Daily checklists in MLO

[Tolqua]

I've just started using MLO, syncing between my Windows desktop and Nexus 5 via Wi-Fi.  I'm fine with using ad-hoc tasks and organising them in Outline view, but I now want to set up a system to deal with a particular type of recurring tasks.

I have noticed that there are two or three times in my day where a ‘checklist’ of items to be completed would be extremely useful (e.g. Before going to work, Before going home, etc.).  The items on the list would all be recurrent items, but with differing patterns (e.g. every working day, every three days, alternate Wednesdays, etc.) so each day’s lists will be different – or different enough that a repeat cycle could be potentially very long.

 

The items on the lists would all be simple tasks without sub-tasks (probably) that simply need to be checked off – whether that’s achieved by marking a task complete or simply by putting a check mark in a box is not important.  What is important is to have the lists appear on my To Do list or Action List as just the checklist name (e.g. Morning Checklist) with the items on the list hidden until the list is opened.  This is important so that the space on my daily Action List isn’t filled with all the regular routine stuff on the checklists.  The checklist should probably have a reminder.  Since I’m in the habit of checking the status bar at the top of my Nexus 5 whenever I pick it up, this tends to be my immediate action list as it’s available to all apps, not just MLO.  The reminder, unless Snoozed or Cancelled, should take me straight to the open checklist or to the Action List with the checklist highlighted so that one more tap would open up the checklist ready for me to go through the things on the list.  The list would need to stay open or be available until I’d checked off all the items, at which point the checklist would disappear from the Action List until the next day (or be greyed-out or changed in some way so it’s clear it’s complete). 

 

I'm not sure whether the checklist itself would need a recurrence pattern and how it would relate to the recurrence patterns of the items, but in the unlikely event that none of the checklist items was due to appear on the list, the list should either appear empty or not appear at all.

 

It doesn't sound too complicated and I'm sure it's well within the capabilities of MLO, but I need some guidance as to the best way to set it up.  Should I make each checklist a Project with the items as Tasks or make each checklist as a Task with the items as Sub-Tasks?  How do I have the checklist appear on the To Do List, but hide the items until the checklist is opened?  How can I have the checklist disappear when all the items have been either checked off or ‘skipped’ (not done, but with the next occurrence in the pattern generated)?

 

There may be many ways to achieve this and I’m sure I’ll have a lot more questions once I start using it, but for now I just need to get it up and running enough to be able to start working with it on a daily basis so any help/suggestions will be most welcome.

Tolqua.

[Dwight]

Hi, Tolqua, glad to meet you. This forum is a good place for advice on issues like this. MLO is good at ad hoc task list but so are dozens of other task managers, some of which are probably better than MLO at the most basic stuff. Where MLO really shines is when you spend the ime to figure out what tasks you need to see when, and set up a system of contexts, filters, etc that lets MLO manage that for you. You seem to be totally headed in the right direction.

As you say, there are probably many ways to address what you are trying to do. If I wanted to do this the first thing I would try would involve dependencies on repeating trigger tasks. I will explain. Disclaimer: I have not tried this. I am not certain that I fully understand dependencies on repeating trigger tasks. My usual practice is to test any advice I'm unsure of, but I don't have time right now. So I'm going to share untested advice, please come back and report on what you do next (if you are lucky some other user will show up with advice better than mine) and if you need it, I may be able to help with debugging or further refinements next week.

OK, so what I would do would be to create a recurring task for each checklist (Morning Checklist, recurring daily at 7am, Going Home checklist recurring weekdays at 4:45pm, etc). I would then set up each of the tasks that belongs in each checklist, each with its own recurrence schedule (example, pack lunch recurring weekly on MoTuThFr). Here is an important gotcha: if there is a start time it *must* be before the start time of the checklist header. Otherwise it will be tomorrow's task. And I would feel safer if the task start time was well in advance of the header's start time. Make sure that any conditions for the task to go active (open/closed contexts, dependencies, delayed dependencies, tasks in order, uncompleted subtasks, etc) are all resolved *before* the header task is activated. You can create a reminder for each header task if you want it to appear on the phone's notification bar: I think it should work as you want but I am not sure because I don't use reminders often.

