How do you do your GTD reviews?
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Rob
Nov 2, 2011, 5:12:42 PM11/2/11
to MyLifeOrganized for Android
MLO doesn't seem to have special support for formal GTD reviews. Any
recommendations?
recommendations?
MOK | MATSURU
Nov 2, 2011, 7:52:25 PM11/2/11
to mlo-a...@googlegroups.com
Rob,
I am not sure what you mean.
I think we can always do the review using the OUTLINE mode?
The OUTLINE mode is the only view that is complete. We can see everything there.
If you have the WINDOWS version, use that instead of ANDROID. PC has bigger screen and the version has move function. I find easier to do review/add tasks/move task around.
Hope this helps. :-)
regards,
MOK | MATSURU
- MALAYSIA -
--------------------------
www.matsuru.net
Support me at http://fans.matsuru.net
--------------------------
Saito College
Tel : +603 – 7954 7200 (ext221)
Fax : +603 – 7954 7211
www.saito.edu.my
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--------------------------
Rob
Nov 2, 2011, 10:31:43 PM11/2/11
to MyLifeOrganized for Android
In gtd you have daily, weekly, monthly, etc. reviews during which you
update items and refresh your memory on what's in the system.
Priorities or due dates might change, you remove duplicates or clarify
items, or you might decide to cancel some items.
You don't want to review everything all the time because if you have,
say, 1000 items in the system it would take too long and you would be
unlikely to perform the reviews. Many things just don't require review
as often, while others may be more time-sensitive. Your "big picture"
reviews also don't need to be done as frequently.
On Nov 2, 6:52 pm, "MOK | MATSURU" <m...@matsuru.net> wrote:
> Rob,
>
> I am not sure what you mean.
>
> I think we can always do the review using the OUTLINE mode?
>
> The OUTLINE mode is the only view that is complete. We can see everything
> there.
> If you have the WINDOWS version, use that instead of ANDROID. PC has
> bigger screen and the version has move function. I find easier to do
> review/add tasks/move task around.
>
> Hope this helps. :-)
>
> regards,
>
> MOK | MATSURU
> - MALAYSIA -
> --------------------------
> *www.matsuru.net
> Support me athttp://fans.matsuru.net
update items and refresh your memory on what's in the system.
Priorities or due dates might change, you remove duplicates or clarify
items, or you might decide to cancel some items.
You don't want to review everything all the time because if you have,
say, 1000 items in the system it would take too long and you would be
unlikely to perform the reviews. Many things just don't require review
as often, while others may be more time-sensitive. Your "big picture"
reviews also don't need to be done as frequently.
On Nov 2, 6:52 pm, "MOK | MATSURU" <m...@matsuru.net> wrote:
> Rob,
>
> I am not sure what you mean.
>
> I think we can always do the review using the OUTLINE mode?
>
> The OUTLINE mode is the only view that is complete. We can see everything
> there.
> If you have the WINDOWS version, use that instead of ANDROID. PC has
> bigger screen and the version has move function. I find easier to do
> review/add tasks/move task around.
>
> Hope this helps. :-)
>
> regards,
>
> MOK | MATSURU
> - MALAYSIA -
> --------------------------
> Support me athttp://fans.matsuru.net
> --------------------------
> Saito College
> Tel : +603 – 7954 7200 (ext221)
> Fax : +603 – 7954 7211www.saito.edu.my
> Be our fan on Facebook!www.facebook.com/saitocollege
> *--------------------------
> Saito College
> Tel : +603 – 7954 7200 (ext221)
> Fax : +603 – 7954 7211www.saito.edu.my
> Be our fan on Facebook!www.facebook.com/saitocollege
MOK | MATSURU
Nov 2, 2011, 10:35:03 PM11/2/11
to mlo-a...@googlegroups.com
Rob,
On the top level, create 3 folders with labels daily, weekly, monthly. Move you task into them and review accordingly?
Use the weekly, monthly, yearly goals in MLO?
does this help? :-)
Lisa Stroyan
Nov 3, 2011, 10:06:06 AM11/3/11
to mlo-a...@googlegroups.com
I, when I've tried to follow GTD, keep a set of desktop views for my structured reviews, as well as a set of tasks that lead me through the actual review itself.
Now though I've evolved my own use model mainly because I wasn't disciplined enough to keep myself on track with GTD. Still though, I do most of my big picture thinking on the desktop, with views that are very specific to my process and contexts and tree structure.
My tree structure is divided by major life area: Work, Family, Health, Self, community, etc. Because I under use Projects, right now I have each of these areas defined as a project, that I can see all of my tasks in each area divided by project in the projects view.
Under each area, I have a someday maybe list which has the hide in to do feature set so that I don't see those in my task lists.
Right now, what I do is I use a combination of the goals field and the starred field to narrow my focus to what I'm working on today and this week.
I use starred for the things I'm going to try to accomplish today, and I use weekly goal for a moving list of what's going to happen in the next week or so. Similarly for monthly and yearly.
I have lots of tasks that are not marked with a goal. These rarely get reviewed. Usually what I do is move tasks from yearly into monthly and monthly and weekly and then star the weeklies.
I sort my views ( I'm not sure you have this feature yet in public beta?) first by starred, then by goal, and then either by caption or computed score. This gives me a pretty well ordered list of what I need to work on right now. I would really like to be able to filter by goal and starred, too, so things I don't need to focus on are out of sight.
I process my inbox about once a week, adding context, goal, and moving each item to the proper place in my tree.
I use the none context to indicate that something has not yet been processed, because I always add a context and process the task the same time. On the desktop, all of my working views have a special case scenario to include tasks that are in the inbox and don't have a context yet. Since I have to process these tasks to get them out of my way, it keeps me accountable .
There are definitely features on android that I could use to finesse this model, but I wouldn't like to see a GTD use model enforced upon me. I want the flexibility to adapt the use model to my workflow.
I think what I would like to see is a set of desktop templates and a set of views that create each use model that MLO supports, that can be created or modified by users. But I don't see the creation of each use model being done on android. Instead, I would imagine that desktop users could export the views to android, and without the desktop, android users would be limited to a finite set of use models that are predefined.
Lisa
--
Sent from my phone.
Reply directly to me at mailto:lstr...@gmail.com
Now though I've evolved my own use model mainly because I wasn't disciplined enough to keep myself on track with GTD. Still though, I do most of my big picture thinking on the desktop, with views that are very specific to my process and contexts and tree structure.
My tree structure is divided by major life area: Work, Family, Health, Self, community, etc. Because I under use Projects, right now I have each of these areas defined as a project, that I can see all of my tasks in each area divided by project in the projects view.
Under each area, I have a someday maybe list which has the hide in to do feature set so that I don't see those in my task lists.
Right now, what I do is I use a combination of the goals field and the starred field to narrow my focus to what I'm working on today and this week.
I use starred for the things I'm going to try to accomplish today, and I use weekly goal for a moving list of what's going to happen in the next week or so. Similarly for monthly and yearly.
I have lots of tasks that are not marked with a goal. These rarely get reviewed. Usually what I do is move tasks from yearly into monthly and monthly and weekly and then star the weeklies.
I sort my views ( I'm not sure you have this feature yet in public beta?) first by starred, then by goal, and then either by caption or computed score. This gives me a pretty well ordered list of what I need to work on right now. I would really like to be able to filter by goal and starred, too, so things I don't need to focus on are out of sight.
