theoretically" because the "computed score" does not quite work
the way which I think makes sense. For instance, in its calculation,
items with no due date are treated as being due to day, instead of due
in infinite days (later and thus less urgent than any task with
specified due date).

Also, it does not factor in the "goal" (week, month, year) except for an
option to add a boost to weekly goals.

Actually I don't understand why MLO has both an "urgency" and "goal"
property, because to me they pretty much mean the same. So in MLO you
can input the same thing twice, and even add conflicting values.

Request to the developers:

Could you consider re-visiting the "computed score" algorithm and
unifying goal/urgency into a single setting in version 5? I'd like to
have an urgency field with settings like today, next 3 days, week, next
14 days, month, quarter, year, 3 years, decade. Similarly, "importance"
should have priorities A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3, C1, C2, C3. This would be
3x3 settings for each of the two qualities urgency and importance. Also,
entering from such a fixed set of values would be easier and could be
handled easier with a choice on desktop and mobile using something like
a slider with 9 tick marks or 9 buttons in a row.

Instead of time-based goals like "year", MLO could then in a later
version grow "purpose-based" goals, like "getting PhD", where you could
mark all tasks leading to the same goal, for those who want to be able
to categorize and review their tasks in that way.

I believe with these changes MLO could become so much better.

Still, even in the current version the computed score ordering is
helpful if you use it in a view where either all or none of the values
have a due date, and all tasks have the same goal.

So I have created views like "this week" (goal = week or due date < 7
days), "this month" (goal = week or month or due date < 30) and "this
year" (similarly). I'm using these in my daily, weekly, monthly, yearly
reviews. E.g. in the daily review I pick the tasks from "this week" and
mark everything I want to do today with a star. In my weekly review I
look at "this month" and change the goal to "week" for every task I want
to tackle this week. Etc.

I think it's important that you distinguish between "review time" and
"to do time", where you just work off the starred things from the list
whether you like them or not. Sometimes when there are not "stars" or I
don't have the time or energy to work on them, I pick items from extra
views for "low energy" context or based on "max time".

Workspaces also help. For instance, you can create workspaces for
"Personal" and "Work" which are zoom to the respective branches.

-- Christoph

[Dwight]

Christoph: I understand that the 200-point scale for importance is more
than you need and that nine levels would be enough for you. That's fine
and I would like you to have a nine-value scale if that would help you.
Please know that I use the 200 level scale for importance and it would
be a real hardship for me if I had to manage my work queue with only
nine levels of importance. Ideally there would be a way that you could
use nine levels while I would still use 200.

-Dwight

[Christoph Zwerschke]

Am 10.01.2018 um 04:35 schrieb Dwight:
> I understand that the 200-point scale for importance is more than you
> need and that nine levels would be enough for you. That's fine and I
> would like you to have a nine-value scale if that would help you.
> Please know that I use the 200 level scale for importance and it
> would be a real hardship for me if I had to manage my work queue with
> only nine levels of importance. Ideally there would be a way that you
> could use nine levels while I would still use 200.

Right. There should be either a config option that lets you choose
between 3 (A-C), 9 (A1-C3) or 200 importance levels, or the inputs
should work in a way that allows easy input on both scales. The levels
A-C could easily map to appropriate values in the 200 level range
internally, so that no compatibility issues arise.

The reasons why I don't want too many levels are 1. that such precise
numbers take more time to enter and decide (can you really give such
precise numbers to your tasks?) and 2. that this means sorting is then
primarily driven by the importance, not by the other factors. I want the
other factors like urgency to kick in as the second level of ordering.
If all the tasks have different importance, then the secondary factors
never play a role. How do you deal with this?

-- Christoph

[MOK | MATSURU]

Hi Christoph Zwerschke,

just in case you do not know, on windows version, right click on the scale gives you 5 levels: Max, More, Normal, Less, Min.

FYI, i don't use this as i find it troublesome.

-- Christoph

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mylifeorganized+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to mylifeorganized@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/f6e2d081-6fc8-68a3-2305-da8074143015%40online.de.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Christoph Zwerschke]

Am 10.01.2018 um 10:07 schrieb MOK | MATSURU:
> just in case you do not know, on windows version, right click on the
> scale gives you 5 levels: Max, More, Normal, Less, Min.
>
> FYI, i don't use this as i find it troublesome.

Right, but that still needs 2 mouse clicks, and you need to know that
trick. That's not really user friendly. A list with 3 or 9 buttons or
(maybe even with keyboard shortcuts) would be more convenient. Or a
slider with 9 tick marks, and it could be made configurable whether that
slider should be "continuous" allowing all 200 values or always jump to
the nearest tick mark.

Anyway, my actual issue was not so much with the number of levels, but
with the redundancy in urgency and goal fields. Urgency should have 3
course steps that map to the goals of week, month, year and finer steps,
9 finer steps mapping to today, next 3 days, etc up to... next 3 years.
Again, these 3 or 9 steps could easily map to the existing 0..200 range.

Btw, there is also redundancy in the input of urgency/goal and
start/due/reminder date. If urgency/goal would be automatically derived
from start/due/reminder, this could spare some input.

My main point is that it should be as simple as possible to input a task
and set its properties, in a consistent way. For automatic sorting, it
is critical that the fields are all filled consistently.

-- Christoph

[MOK | MATSURU]

There are 2 workarounds i can propose to you:
01. Use tags on task name = [A1], [A2], [A3]...so on

- Then u can adjust your views to sort according to them.

- to facilitate faster typing, you can use Autohotkey (windows app) and assign something like "..1" and it will become "[A1]"

- On android, you can do the same with autotext enable keyboard such as Multiling O keyboard or use an app called Textpand.

02. Create [A1], [A2], [A3]... so on in CONTEXT

- assign your task with priorities faster by using keyboard shortcut ALT-L, then type "[" to list out all your tags. 

- or use autohotkey like what i mentioned on the 1st method. 

- or assign keyboard shortcuts to all your context tags. F8>select context>Propertise

- then you can create views/list and group/sort by context.

Hope this is helpful. 

[Christoph Zwerschke]

Right, you really can extend and customize MLO to your likes if you
want. Personally, I tend to avoid working "against the system" (by e.g.
abusing tags or context as priorities in a system that already has
priorities), or customizing and tuning systems too much.

-- Christoph

[Marvin Hamm]

Thanks for all this feedback, lots to ponder.

I'm working on a boat refit and came across this exact 3x3 idea and
built myself a bunch of tags with icons. In the end I gave it up. The
concept made sense in the description, but I just couldn't remember it.
I ended up creating descriptors that end up making more sense for me:
before winter, dead of winter, spring, launch, on water... And gave them
icons that made sense, so that works out quite intuitively. So for me,
in this project Tags = which season the work can or should be done/needs
to be completed.

The neat part with contexts, is I've found I can create different sets
for different parts of my list and they still all sort nice in their
different 'zones'. I have a Morning/Afternoon/Evening set I use in my
general outline that doesn't interfere with the set in my boat refit.

Marvin