So, by 4:40 any weekday there will be a collection of tasks that are all ready to go except for one thing: they are dependent on the uncompleted "Going Home Checklist" task, which is itself inactive pending its 4:45 start time. The dependent tasks will consequently all be considered inactive and will not appear on any list of active actions. at 4:45 the Going Home Checklist header task will reach its start time and become active, appearing on your active actions list. Presumably at about that time the reminder will go off. Soon afterwards you will check the completion box on the header task. Because it is a recurring task it will not become completed; it will regenerate for the next weekday afternoon. But during this regeneration process anything that was dependent on the header task will see the dependency satisfied and will become active, appearing in your active actions list.

hth
-Dwight

--
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 mylifeorganiz...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to mylifeo...@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/fe4eab08-aa04-4d93-8f67-4fbb7410391f%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Tolqua]

Hi Dwight and thanks for your input.

I've made a start - creating the checklists as Tasks with the items on the lists as Sub-Tasks.  I hadn't considered using start times at all since the checklists themselves are not actually to-do items and even the items themselves aren't something that needs this level of detail.  The important thing to remember here is that it's a list to which I need to refer and check things off before I leave some place (after which point it's a hassle to go back).  The items themselves don't need scheduling and should have been done anyway by the time I look at the list so I'll avoid start times and durations unless they're needed for the successful operation of the system. 

Like you, I'm also not sure how dependencies and recurrences work yet, but I've already found a couple of problems before we get to this level:  Firstly, the checklists themselves are top level items and don't show on the desktop To Do list for some reason (although they are there in the All Items list) yet the reminder pops up on the phone at the right time fine.  When I ten tap the reminder, I get a dialogue box where I can Snooze, Dismiss or Complete the item in addition to a link that opens the [checklist] Task.  The first three options are obvious, but only opening the item has any chance of accessing the items on the list (Sub-Tasks), yet even then, they're only visible as a small list of Subtasks by scrolling down so there's no ability to 'check off' the items from here.  Even going in to Edit the task doesn't give this access so my need to get quickly from the reminder to the 'check off' screen isn't met by doing it this way.  I may have to settle for dismissing the reminder then just manually opening MLO and then the view that gives me the list, but this is really rather clumsy so a rethink may be in order. 

Even if your dependency suggestion works to create the checklist correctly at the right time, my hope of accessing it smoothly appear to be hampered by limitations of where the reminder can take me and accessing the Items (Sub-tasks) from the checklist (Task).

Tolqua.

[Tolqua]

Hi Dwight.

Not having a great deal of success here.  I'm spending more time writing these posts and sending questions to MLO support than I'm saving using the program.  This is to be expected at such an early stage, but there are limits and if I'm not seeing any light at the end of the tunnel I'll have to call it a day and try something else (Todoist seems to have much better support, but I just couldn't get started with the unhelpfully 'clean' UI).  I've made a specific request for some input on this here, but no luck so far and I'm still waiting for a response to my last set of questions.  Looks like it's just one guy handling support and the quality isn't great.

Here's a copy of the message which brings you up to speed with where I am:

I’ve made a start and had some success using Folders for the lists with the list items appearing as recurring Tasks (which accommodates the differing recurrences of the items), but I’m having some problems:

 

1. I’ve set a daily recurrence pattern for the list Folders, but since they’re folders, they don’t get completed so how’s the recurrence supposed to work?  I’ve set them so they’ll regenerate when all Tasks are done but that doesn’t seem to have created new folders – they’re still showing yesterday’s date:

 

 

I have the reminder set to get triggered from the list rather than the individual tasks (that’s the point of the checklist) so if it doesn’t get regenerated I don’t get a reminder.  What’s the point of allowing recurrence options on a folder if it can’t be completed and doesn’t get automatically regenerated when all its tasks are complete?