I process my inbox about once a week, adding context, goal, and moving each item to the proper place in my tree.
I use the none context to indicate that something has not yet been processed, because I always add a context and process the task the same time. On the desktop, all of my working views have a special case scenario to include tasks that are in the inbox and don't have a context yet. Since I have to process these tasks to get them out of my way, it keeps me accountable .
There are definitely features on android that I could use to finesse this model, but I wouldn't like to see a GTD use model enforced upon me. I want the flexibility to adapt the use model to my workflow.
I think what I would like to see is a set of desktop templates and a set of views that create each use model that MLO supports, that can be created or modified by users. But I don't see the creation of each use model being done on android. Instead, I would imagine that desktop users could export the views to android, and without the desktop, android users would be limited to a finite set of use models that are predefined.
Lisa
--
Sent from my phone.
Reply directly to me at mailto:lstr...@gmail.com
OC OConnor
Nov 3, 2011, 10:22:05 PM11/3/11
to mlo-a...@googlegroups.com
Nice recap Lisa - sharing that type of process is very helpful - thank you!
Rob
Nov 7, 2011, 6:58:13 PM11/7/11
to MyLifeOrganized for Android
Thanks for the detailed overview of your review process, Lisa. It
sounds like you've run into some of the same problems that I'm
dreading--namely, that some items stagnate, that using views and
filters in MLO to carry out a review can be a complex and frustrating
undertaking, and that you don't know what has been reviewed and what
hasn't.
The review process would be similar to adding reminders, but not
intrusive. Let me share the review process I have in mind after
talking to a friend who uses OmniFocus:
1. A new "review" view would be added to the app.
2. When you add/process a new task, you set a review frequency
(similar to setting up a recurring task--e.g., "second Monday of every
month" or "1 week after the next time the task is checked off from the
review"). The review frequency could also be set on a folder or
context, just as other attributes can be set on a folder.
3. The task does not show up in "review" until its next review date
comes up.
4. Check the "review" view as often as you like; it will only show
items for the current review.
5. You can update tasks in the review as necessary, or just check them
off to show that you've reviewed them.
Future improvement: filter the review by priority, urgency, due date,
context, project, folder, goal, etc.
The killer feature of this type of review process is that it allows
your reviews to be incremental, so you can do the review while waiting
for the bus, standing in line at the grocery store, etc. Because you
eventually review everything in the list, you don't have to worry
about things being forgotten, no matter how many items you have. It
also gives you the ability to easily prune duplicates and delete tasks
that no longer should be in your system (e.g., an expired coupon from
one of those online deal sites).
Of course, this feature would not force any particular workflow on
anyone--just as you can choose whether or not to set recurrences,
reminders and deadlines; you could choose whether or not to set a
review frequency for each context, folder or task.
I have some ideas on how to abuse contexts and meta-tasks to perform
reviews, but I don't think those ideas will scale very well.
sounds like you've run into some of the same problems that I'm
dreading--namely, that some items stagnate, that using views and
filters in MLO to carry out a review can be a complex and frustrating
undertaking, and that you don't know what has been reviewed and what
hasn't.
The review process would be similar to adding reminders, but not
intrusive. Let me share the review process I have in mind after
talking to a friend who uses OmniFocus:
1. A new "review" view would be added to the app.
2. When you add/process a new task, you set a review frequency
(similar to setting up a recurring task--e.g., "second Monday of every
month" or "1 week after the next time the task is checked off from the
review"). The review frequency could also be set on a folder or
context, just as other attributes can be set on a folder.
3. The task does not show up in "review" until its next review date
comes up.
4. Check the "review" view as often as you like; it will only show
items for the current review.
5. You can update tasks in the review as necessary, or just check them
off to show that you've reviewed them.
Future improvement: filter the review by priority, urgency, due date,
context, project, folder, goal, etc.
The killer feature of this type of review process is that it allows
your reviews to be incremental, so you can do the review while waiting
for the bus, standing in line at the grocery store, etc. Because you
eventually review everything in the list, you don't have to worry
about things being forgotten, no matter how many items you have. It
also gives you the ability to easily prune duplicates and delete tasks
that no longer should be in your system (e.g., an expired coupon from
one of those online deal sites).
Of course, this feature would not force any particular workflow on
anyone--just as you can choose whether or not to set recurrences,
reminders and deadlines; you could choose whether or not to set a
review frequency for each context, folder or task.
I have some ideas on how to abuse contexts and meta-tasks to perform
reviews, but I don't think those ideas will scale very well.
Rob
Nov 7, 2011, 7:08:39 PM11/7/11
to MyLifeOrganized for Android
One more point--you mentioned you strayed from GTD because you weren't
disciplined enough to keep yourself on track. I think the review
process is the critical component in staying on track--if the tool can
automate the review process to the point that you just see a list of
items that just need to be quickly edited or checked off one-by-one,
then the review process becomes even easier than processing the inbox.
On Nov 3, 8:06 am, Lisa Stroyan <lstro...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I, when I've tried to follow GTD, keep a set of desktop views for my structured reviews, as well as a set of tasks that lead me through the actual review itself.
>
> Now though I've evolved my own use model mainly because I wasn't disciplined enough to keep myself on track with GTD. Still though, I do most of my big picture thinking on the desktop, with views that are very specific to my process and contexts and tree structure.
>
> My tree structure is divided by major life area: Work, Family, Health, Self, community, etc. Because I under use Projects, right now I have each of these areas defined as a project, that I can see all of my tasks in each area divided by project in the projects view.
>
> Under each area, I have a someday maybe list which has the hide in to do feature set so that I don't see those in my task lists.
>
> Right now, what I do is I use a combination of the goals field and the starred field to narrow my focus to what I'm working on today and this week.
>
> I use starred for the things I'm going to try to accomplish today, and I use weekly goal for a moving list of what's going to happen in the next week or so. Similarly for monthly and yearly.
>
> I have lots of tasks that are not marked with a goal. These rarely get reviewed. Usually what I do is move tasks from yearly into monthly and monthly and weekly and then star the weeklies.
>
> I sort my views ( I'm not sure you have this feature yet in public beta?) first by starred, then by goal, and then either by caption or computed score. This gives me a pretty well ordered list of what I need to work on right now. I would really like to be able to filter by goal and starred, too, so things I don't need to focus on are out of sight.
>
> I process my inbox about once a week, adding context, goal, and moving each item to the proper place in my tree.
>
> I use the none context to indicate that something has not yet been processed, because I always add a context and process the task the same time. On the desktop, all of my working views have a special case scenario to include tasks that are in the inbox and don't have a context yet. Since I have to process these tasks to get them out of my way, it keeps me accountable .
>
> There are definitely features on android that I could use to finesse this model, but I wouldn't like to see a GTD use model enforced upon me. I want the flexibility to adapt the use model to my workflow.
>
> I think what I would like to see is a set of desktop templates and a set of views that create each use model that MLO supports, that can be created or modified by users. But I don't see the creation of each use model being done on android. Instead, I would imagine that desktop users could export the views to android, and without the desktop, android users would be limited to a finite set of use models that are predefined.
> Lisa
>
> --
> Sent from my phone.
> Reply directly to me at mailto:lstro...@gmail.com
disciplined enough to keep yourself on track. I think the review
process is the critical component in staying on track--if the tool can
automate the review process to the point that you just see a list of
items that just need to be quickly edited or checked off one-by-one,
then the review process becomes even easier than processing the inbox.
