New user-Where do I start?

[Sylvia R Flores]

Hello everyone,

I decided to get organized and eagerly decided to purchase the software, but now that I have it installed on my PC and iPad I am starting to feel overwhelmed. Any tips and/or ideas are more than welcomed. Where do I start?

Thanks in advance!

Sylvia

[Christoph Zwerschke]

Am 03.06.2014 01:04, schrieb Sylvia R Flores:
> I decided to get organized and eagerly decided to purchase the software,
> but now that I have it installed on my PC and iPad I am starting to feel
> overwhelmed. Any tips and/or ideas are more than welcomed. Where do I start?

The online help for the desktop version is pretty good. It also has a
section "getting started".

-- Chris

[Henk Walraven]

Hi Sylvia,

Don't try to know all of MLO in 1 day :)

That is not possible, there are to much options for that.

A good idea is also to watch some youtube movies about GTD (Getting Things Done). These will help you to decide how to arrange all in MLO.

cu
Henk

[Dwight Arthur]

Hi, Sylvia. You have picked a great tool in MLO. One of the great things about this tool is that it supports many different methodologies for task management, and even allows you to invent your own methodology or to modify an existing methodology to match up with how you are most comfortable working. All of this flexibility can be intimidating for a newcomer, so I would recommend starting out by learning an existing methodology. Then, if something about the methodology seems burdensome or restrictive, you can adjust it to suit your needs.

The methodology I would recommend is called Getting Things Done (GTD) and was developed by David Allen. He teaches courses and offers consulting but most people can learn what they need buy buying his book "Getting Things Done: the art of stress-free productivity" or borrowing it from your library. Allen describes his methodology in terms of capturing tasks on cards or pieces of paper, MLO lets you do that on your phone or computer but otherwise it's pretty easy to see how to use MLO to accomplish the steps laid out in the book.

-Dwight

[pottster]

For download of detailed user guide:-

http://www.mylifeorganized.net/downloads/files/MyLifeOrganized%20User%27s%20Guide.pdf

In MLO desktop go to file|new|templates to review sample outlines

Quick run through on website: -

http://www.mylifeorganized.net/products/my-life-organized/how-it-works.htm

Quick intro to MLO and GTD

http://www.mylifeorganized.net/products/my-life-organized/GTD-Getting-Things-Done.htm

One of the things that was different about GTD when it came out was it advocated a bottom up approach to task management which didn't begin with trying to create a grand plan. The first job is to completely empty your mind and all of your digital and paper systems of "To Dos" into ONE trusted system. In this case your trusted system will be MLO. At this stage, the really important thing is to put EVERYTHING in this list. Don't worry about whether it's a project or a task, whether it will happen or not, whether it's high or low priority, what you need to get it done, how long it will take, whether it's urgent or not - just create one long list. Having done this you'll feel a lot better; you'll be a bit daunted, but you'll be ready for the next stage which is organizing the list. The point of the Outline is to group related tasks together and then create sub-tasks which eventually reduce tasks, however large, into something which can be done quickly and easily. You will end up with a lot of tasks but the To-Do view in MLO will apply filters to allow you to focus on, amongst other factors, what can be done now, and in what order. You can forget about the bigger picture and just concentrate on doing stuff. There's much more but if you can do all this it will be a good start.

One of my favourite resources for understanding GTD is still the talks between the creator, David Allen and the productivity guru, Merlin Mann. They were recorded in 2006 but remain insightful about what's involved in getting organized and getting things done. You can catch them here. It would probably help to have a general understanding of GTD before listening but it's not essential.

[Richard C]

Hi Sylvia

I can remember feeling exactly the same when I started using MLO - it is a bit daunting.   But 7 or 8 years on,  I am still using it and couldn't manage without it.

From what I can remember, I started by creating an empty file and just using it to manage a few tasks to get a feel for how it works.   And then later on, looking at the different templates to try and decide how to organise a larger number of tasks.

One of key (but difficult) decisions is whether to use the automatic sorting of tasks in the To Do list (based on the Computed Score) or the Manual sorting where you just drag and drop tasks into the order in which you want to do them.    I could never really get the Computed Score mechanism to work and use the manual sorting.  To switch to manual sorting, you just start dragging and dropping items in your To Do list.

I am not a big fan of Getting Things Done but it is probably worth reading because a) there are some good ideas there;  and b) it is the approach that MLO was originally based on.   BUT (and it is big but),  the beauty of MLO is that it is very flexible so that you can build your own way of working

Hope this helps and good luck.

Regards

Richard