 

1. When I tap on the Folder’s reminder (on the phone) it takes me to the folder, but I can’t see how to get to the Tasks inside – This is the same whether it’s a Folder or a Task.

    

2. How do I Skip a recurring Task (it’s not required today so I don’t want to mark it as done, but I do need to check it off the list and regenerate the next instance)?

You can also see from the screen-shot that I have a couple of empty erronrous duplicated <Inbox> folders.  I have no idea how these got created, but they only appeared after I'd done a Wi-Fi sync.  I've asked MLO support for some help, but they just said to delete them.  This I can do, but it isn't the first time I've seen them so it probably won't be the last. 

I'm a bit concerned now about the slowness of my progress and am beginning to doubt that MLO's suitable for my needs.  I don't mind putting in the effort, but I'm seeing what looks like upredictable (buggy?) behaviour, the support's not great and you're the only one to have given any input here.  Also, despite looking awesomely powerful and configurable, MLO's a bit daunting in its complexity.  I've also had some unnecessary questions regarding the rather limited Wi-Fi sync that could easily have been avoided if the documentation were clearer, but pointing this out didn't get a great response.  For now I'm pushing ahead, but life's too short to waste time going down roads that lead to more work so I'm also taking another look around. 

Thanks again for your time.

Tolqua.

 

On Thursday, 21 April 2016 14:37:50 UTC+1, Dwight Arthur wrote:

[Francesco Consoli]

I found the support side good enough. Support is separated from developers.

They answer in 12hr average. Not bad at all.

I didn't look at number of developers only (when i chose MLO), I looked at number of years they are up and running. 

May be they have some issues (normal) on support side. I suggest you to keep on asking for help through support email.

 

PS! Todoist is just a big marketing product. They push on social connections, but it is still a simple to-do list with tags. 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/34052e0c-968c-4fc5-907d-abb7c0182888%40googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

 

Email had 1 attachment:

• Auto Generated Inline Image 1
  
    272k (image/png)
  

 

[Laurence Glazier]

Hi Tolqua

Go to the folder properties, and where the recurrence info is, click on skip occurrence. I do it this way at the moment. There are other ways too.

Support is an issue, but this is a very comprehensive application.

Laurence

[Dwight]

Hi, Tolqua.
There are an unusually large number of issues in your latest post. Let's deal with some smaller ones first.

1. Support. I rely on the MLO support email for issues like, I found a bug, or I can't figure out how some feature should work. I rely on the forums for help like,  how can I get the most out of some feature,  how do I use MLO to manage some complex situation, or is there a workaround for some bug that isn't fixed yet. This is working pretty well for me.

2. Recurring Folders. Everything you said is correct. Folders can do everything that tasks can do except for being completed. This includes being a project, which is sometimes useful. It also includes having recurrence options, which is unfortunately meaningless for an object that cannot be completed (as you have pointed out). My guess is that nobody before you has ever tried. It would be a good idea for mlo to gray out the recurrence options  for folders. But this does not seem like a really urgent fix.

3. Multiple inboxes. It's very likely that at some point you created a new profile on some device, used it for a while, and then set up synch, and this caused your multiple inboxes. Cure: pick one inbox and move all of your inbox content there. Delete all empty inboxes. Sync. If you have multiple inboxes again, repeat the procedure another time or two. Explanation: New profiles are created without an inbox. There are numerous functions within MLO that reference the inbox, if there is none one is created. Now you have one. If you sync, the sync process will add the inbox folder from the cloud copy to your profile. Now you have two You are allowed to have multiple tasks on MLO with the same description, so MLO does not recognize anything wrong with having two inboxes. This should probably be fixed, but none of us have pushed the issue very hard, probably because it only affects users who are still trying to get their workflows set up, after a while they get it cleaned up and don't care enough to pursue getting a fix.