On Nov 3, 8:06 am, Lisa Stroyan <lstro...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I, when I've tried to follow GTD, keep a set of desktop views for my structured reviews, as well as a set of tasks that lead me through the actual review itself.
>
> Now though I've evolved my own use model mainly because I wasn't disciplined enough to keep myself on track with GTD. Still though, I do most of my big picture thinking on the desktop, with views that are very specific to my process and contexts and tree structure.
>
> My tree structure is divided by major life area: Work, Family, Health, Self, community, etc. Because I under use Projects, right now I have each of these areas defined as a project, that I can see all of my tasks in each area divided by project in the projects view.
>
> Under each area, I have a someday maybe list which has the hide in to do feature set so that I don't see those in my task lists.
>
> Right now, what I do is I use a combination of the goals field and the starred field to narrow my focus to what I'm working on today and this week.
>
> I use starred for the things I'm going to try to accomplish today, and I use weekly goal for a moving list of what's going to happen in the next week or so. Similarly for monthly and yearly.
>
> I have lots of tasks that are not marked with a goal. These rarely get reviewed. Usually what I do is move tasks from yearly into monthly and monthly and weekly and then star the weeklies.
>
> I sort my views ( I'm not sure you have this feature yet in public beta?) first by starred, then by goal, and then either by caption or computed score. This gives me a pretty well ordered list of what I need to work on right now. I would really like to be able to filter by goal and starred, too, so things I don't need to focus on are out of sight.
>
> I process my inbox about once a week, adding context, goal, and moving each item to the proper place in my tree.
>
> I use the none context to indicate that something has not yet been processed, because I always add a context and process the task the same time. On the desktop, all of my working views have a special case scenario to include tasks that are in the inbox and don't have a context yet. Since I have to process these tasks to get them out of my way, it keeps me accountable .
>
> There are definitely features on android that I could use to finesse this model, but I wouldn't like to see a GTD use model enforced upon me. I want the flexibility to adapt the use model to my workflow.
>
> I think what I would like to see is a set of desktop templates and a set of views that create each use model that MLO supports, that can be created or modified by users. But I don't see the creation of each use model being done on android. Instead, I would imagine that desktop users could export the views to android, and without the desktop, android users would be limited to a finite set of use models that are predefined.
> Lisa
>
> --
> Sent from my phone.
Empire Builder
Nov 8, 2011, 12:58:12 PM11/8/11
to MLO-A...@googlegroups.com
This is an interesting idea, but (a) it's a whole 'nother app, and (b) it's not GTD.
In "ideal" GTD, all of your tasks are either actionable now, waiting for some other task to be completed (as in a project), waiting for someone else to do something, or Someday/Maybe. The beauty of MLO is that, if you have your tasks set up with proper dependencies between them, they will just magically appear on your active actions when it's time to do them. This eliminates the major ongoing review pain of GTD, which is checking your projects to make sure that each one of them has a next action. In MLO there's always a next action for each project on your active tasks list, unless you have a lot of "Hide Branch" folders. WaitingFor and Someday/Maybe should be hidden, but that's it. And you review each of those lists once a week during the GTD weekly review. Of course you still have to review the tasks that you've delegated to make sure that other people are as organized as you are :-), but that's done in the formal weekly review.
If you have to keep reviewing your entire list of tasks, then I suspect you don't have the proper task dependencies defined. If there's really something that you keep putting off by "reviewing" it, then it belongs in Someday/Maybe with a recurring alarm (although the alarm is not really necessary since you should glance at the S/M list during each weekly review). Or put a start date on it and forget about it until then.
Am I the purest GTD practitioner out there? No, but I'm just saying, this is what GTD is.
I have a lot of actionable tasks at any one time, and the only thing I do that resembles an ongoing review is to star a few of them every now and then so that they appear near the top of my list.
For weekly review, I have a task set up with one subtask for each step of the GTD weekly review. The main task is set to recur once a week, and set to automatically recur when all subtasks have been completed. Since there's a start date on this branch, none of these tasks appear until it's time for the weekly review. The subtasks are:
- Gather loose papers
- Process inbox
- Review past calendar items
- Review future calendar items
- Empty your head
- Review projects and goals
- Review next actions
- Review postponed/waiting for
- Review checklists
- Review someday/maybe
- Pending / Files
I have to admit that I cheat on items 3 and 4 by using the desktop version of MLO. #7 is generally unnecessary because, as I mentioned earlier, MLO does this automatically.
The nice thing about having this multi-step checklist is that I don't have to refer back to the GTD book to make sure I'm not forgetting anything, and also it allows me to complete the review over the course of multiple sessions -- whenever I have a few minutes to spare. Which is, of course, the essence of GTD.
Empire Builder
Nov 8, 2011, 1:06:14 PM11/8/11
to MLO-A...@googlegroups.com
Oh, while I'm pontificating I should also add that, if you find that there's a task that you keep postponing, then perhaps the real problem is that it's not actionable; it might actually be a project that you just haven't broken down into actions yet. There's a great article about this here.
Rob
Nov 8, 2011, 2:55:00 PM11/8/11
to MyLifeOrganized for Android
Empire Builder, thanks for the thoughts. A recurring weekly review task
+subtasks like yours helps a lot, but the granularity seems to be
limited to a single large step (e.g., "Review next actions"). Maybe I
could create another level of subtasks linked to various meta-contexts
or folders in my tree, but I think that will introduce a lot of extra
processing overhead, and I'm not sure if it would even be workable in
the Android version.
Since I'm just starting with GTD, I think I'm going to have a lot of
projects and actionable items, and over time I think a lot of those
will need to be refined, canceled, or moved to someday/maybe. I'm
expecting to have 1000+ actionable items soon, so the "review next
actions" step, for example, could potentially take me hours. (If I
just have to read 1000 tasks without editing them, it would take 50
minutes at a rate of one task every 3 seconds.)
I think I misspoke earlier--you're correct that the review feature
would ideally only show actionable, waiting-for, and someday/maybe,
not "all items." The specific use-case I had in mind for the review
feature was for the weekly review, rather than just for punting tasks
over and over again. Specifically, it would help with steps 6-10 in
your weekly review.
> 1. Gather loose papers
> 2. Process inbox
> 3. Review past calendar items
> 4. Review future calendar items
> 5. Empty your head
> 6. Review projects and goals
> 7. Review next actions
> 8. Review postponed/waiting for
> 9. Review checklists
> 10. Review someday/maybe
> 11. Pending / Files
If you want to strictly follow GTD, the review feature could be
simplified as follows:
1. Create a review "mode" (similar to "move mode" in the outline)
which is available in the "active by context" view
2. Checking off an item in "move mode" would set its "last checked-
off" date as today (instead of marking it as completed)
3. The review mode hides all items which were checked off fewer than 7
days ago.
Setting reminders on someday/maybe items is one possible workaround,
but reminders are intrusive and it's easier to have a dynamically-
generated list of tasks rather than having a separate reminder for
each task.
> The nice thing about having this multi-step checklist is that I don't have
> to refer back to the GTD book to make sure I'm not forgetting anything, and
> also it allows me to complete the review over the course of multiple
> sessions -- whenever I have a few minutes to spare. Which is, of course,
> the essence of GTD.