4. Repeating tasks with repeating parents. This is very unlikely to produce the results that you wish for. Each task will be regenerated when it is completed, and then will be regenerated again when its parent is completed. If that is what you really want you can do it but almost everyone wants their tasks to be regenerated only once for each time it's completed.

OK, that brings us to the big issue: the requirements for the checklist you want to build. Short answer: I don't know how to meet all of these requirements in a single design. Maybe somebody else does, in which case I will learn something. Otherwise, I would venture to say it's probably not possible. This does not happen very often. One possibility here is that you are asking for something that is actually more complex than what you really need. In that case, , maybe some of the people on this forum could help you envision something that you would find useful although it's not what you were requesting. Alternatively, maybe there is a different tool that would be able to do all of this. I haven't seen one, but maybe you would find one.

Recapping what I think are your requirements:

• Multiple checklists
• Each checklist has a header that describes it
• Each checklist follows a schedule for when it appears, like daily 0900 or weekdays 1700
• Each checklist has multiple (zero, one or several) tasks under its header
• When all of the tasks in a checklist are completed the checklist header becomes inactive and does not appear until it is next scheduled. The checklist header does not have to be closed or completed, completion of the last task will close it.
• When a task in a checklist is completed it does not reappear until some subsequent appearance of the checklist title
• A task may be present every time the checklist header appears or in may have its own schedule. For example, a daily 0900 checklist could include a task which appears only on weekdays.
• A checklist can be opened with a single click at which time all tasks that appear on this issue of the checklist will appear
• A checklist can have a reminder which will appear in the notification area of a phone running MLO. From the reminder area, it should take no more than one click to bring up the checklist header and another click to open the checklist and display its tasks.

As I said, I cannot envision a way to use MLO to satisfy these requirements. If I were trying to make checklists of this sort, I would devote a context to each checklist and create a saved view showing each checklist. I would create tasks, each with its appropriate recurrence and with a context associated with  its checklist.On my phone, I would create a home page within my launcher with up to four MLO widgets, each showing one checklist. On Windows, I would create a series of locked workspaces, each showing one checklist. When I want to see a particular checklist it should be only one tap to get there. I would doubt that I would need a reminder for checklists that are tied to major events of the day, like getting up or end of work. If I felt, for example, that lunchtime might sneak up on me without my remembering to scan my lunchtime checklist, I might set an alarm in my alarm app that says "lunchtime checklist" to remind me, but without a link to the checklist - no a big loss to me if the checklist is only a tap away.
-Dwight

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/34052e0c-968c-4fc5-907d-abb7c0182888%40googlegroups.com.

[Laurence Glazier]

Hi Dwight

Just to say that I use the recurrence property for a folder containing todo lists every day, I hope there are no plans to remove that feature, try it out, skip next (possibly receded by up to current) occurrence is an approach to resetting todo lists within a folder. I prefer storing my check lists in folders, seems neater to me :)

Laurence

[Dwight]

Hi, Laurence. I had not thought of using skip occurence to force a recurring folder to regenerate. Thanks for the tip.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/29292ec0-65e0-4ad6-9532-7b0ec30f3da4%40googlegroups.com.

[Tolqua]

Hi Dwight.

Thanks so much for your patience and understanding.  You've taken a lot of trouble to understand and deal with the problems I'm up against and it's much appreciated. 

I'm quite surprised to learn that recurrence options actually don't apply to folders at all - I was sure I was missing something, but if what you're saying is true that they should either be greyed out or just not appear at all, it's a pretty big design blunder in my opinion.  No problem to deal with once you know, but for me it doesn't exactly inspire confidence at this early stage.  I haven't exactly gone looking for faults, but this plus the rogue <inbox> folders bug and a few other minor design anomalies have me question whether I'm willing to entrust the organisation of my life to a system that's showing problems before I've begun putting it under any real load. 