If you're willing to share, I would be interested to know how many
items you have in your system and how long it takes you to perform
each of the steps in a thorough weekly review. As I mentioned earlier,
I think I will have so many items in my system that some of the steps
themselves will have to be broken into multiple sessions. One of my
colleagues who uses OmniFocus has a list of 2700+ items but is able to
keep his review manageable by using a review process similar to the
one I described in my previous post. I have a couple hundred items in
my system right now, but between my e-mail inbox and a big box of
papers, I probably have several hundred more projects or tasks to add
to my inbox. Once I start breaking those down into actionable items by
processing the inbox, I think I'll quickly pass the 1000-item mark. It
would be nice to have a built-in feature which doesn't require you to
remember which list/view you were processing last, or where in that
list you left off.
If there is an MLO API, I can implement the Review feature as a
separate app--but so far I've gotten the impression that there is no
API for integration. Getting even a basic review feature added to MLO
would be immensely helpful and would probably be easier for the
developers than exposing the API. The important part is being able to
link back to the original task in MLO to edit it.
> 1. Gather loose papers
> 2. Process inbox
> 3. Review past calendar items
> 4. Review future calendar items
> 5. Empty your head
> 6. Review projects and goals
> 7. Review next actions
> 8. Review postponed/waiting for
> 9. Review checklists
> 10. Review someday/maybe
> 11. Pending / Files
+subtasks like yours helps a lot, but the granularity seems to be
limited to a single large step (e.g., "Review next actions"). Maybe I
could create another level of subtasks linked to various meta-contexts
or folders in my tree, but I think that will introduce a lot of extra
processing overhead, and I'm not sure if it would even be workable in
the Android version.
Since I'm just starting with GTD, I think I'm going to have a lot of
projects and actionable items, and over time I think a lot of those
will need to be refined, canceled, or moved to someday/maybe. I'm
expecting to have 1000+ actionable items soon, so the "review next
actions" step, for example, could potentially take me hours. (If I
just have to read 1000 tasks without editing them, it would take 50
minutes at a rate of one task every 3 seconds.)
I think I misspoke earlier--you're correct that the review feature
would ideally only show actionable, waiting-for, and someday/maybe,
not "all items." The specific use-case I had in mind for the review
feature was for the weekly review, rather than just for punting tasks
over and over again. Specifically, it would help with steps 6-10 in
your weekly review.
> 1. Gather loose papers
> 2. Process inbox
> 3. Review past calendar items
> 4. Review future calendar items
> 5. Empty your head
> 6. Review projects and goals
> 7. Review next actions
> 8. Review postponed/waiting for
> 9. Review checklists
> 10. Review someday/maybe
> 11. Pending / Files
If you want to strictly follow GTD, the review feature could be
simplified as follows:
1. Create a review "mode" (similar to "move mode" in the outline)
which is available in the "active by context" view
2. Checking off an item in "move mode" would set its "last checked-
off" date as today (instead of marking it as completed)
3. The review mode hides all items which were checked off fewer than 7
days ago.
Setting reminders on someday/maybe items is one possible workaround,
but reminders are intrusive and it's easier to have a dynamically-
generated list of tasks rather than having a separate reminder for
each task.
> The nice thing about having this multi-step checklist is that I don't have
> to refer back to the GTD book to make sure I'm not forgetting anything, and
> also it allows me to complete the review over the course of multiple
> sessions -- whenever I have a few minutes to spare. Which is, of course,
> the essence of GTD.
items you have in your system and how long it takes you to perform
each of the steps in a thorough weekly review. As I mentioned earlier,
I think I will have so many items in my system that some of the steps
themselves will have to be broken into multiple sessions. One of my
colleagues who uses OmniFocus has a list of 2700+ items but is able to
keep his review manageable by using a review process similar to the
one I described in my previous post. I have a couple hundred items in
my system right now, but between my e-mail inbox and a big box of
papers, I probably have several hundred more projects or tasks to add
to my inbox. Once I start breaking those down into actionable items by
processing the inbox, I think I'll quickly pass the 1000-item mark. It
would be nice to have a built-in feature which doesn't require you to
remember which list/view you were processing last, or where in that
list you left off.
If there is an MLO API, I can implement the Review feature as a
separate app--but so far I've gotten the impression that there is no
API for integration. Getting even a basic review feature added to MLO
would be immensely helpful and would probably be easier for the
developers than exposing the API. The important part is being able to
link back to the original task in MLO to edit it.
> 2. Process inbox
> 3. Review past calendar items
> 4. Review future calendar items
> 5. Empty your head
> 6. Review projects and goals
> 7. Review next actions
> 8. Review postponed/waiting for
> 9. Review checklists
> 10. Review someday/maybe
> 11. Pending / Files
Lisa Stroyan
Nov 8, 2011, 6:20:39 PM11/8/11
to mlo-a...@googlegroups.com
I like the idea of figuring out a way to do reviews with MLO. I'm not convinced which features are missing yet though.
First, I think features have to be general enough that they would work with different methodologies; certainly GTD is not the only one that has a review component, so that doesn't rule it out, but it does make design something that would have to be carefully thought out and made methodology independent.
Second, I don't think that the Android app is the place to make major design changes. There is a huge loyal user base on the desktop and that has already been established as the way place to implement design changes. Since a new version of the desktop with a more flexible tabbed interface has been announced as "in the works", I think it would be the perfect time to think about a whole-product solution that could be easily extended to the android product/use model.
Rob, even if you aren't intending to use the desktop version at this time, I would encourage you to post your ideas and also your goals (to invite alternative implementations) on http://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized/ . You'll get a much wider variety of ideas for use models there and also ways to implement them in MLO, in my experience. (And there are a lot of GTD followers there too :)
Lisa Stroyan
www.empathic-parenting.com
Rob
Nov 8, 2011, 7:12:27 PM11/8/11
to MyLifeOrganized for Android
Lisa,
Thanks for the suggestion; I'll post the idea on the MLO-Windows
forum. I've started evaluating the desktop version but am still
getting the hang of it.
The review definitely could be implemented in a generic fashion.
Whether filtering is included from the start or added later, the
review feature could support workflows for GTD and any other
methodologies.
I also posted the feature request on the MLO UserVoice site. If anyone
else likes the idea or has other refinements/alternative
implementations they'd like to suggest, please vote for the idea and
add a comment with your thoughts:
http://mlo.uservoice.com/forums/9235-general/suggestions/2373546-add-a-review-feature
On Nov 8, 5:20 pm, Lisa Stroyan <lstro...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I like the idea of figuring out a way to do reviews with MLO. I'm not
> convinced which features are missing yet though.
>
> First, I think features have to be general enough that they would work with
> different methodologies; certainly GTD is not the only one that has a
> review component, so that doesn't rule it out, but it does make design
> something that would have to be carefully thought out and made methodology
> independent.
>
> Second, I don't think that the Android app is the place to make major
> design changes. There is a huge loyal user base on the desktop and that has
> already been established as the way place to implement design changes.
> Since a new version of the desktop with a more flexible tabbed interface
> has been announced as "in the works", I think it would be the perfect time
> to think about a whole-product solution that could be easily extended to
> the android product/use model.
>
> Rob, even if you aren't intending to use the desktop version at this time,
> I would encourage you to post your ideas and also your goals (to invite
> alternative implementations) onhttp://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized/. You'll get a much wider
Thanks for the suggestion; I'll post the idea on the MLO-Windows
forum. I've started evaluating the desktop version but am still
getting the hang of it.
The review definitely could be implemented in a generic fashion.
Whether filtering is included from the start or added later, the
review feature could support workflows for GTD and any other
methodologies.
I also posted the feature request on the MLO UserVoice site. If anyone
else likes the idea or has other refinements/alternative
implementations they'd like to suggest, please vote for the idea and
add a comment with your thoughts:
http://mlo.uservoice.com/forums/9235-general/suggestions/2373546-add-a-review-feature
On Nov 8, 5:20 pm, Lisa Stroyan <lstro...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I like the idea of figuring out a way to do reviews with MLO. I'm not
> convinced which features are missing yet though.
>
> First, I think features have to be general enough that they would work with
> different methodologies; certainly GTD is not the only one that has a
> review component, so that doesn't rule it out, but it does make design
> something that would have to be carefully thought out and made methodology
> independent.
>
> Second, I don't think that the Android app is the place to make major
> design changes. There is a huge loyal user base on the desktop and that has
> already been established as the way place to implement design changes.
> Since a new version of the desktop with a more flexible tabbed interface
> has been announced as "in the works", I think it would be the perfect time
> to think about a whole-product solution that could be easily extended to
> the android product/use model.
>
> Rob, even if you aren't intending to use the desktop version at this time,
> I would encourage you to post your ideas and also your goals (to invite
Empire Builder
Nov 9, 2011, 3:56:24 PM11/9/11
to MLO-A...@googlegroups.com
I currently have about 170 tasks (not counting "meta tasks related to weekly reviews") and 19 tasks in my active actions list. I realize this may be small potatoes compared to some people, but come on, 2700 tasks is preposterous. Unless you are micro-managing a bunch of other people by keeping track of all of their actionable items as well as your own, the math just isn't believable.
How many tasks can you do in a day? Let's say 12 (1 per hour, all day at work and a few hours at home in the evening). That would be a 225-day backlog of tasks. I can see no reason why a person would need to break his or her time down into 60-minute slices for the next 7.5 months! Maybe you are a ninja GTD master, able to break down even the most complex projects into 10-minute tasklets. Then you still have a > 1 month backlog of tasks at 10-minutes per task. There is simply no reason that anyone needs to plan out their time at this level of resolution. To use a phrase coined by Merlin Mann, this is productivity pr0n, pure and simple: productivity planning to the extent that it takes away time that could be used for actual productivity, just for the sake of the gratification that it gives the planner.
Now, rather than just criticize, let me offer some constructive suggestions. Stop trying to break down far-in-the-future projects into next actions until those projects get a little closer on the time horizon. In fact, it may not even be necessary, once a project starts, to break it down into all of its actions right away. Perhaps one of the functions of the weekly review is to notice projects that don't have any more next actions and to add things to keep them moving along (or to mark them complete, and that's what it's all about, right?). The "Active by projects" view won't show empty projects, but the "Projects" view does.
Anyway, I don't mean to insult anybody; all of us on this forum -- especially those who quote David Allen and Merlin Mann, LOL -- are aficionados of productivity pr0n or else we'd be too busy doing things to read and post to this forum. Anytime your to-do list management starts getting in the way of your to-dos, it's time to take a step back and look at the bigger picture, that's all I'm saying.
Rob
Nov 9, 2011, 5:22:51 PM11/9/11
to MyLifeOrganized for Android
My mistake; I think I had a dyslexic moment when I glanced at his e-
mail. He has 270 projects, with about 1230 actions. He was originally
keeping track of these tasks in a spreadsheet but switched to
OmniFocus when his previous system started to break down and he could
no longer manage his lists efficiently. I don't think he expects to
cross off everything in his list in a month, a year, or even two
years. He might never get to some of the items in his list, but those
will likely be deleted during some future review.
If I only had 170 items in my task list, I probably could get by with
MLO as-is. But I suspect many people have much longer lists. So far
I have 218 items in MLO (projects, tasks, and folders) but still have
to finish going through a box of papers at work, a list of TODOs for
our family business, some tasks/projects related to my hobbies, and a
backlog of e-mails for work, home, and our small business (many of
which can probably be archived without being put into the system).
I'm pretty sure I'll have at least 600 items, but I wouldn't be
surprised if I have more than 1000 by the time everything is added.
If I recall correctly, Allen said in his book that one of the people
he helped had a backlog of more than 3000 e-mails. I don't think he
said how many of those items actually ended up in the inbox and how
many were just pitched during collection, but remember--that's just e-
mail. If you think a task list in the low thousands is inconceivable,
I would suspect that you either never did an initial collection, or
you just didn't have as many responsibilities to fulfill.
On Nov 9, 2:56 pm, Empire Builder <davidbwag...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I currently have about 170 tasks (not counting "meta tasks related to
> weekly reviews") and 19 tasks in my active actions list. I realize this
> may be small potatoes compared to some people, but come on, 2700 tasks is
> preposterous. Unless you are micro-managing a bunch of other people by
> keeping track of all of their actionable items as well as your own, the
> math just isn't believable.
>
> How many tasks can you do in a day? Let's say 12 (1 per hour, all day at
> work and a few hours at home in the evening). That would be a 225-day
> backlog of tasks. I can see no reason why a person would need to break his
> or her time down into 60-minute slices for the next 7.5 months! Maybe you
> are a ninja GTD master, able to break down even the most complex projects
> into 10-minute tasklets. Then you still have a > 1 month backlog of tasks
> at 10-minutes per task. There is simply no reason that anyone needs to
> plan out their time at this level of resolution. To use a phrase coined by
> Merlin Mann, this is productivity pr0n<http://wiki.43folders.com/index.php/Productivity_pr0n>,
mail. He has 270 projects, with about 1230 actions. He was originally
keeping track of these tasks in a spreadsheet but switched to
OmniFocus when his previous system started to break down and he could
no longer manage his lists efficiently. I don't think he expects to
cross off everything in his list in a month, a year, or even two
years. He might never get to some of the items in his list, but those
will likely be deleted during some future review.
If I only had 170 items in my task list, I probably could get by with
MLO as-is. But I suspect many people have much longer lists. So far
I have 218 items in MLO (projects, tasks, and folders) but still have
to finish going through a box of papers at work, a list of TODOs for
our family business, some tasks/projects related to my hobbies, and a
backlog of e-mails for work, home, and our small business (many of
which can probably be archived without being put into the system).
I'm pretty sure I'll have at least 600 items, but I wouldn't be
surprised if I have more than 1000 by the time everything is added.
If I recall correctly, Allen said in his book that one of the people
he helped had a backlog of more than 3000 e-mails. I don't think he
said how many of those items actually ended up in the inbox and how
many were just pitched during collection, but remember--that's just e-
mail. If you think a task list in the low thousands is inconceivable,
I would suspect that you either never did an initial collection, or
you just didn't have as many responsibilities to fulfill.
On Nov 9, 2:56 pm, Empire Builder <davidbwag...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I currently have about 170 tasks (not counting "meta tasks related to
> weekly reviews") and 19 tasks in my active actions list. I realize this
> may be small potatoes compared to some people, but come on, 2700 tasks is
> preposterous. Unless you are micro-managing a bunch of other people by
> keeping track of all of their actionable items as well as your own, the
> math just isn't believable.