Having said this, your attention to my posts is very encouraging and you are clearly well-versed with MLO's flexibility and power.  Your summary of my checklist system is spot-on as far as I can see, although, I'm sure if I were able to get this implemented easily and start using it, I'd soon want to change things.  As you say, it's probably not possible to achieve and is, for sure, more complex to set-up than it at first appears.  If correctly done it would be easy and straightforward to use, but for now I'm going to make do with a simple set of recurring 'Checklist' tasks with a list of items in their notes.  No physical check-off of items and those with different recurrence patterns will just have to be separate tasks for now.  I may come back to this later using your suggestions of applying contexts and filtered views to achieve the complex checklist result, but for now, I'd rather spend the time working with MLO and getting to know it. 

I'm still amazed that there's no clear path to sub-tasks when opening a task - Am I missing something obvious or is there some logical reason that this wouldn't work?  There also appears to be no way to 'skip' an instance of a recurring task from it's reminder (as in Outlook, for example).  Looks like this can only be done in the properties window in the desktop app.  Surely not?  This is a really basic 'must-have' - I'm finding I can only do this by completing the task then deleting the completed task - very clumsy.

Okay, enough for now - I could spend all day doing this, but nothing would get done.  I have more to say, but it'll have to wait 'til later.

Thanks again for all your help.

Tolqua.

[Tolqua]

Hi Dwight.

Thanks a million for your patience and help with my issues.  I spent over half an hour yesterday writing a reply.  I posted it and got the notification saying it had been accepted for review so I don't understand why it hasn't appeared, but it looks like it's been lost (Don't you just hate it when that happens?) I don't have the time to do it all again now - I'll have to come back to it later.

Tolqua.

[Tolqua]

Hi Dwight.

Really sorry you've not had my reply sooner.  I did respond in detail the next day, clicked Post and saw a message saying it had been sent for approval so I was surprised and disappointed to not see it there later in the day.  I have no idea what happened to it and can't see any reason it would have been rejected (I'd assume that if it had been I'd have heard something, but nothing here or in the associated Gmail account) so I posted another brief reply apologising and explaining that I didn't have the time to write it all again right then and that I'd do so later.  Unfortunately, the same thing happened again so I'm trying this form my work machine - It seems unlikely, but I don't know what else I can do.

If the posting's successful I'll do the original reply again, but there seems little point doing so unless it's going to be seen.

Tolqua.

[Tolqua]

Hi Dwight

I have tried posting 5 or 6 times over the past week and am resorting to foreign assistance for help.  Attempting to understand the technical issues by remotely posting this reply.

Regards, Tolqua

...

[Dwight]

On 4/28/2016 3:55 AM, Tolqua wrote:
> I'm quite surprised to learn that recurrence options actually don't
> apply to folders at all

Did you catch Laurence Glazier's post? He pointed out that you can set
up a recurring folder and then cause it to regenerate its subtasks by
right clicking the folder and selecting "skip occurence"

> I'm still amazed that there's no clear path to sub-tasks when opening
> a task - Am I missing something obvious or is there some logical
> reason that this wouldn't work?

On Windows, if you are using a view that does not show subtasks because
it's a flat (or non-hierarchical, or to-do) view, you can position the
cursor at the beginning of a task and doubleclick and MLO will open an
"all tasks" (hierarchical) view with the same task selected. Its
subtasks will be right there under it, unless it's collapsed in which
case a single click will expand it.

> There also appears to be no way to 'skip' an instance of a recurring
> task from it's reminder (as in Outlook, for example). Looks like this
> can only be done in the properties window in the desktop app. Surely
> not? This is a really basic 'must-have' - I'm finding I can only do
> this by completing the task then deleting the completed task - very
> clumsy.

Skipping is a really great feature especially if you have missed several
occurrences of the task and you want to skip all of them up to today. If
you are just trying to skip a single, current occurrence I do not
understand what is so important about skipping - why notjust complete
the task, which you can easily do from any view or from the reminder. I
am guessing that it's because you don't want to be bothered about
deleting the completed task. But there are other excellent ways of
avoiding that. For one thing you can turn on automatic archiving of any
task that has been completed for more than one hour. Or, when you set up
the recurrence pattern (using the Task Recurrence pop-up) you can click
the Advanced Options button and then, in the Task Recurrence Advanced
Options popup, tick the checkbox for "Do not create a completed copy of
this task on recurring"

[Tolqua]

Thanks for your input Francesco.