>
> How many tasks can you do in a day? Let's say 12 (1 per hour, all day at
> work and a few hours at home in the evening). That would be a 225-day
> backlog of tasks. I can see no reason why a person would need to break his
> or her time down into 60-minute slices for the next 7.5 months! Maybe you
> are a ninja GTD master, able to break down even the most complex projects
> into 10-minute tasklets. Then you still have a > 1 month backlog of tasks
> at 10-minutes per task. There is simply no reason that anyone needs to
> plan out their time at this level of resolution. To use a phrase coined by
> pure and simple: productivity planning to the extent that it takes away
> time that could be used for actual productivity, just for the sake of the
> gratification that it gives the planner.
>
> Now, rather than just criticize, let me offer some constructive
> suggestions. Stop trying to break down far-in-the-future projects into
> next actions until those projects get a little closer on the time horizon.
> In fact, it may not even be necessary, once a project starts, to break it
> down into all of its actions right away. Perhaps one of the functions of
> the weekly review is to notice projects that don't have any more next
> actions and to add things to keep them moving along (or to mark them
> complete, and that's what it's all about, right?). The "Active by
> projects" view won't show empty projects, but the "Projects" view does.
>
> Anyway, I don't mean to insult anybody; all of us on this forum --
> especially those who quote David Allen and Merlin Mann, LOL -- are
> aficionados of productivity pr0n or else we'd be too busy *doing things* to
> time that could be used for actual productivity, just for the sake of the
> gratification that it gives the planner.
>
> Now, rather than just criticize, let me offer some constructive
> suggestions. Stop trying to break down far-in-the-future projects into
> next actions until those projects get a little closer on the time horizon.
> In fact, it may not even be necessary, once a project starts, to break it
> down into all of its actions right away. Perhaps one of the functions of
> the weekly review is to notice projects that don't have any more next
> actions and to add things to keep them moving along (or to mark them
> complete, and that's what it's all about, right?). The "Active by
> projects" view won't show empty projects, but the "Projects" view does.
>
> Anyway, I don't mean to insult anybody; all of us on this forum --
> especially those who quote David Allen and Merlin Mann, LOL -- are
Dwight
Nov 10, 2011, 9:30:42 AM11/10/11
to MyLifeOrganized for Android
Let me just offer this about high task counts:
I saved myself about $700/year by doing the spring opening and fall
closing of my swimming pool by myself. The first time I did it (it was
a Spring opening) it took me forever because I was constantly running
back to the house for a smaller wrench, running back to the store for
another gallon of antifreeze, etc. But I tracked every task as I did
them, and afterwards I went back and organized them into a reasonably
efficient project. Then I made a clone project and put in the opposite
of each task, in reverse order. With a little more tweaking over then
next couple seasons, I got to the point where I know how to do this,
and it's all in MLO with task dependencies defined. There are about
190 tasks in just these two projects. They are in the "spring
housekeeping" and "autumn housekeeping" folders respectively, so I do
not waste any time reviewing them until the relevant season is upon
us. I'm now running about 800 tasks, so pool opening/closing is about
a quarter of them. With another couple of hundred tasks sleeping in my
someday folders, getting a quick quarterly review, that's about half
my tasks. It's not hard at all for me to imagine that I will hit 1000
this winter. I'm not tracking anyone else's work, though I do have a
couple dozen tasks like "wait to receive comments on proposal".
I started with MLO because I was spending more time adjusting the due
dates on tasks than I was accomplishing the tasks. That's not
happening any more, though I do find once in a while that I am pushing
a task out of my daily routing into the weekly, or from the monthly to
the quarterly.
I don't think I'm micromanaging.
-Dwight
I saved myself about $700/year by doing the spring opening and fall
closing of my swimming pool by myself. The first time I did it (it was
a Spring opening) it took me forever because I was constantly running
back to the house for a smaller wrench, running back to the store for
another gallon of antifreeze, etc. But I tracked every task as I did
them, and afterwards I went back and organized them into a reasonably
efficient project. Then I made a clone project and put in the opposite
of each task, in reverse order. With a little more tweaking over then
next couple seasons, I got to the point where I know how to do this,
and it's all in MLO with task dependencies defined. There are about
190 tasks in just these two projects. They are in the "spring
housekeeping" and "autumn housekeeping" folders respectively, so I do
not waste any time reviewing them until the relevant season is upon
us. I'm now running about 800 tasks, so pool opening/closing is about
a quarter of them. With another couple of hundred tasks sleeping in my
someday folders, getting a quick quarterly review, that's about half
my tasks. It's not hard at all for me to imagine that I will hit 1000
this winter. I'm not tracking anyone else's work, though I do have a
couple dozen tasks like "wait to receive comments on proposal".
I started with MLO because I was spending more time adjusting the due
dates on tasks than I was accomplishing the tasks. That's not
happening any more, though I do find once in a while that I am pushing
a task out of my daily routing into the weekly, or from the monthly to
the quarterly.
I don't think I'm micromanaging.
-Dwight
Empire Builder
Nov 10, 2011, 9:58:53 AM11/10/11
to MLO-A...@googlegroups.com
I also want accurate. It turns out that I have about 200 tasks.
Anyway, I'm not saying it's inconceivable to have 3000 tasks or even 3000 emails ; just that it's inconceivable that you will ever do all 3000 tasks or reply to all 3000 emails! Because new stuff never stops coming in, does it? The implication is that you can throw away a lot of those if you take a critical look at them. Be ruthless! What led to the buildup of such a backlog in the first place? You have to be ruthless about what you keep on your plate vs what you delegate or just what's not likely to ever get done.
Empire Builder
Nov 10, 2011, 1:19:36 PM11/10/11
to MLO-A...@googlegroups.com
Dwight, I think a key observation you made about your giant task list is this:
There are about 190 tasks in just these two projects. They are in the "spring housekeeping" and "autumn housekeeping" folders respectively, so I do not waste any time reviewing them until the relevant season is upon us.
The point is that these 190 tasks don't impinge on your regular reviews. This is a good use of the features of MLO to keep your active task list manageable.
The thing I'm playing Devil's Advocate against, for the most part, is not the total number of tasks that you have but how many of those can possibly be active (and contributing to review overhead) at any one time. Let me take Rob's example of his friend with 270 projects (!). Rob's friend can either:
- Do one task from each project, round-robin style.
- Do multiple tasks from each project, to reduce context-switch overhead.
If he does round-robin, then assuming he breaks down his projects into 30-minute tasks and works 12 hours a day, each project will get a 30-minute slice of his time every 11 working days, about. Is that frequently enough to keep each project moving? On the other hand, if he breaks the tasks down into 10-minutes, each project will get a 10-minute slice of his time every 3.5 days. But even if it takes him only 1 minute to switch contexts (unlikely, IMHO), at least 10% of his time is being wasted on context switching.
Conclusion: there's no realistic way that a single person can keep 270 projects moving forward simultaneously.
Of course, it's likely that some (or most) of these projects are tied to dates in the future, like your pool opening/closing, or to the completion of some other task or project. But if that is so, then these deferred/dependent projects don't appear in your regular review routine.
Back to my original point, which led to the digression on # of tasks: using all the features of MLO like start dates, complete-in-order, task dependency, etc, should keep the number of tasks you have to keep "on your radar" far below the total number of tasks you have in the system. MLO will automatically bring those tasks to your attention when their date arrives, or their dependencies have been completed, etc. You shouldn't have to explicitly review more than a small fraction of your projects and tasks, ever (Although I confess to doing so every once in a great while to make sure that nothing slips between the cracks. Occasionally I find a task that hasn't become active when it should have because I screwed up some dependency, but more often it's the other way around -- I find tasks that are active that shouldn't be because I neglected to set the correct time and dependency constraints.) If you find that you need to bring every project to your attention every so often then I postulate that you have a lot of projects that are being starved, and the correct thing to do when you recognize this is happening is to either delegate it to someone else or admit that it's never going to get done and delete / archive it. Stop looking at it every 2 weeks and thinking, "I'll just defer this two more weeks."
BTW, one last note, I don't keep checklist-type things in MLO (other than my weekly review checklist). I use ColorNote for that, and I have an MLO task that refers to each checklist.
Rob
Nov 10, 2011, 3:22:36 PM11/10/11
to MyLifeOrganized for Android
One benefit to reviewing what's already processed in the system is
that you have an idea what's there and what isn't. It's one thing to
add tasks and set time dependencies, but if you don't review the
system periodically, you can end up with duplicates that never get
merged or weeded out. The review also enables a person to do exactly
what you're recommending--to notice that certain things just aren't
going to get done, and remove them from the system.
Empire Builder, I think you are in a different place in terms of your
organization system: your system is mature, you're 100% comfortable
with it, and your number of responsibilities is well within your
capabilities. You deserve some congratulations for that. But people
who have many more responsibilities or who are just starting to use a
system because they realize they are being overwhelmed will probably
have a backlog (unless they are at a turning point in their life and
are comfortable lighting all their baggage on fire--figuratively or
literally--and starting from scratch). I think you are missing the
point of comprehensive reviews, maybe because you are already so well
focused yourself. We're not talking about decluttering a house by
throwing out everything you don't use on a weekly basis; we're talking
about organizing all the responsibilities you have to all the people
in your life, including your responsibilities to yourself. It's good
to be able to toss things out during collection or while processing
the inbox, but if you have hundreds or thousands of tasks you cannot
adequately prioritize them until you have recorded all of the tasks
that you think are worthy of a second look. Some things require more
than 2 minutes' worth of consideration before you can determine
whether or not you can safely pitch them. If you're just starting out,
it can take many passes of reviewing and processing over a long period
of time to clarify the relative importance of various items and
determine what is ultimately not important. You also have to review
your long-term goals regularly in order to start planning them and
assigning next actions so you can eventually accomplish those goals.
I haven't personally pried into my friend's 270 tasks, but I imagine
most of the items are related to home maintenance, work, and
parenting. Some of them might not be very urgent, like that funny
noise coming from the washing machine, but they should still be in the
system because you can't clear your head unless they're in the system.
As far as I recall, GTD does not guarantee that everything will get
done; only that you can clear your head by putting everything into the
system. Once you've done that and have started reviewing and
completing items on your lists, you can start to recognize whether or
not you are truly overloaded and can try to make adjustments
accordingly. But you have to be able to get to that point in the first
place, and even a basic built-in review feature would greatly decrease
the overhead currently associated with doing reviews in MLO.
On Nov 10, 12:19 pm, Empire Builder <davidbwag...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Dwight, I think a key observation you made about your giant task list is
> this:
>
> *There are about 190 tasks in just these two projects. They are in the
> - Do multiple tasks from each project, to reduce context-switch overhead.
that you have an idea what's there and what isn't. It's one thing to
add tasks and set time dependencies, but if you don't review the
system periodically, you can end up with duplicates that never get
merged or weeded out. The review also enables a person to do exactly
what you're recommending--to notice that certain things just aren't
going to get done, and remove them from the system.
Empire Builder, I think you are in a different place in terms of your
organization system: your system is mature, you're 100% comfortable
with it, and your number of responsibilities is well within your
capabilities. You deserve some congratulations for that. But people
who have many more responsibilities or who are just starting to use a
system because they realize they are being overwhelmed will probably
have a backlog (unless they are at a turning point in their life and
are comfortable lighting all their baggage on fire--figuratively or
literally--and starting from scratch). I think you are missing the
point of comprehensive reviews, maybe because you are already so well
focused yourself. We're not talking about decluttering a house by
throwing out everything you don't use on a weekly basis; we're talking
about organizing all the responsibilities you have to all the people
in your life, including your responsibilities to yourself. It's good
to be able to toss things out during collection or while processing
the inbox, but if you have hundreds or thousands of tasks you cannot
adequately prioritize them until you have recorded all of the tasks
that you think are worthy of a second look. Some things require more
than 2 minutes' worth of consideration before you can determine
whether or not you can safely pitch them. If you're just starting out,
it can take many passes of reviewing and processing over a long period
of time to clarify the relative importance of various items and
determine what is ultimately not important. You also have to review
your long-term goals regularly in order to start planning them and
assigning next actions so you can eventually accomplish those goals.
I haven't personally pried into my friend's 270 tasks, but I imagine
most of the items are related to home maintenance, work, and
parenting. Some of them might not be very urgent, like that funny
noise coming from the washing machine, but they should still be in the
system because you can't clear your head unless they're in the system.
As far as I recall, GTD does not guarantee that everything will get
done; only that you can clear your head by putting everything into the
system. Once you've done that and have started reviewing and
completing items on your lists, you can start to recognize whether or
not you are truly overloaded and can try to make adjustments
accordingly. But you have to be able to get to that point in the first
place, and even a basic built-in review feature would greatly decrease
the overhead currently associated with doing reviews in MLO.
On Nov 10, 12:19 pm, Empire Builder <davidbwag...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Dwight, I think a key observation you made about your giant task list is
> this:
>
> "spring housekeeping" and "autumn housekeeping" folders respectively, so I
> do not waste any time reviewing them until the relevant season is upon us.*
>
> The point is that these 190 tasks don't impinge on your regular reviews.
> This is a good use of the features of MLO to keep your active task list
> manageable.
>
> The thing I'm playing Devil's Advocate against, for the most part, is not
> the total number of tasks that you have but how many of those can possibly
> be active (and contributing to review overhead) at any one time. Let me
> take Rob's example of his friend with 270 projects (!). Rob's friend can
> either:
>
> - Do one task from each project, round-robin style.
> The point is that these 190 tasks don't impinge on your regular reviews.
> This is a good use of the features of MLO to keep your active task list
> manageable.
>
> The thing I'm playing Devil's Advocate against, for the most part, is not
> the total number of tasks that you have but how many of those can possibly
> be active (and contributing to review overhead) at any one time. Let me
> take Rob's example of his friend with 270 projects (!). Rob's friend can
> either:
>
> - Do multiple tasks from each project, to reduce context-switch overhead.
Empire Builder
Nov 11, 2011, 5:50:45 PM11/11/11
to MLO-A...@googlegroups.com
I think I'm realizing what you're asking for and it seems almost reasonable. The crux of what you want is the ability to start a review and finish it at a later time -- perhaps over multiple sittings. And as such, you want the tool to keep track of what you have left to review. Sounds reasonable. Typically I try to do a review when I can get it done all at one sitting, but this might not work for everyone.