I'm afraid my experience of support is nowhere near as good as yours.  I've been evaluating MLO for over a month and had a few replies back within 24 hours, but a similar number have taken significantly longer.  However, the quality hasn't been great with some 'answers' repeated several times even after I'd made it clear I'd 'got it' and a number of key questions still remain unanswered despite reminders.  perhaps the most worrying thing, though, is that I've had no response from support at all to my last four messages.  Not sure what's going on at MLO, but I don't care how good the product is if I can't get support.

I'm not sure what you mean about Todoist pushing social connections (not thinking of Wunderlist, are you), but I don't think it's entirely valid to dismiss it as a marketing tool.  I can see it doesn't have the power and flexibility of MLO, but it has some great features, a much wider user base and their support is in a different league.

Tolqua.

[Tolqua]

Hi Laurence.

Thanks for your input. 

It's on the phone app that I'll mostly be needing to Skip and I can see that Tasks can be skipped easily, but I think I was wanting to do this on a folder and the option's not there (I think) whereas it is on the desktop as you say.

Tolqua.

[Dwight Arthur]

Would you be interested in posting a summary list of your unanswered key questions to this forum?

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/defc1610-e5af-463a-a6a0-51def7236c90%40googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

-- Sent with K-@ Mail - the evolution of emailing.

[Tolqua]

Hi Dwight.

Yes, I did see this although I'm not sure how it's useful.

I want direct access to subtasks after opening the task on the phone as this is where I'll be reacting to most reminders and taking action as a result.  Having subtasks represent the items on my checklist seemed the most obvious way to do this, but without that pathway it doesn't work.

Skipping tasks is, as you say, really useful and I can how see the 'skip all up to present' would be useful although I haven't had a situation yet where it is (only a matter of time, though), but skipping is also the easy way to generate the next instance without leaving a completed task.  Whilst this is normally not a problem, there will be situations where having a record of which instances were actually completed, rather than skipped could be very useful.

As I said in my reply to Laurence, it was when I was using a folder as the checklist itself that I had not been able to use Skip because it isn't available on the phone app.

Tolqua.

[Dwight]

On 5/11/2016 9:24 AM, Tolqua wrote:

> I want direct access to subtasks after opening the task on the phone
> as this is where I'll be reacting to most reminders and taking action
> as a result.

OK, I experimented a little bit with this (I dont use reminders much)
and now I see what your issue is. When you tap a task name on a
reminder, you get a widget-like view of a single item's properties page.
There is no easy clickstream from there to the full app. So you can see
(and edit, within limits) the task that triggered the reminder but no
other tasks. It's not just about subtasks it's about any task other than
the one that kicked the reminder. I have no idea how feasible or
difficult it would be to give you a path to the full task from the reminder.

If this were for me, I would create a "recent reminders"view showing
items whose reminder time fell between five minutes in the future and
one hour in the past and install that view into a widget. When a
reminder went off I would clear it and look at the widget, where I would
see something like "morning checklist". From there it would be five taps
to the full set of subtasks:
1. three dot icon in widget upper right to get the menu
2. "run mlo app" to open the app showing the recent reminders view
3. tap the morning checklist item to highlight it
4. tap the hamburger menu in the top left to get the view menu
5. tap All Tasks to get the hierarchical menu with the morning checklist
selected.
OK I know that this is five taps instead of the one you wanted but there
are no requirements for thinking or decisions so my guess is that of you
do it several times per day, after two weeks your fingers will do it
with no help from your brain in under a second.

> it was when I was using a folder as the checklist itself that I had
> not been able to use Skip because it isn't available on the phone app.

After you tap an item name in a reminder or swipe left to right over an
item in a task-list you will get a task preview page. A little ways down
from the top is a giant green "skip task" button.