However, I think it can probably be done without such a heavy-weight approach as introducing a new "review interval" setting in each task. All that's required, from a developer's point of view, is the addition of a single bit to each task. In the user interface, you would create a view containing all the tasks you want to review, click an "add to review" button, which would set the bit for each task in the view, and then whenever you go to the "review view" you would be presented with a list of tasks whose bit is set. As you clear the bit, the task disappears from the review mode. You could add more tasks to your current review at any time just by selecting an appropriate view and clicking the "add to review" button or whatever.
This is the minimal amount of new functionality required to get you 98% of what you're asking for. You would have all the flexibility afforded by the current view filtering to set up your initial list, and you could convert any existing view into a review list. You could set up multiple views, add each one to the review list, and then review the union of them all at once. You wouldn't have the "last time reviewed" field but I'll bet if you were creative you could find a way to work around that. As a software developer, I would urge you to ask for the most minimal change required, see if that fits your needs, and only later ask for something more elaborate. Otherwise, you end up with bloatware.
Rob
Nov 11, 2011, 9:09:08 PM11/11/11
to MyLifeOrganized for Android
Empire Builder, thanks for the extra thoughts, and please feel free to
add your idea to the UserVoice feature request:
http://mlo.uservoice.com/forums/9235-general/suggestions/2373546-add-a-review-feature
> The crux of what you want is the ability to start a review and> finish it at a later time -- perhaps over multiple sittings. And as such,> you want the tool to keep track of what you have left to review. Sounds> reasonable.
Yes, that's exactly what I want to be able to do. MLO and most other
tools are lacking this feature, and as I've mentioned a few times in
this thread and the one on the main MLO forum, even the most basic
built-in review feature would be an enormous improvement over the
improvised review processes that everyone is stuck using right now.
> However, I think it can probably be done without such a heavy-weight
> approach as introducing a new "review interval" setting in each task.
My original idea was based pretty closely on my understanding of the
corresponding feature in OmniFocus (the only GTD/ToDo tool I've seen
so far that has a review feature). There are a few similar heavyweight
features already in MLO, so I figured it would largely be a matter of
reusing some of the recurrence or reminder code. However, I later came
to a much simpler solution in one of my previous replies in this
thread, and have added that variation as a comment in the UserVoice
feature request at http://mlo.uservoice.com/forums/9235-general/suggestions/2373546-add-a-review-feature
> All
> that's required, from a developer's point of view, is the addition of a
> single bit to each task. In the user interface, you would create a view
> containing all the tasks you want to review, click an "add to review"
> button, which would set the bit for each task in the view, and then
> whenever you go to the "review view" you would be presented with a list of
> tasks whose bit is set. As you clear the bit, the task disappears from the
> review mode. You could add more tasks to your current review at any time
> just by selecting an appropriate view and clicking the "add to review"
> button or whatever.
This is also a fine way to implement the reviews but it would probably
require about the same amount of effort to implement as my original
idea because it requires almost the same level of complexity (or
perhaps even more) to be added to the UI. You would have to add some
way of adding views to a review list, along with an "add to review"
button and the actual review screen, etc.
On the other hand, if you just record the "last reviewed" time instead
of setting a bit, the review can be almost completely automated, and
the only thing that needs to be added to the UI is the review screen
itself, with a checkbox for each task and a way to select what date
range you want to review. As the user, you wouldn't even have to think
about what you need to review. Instead, you just set the time window
you want to review--for example, items that haven't been reviewed in
the past week. When you check off an item in the review, its "last
reviewed" time is set to today, and it drops off of your review
checklist.
Keeping in line with the current MLO UI, maybe a good hybrid of your
idea and my idea (the simple version) would be to record the "last
reviewed" time but also have a "hide in review" checkbox for those
items that you know you don't need to review, such as your meta tasks
and checklists.
> As a software
> developer, I would urge you to ask for the most minimal change required,
> see if that fits your needs, and only later ask for something more
> elaborate. Otherwise, you end up with bloatware.
I'm also a software developer. :) I've described both my first idea
(which I can only presume is a pretty close rip-off of OmniFocus'
review feature) and the simplest versions of the feature that came to
mind. I'm sure there's something even more awesome than my first idea,
and there might even be something even simpler to imlement than my
"simple" idea. I wouldn't expect the MLO developers to take either
version of the feature and add it without also carefully considering
other variations and estimating the amount of effort required for
each. At the moment, it doesn't really matter to me how the MLO
developers decide to implement the Review feature, as long as they add
something.
add your idea to the UserVoice feature request:
http://mlo.uservoice.com/forums/9235-general/suggestions/2373546-add-a-review-feature
> The crux of what you want is the ability to start a review and> finish it at a later time -- perhaps over multiple sittings. And as such,> you want the tool to keep track of what you have left to review. Sounds> reasonable.
tools are lacking this feature, and as I've mentioned a few times in
this thread and the one on the main MLO forum, even the most basic
built-in review feature would be an enormous improvement over the
improvised review processes that everyone is stuck using right now.
> However, I think it can probably be done without such a heavy-weight
> approach as introducing a new "review interval" setting in each task.
corresponding feature in OmniFocus (the only GTD/ToDo tool I've seen
so far that has a review feature). There are a few similar heavyweight
features already in MLO, so I figured it would largely be a matter of
reusing some of the recurrence or reminder code. However, I later came
to a much simpler solution in one of my previous replies in this
thread, and have added that variation as a comment in the UserVoice
feature request at http://mlo.uservoice.com/forums/9235-general/suggestions/2373546-add-a-review-feature
> All
> that's required, from a developer's point of view, is the addition of a
> single bit to each task. In the user interface, you would create a view
> containing all the tasks you want to review, click an "add to review"
> button, which would set the bit for each task in the view, and then
> whenever you go to the "review view" you would be presented with a list of
> tasks whose bit is set. As you clear the bit, the task disappears from the
> review mode. You could add more tasks to your current review at any time
> just by selecting an appropriate view and clicking the "add to review"
> button or whatever.
require about the same amount of effort to implement as my original
idea because it requires almost the same level of complexity (or
perhaps even more) to be added to the UI. You would have to add some
way of adding views to a review list, along with an "add to review"
button and the actual review screen, etc.
On the other hand, if you just record the "last reviewed" time instead
of setting a bit, the review can be almost completely automated, and
the only thing that needs to be added to the UI is the review screen
itself, with a checkbox for each task and a way to select what date
range you want to review. As the user, you wouldn't even have to think
about what you need to review. Instead, you just set the time window
you want to review--for example, items that haven't been reviewed in
the past week. When you check off an item in the review, its "last
reviewed" time is set to today, and it drops off of your review
checklist.
Keeping in line with the current MLO UI, maybe a good hybrid of your
idea and my idea (the simple version) would be to record the "last
reviewed" time but also have a "hide in review" checkbox for those
items that you know you don't need to review, such as your meta tasks
and checklists.
> As a software
> developer, I would urge you to ask for the most minimal change required,
> see if that fits your needs, and only later ask for something more
> elaborate. Otherwise, you end up with bloatware.
(which I can only presume is a pretty close rip-off of OmniFocus'
review feature) and the simplest versions of the feature that came to
mind. I'm sure there's something even more awesome than my first idea,
and there might even be something even simpler to imlement than my
"simple" idea. I wouldn't expect the MLO developers to take either
version of the feature and add it without also carefully considering
other variations and estimating the amount of effort required for
each. At the moment, it doesn't really matter to me how the MLO
developers decide to implement the Review feature, as long as they add
something.
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