MLO Missing feature
Allen
However, I suggest you may include another feature that MLO has been
missing forever, the time tracking.
I would like to share what I did for my time tracking and see whether
it make sense and easy to implement. Mine is tracking both 7 habits
and life balance.
First the time used for each task, I use the min time for each task.
The reason is that if you spend more than the min time for the task.
You either wasting your time and therefore should not court on the
time wasted. Or you under estimate the time required which you should
amend your min time required.
For importance and urgency, anything above or on the middle of the
toolbar is consider as important and urgent. Therefore, a default task
will be important and urgent. I usually change the task to important
and not urgent when I create it.
During each morning, I copy all the tasks I completed the date before
into an excel worksheet from MLO. However, MLO only allow you to copy
the task name. In such case, I have to manually add the "Top level
Parent", "Importance", "Urgency" and "Time" for each task. The process
only take 15 min but I hate it because I think it should be easy to
automatic by MLO. The worksheet will be look like below.
Then I assume I should used 12 hours per day for all task. Then I
create a None Parent which is not important and not urgent. I used
12*60 minus all the task I spend on for the time of this task. This is
how much time I have been wasted for the date since I cannot recall
what is it. (You also need to manually create your meeting time
everyday and other calendar event in MLO)
With the excel, I can easily create a pivot table for Importance and
Urgency time taken like below. You can see that spend about 26% of my
time on task that are not important and not urgent.
Also, I create a pie chart for the time I spend on each role and
review it weekly and see whether I spend too less time or too much
time on certain role.
Parent Date Task Time Important Urgent
Personal 2010/3/22 Task 1 15 Important Not Urgent
Personal 2010/3/22 Task 2 60 Important Not Urgent
Finance 2010/3/22 Task 3 60 Not Important Not Urgent
Career 2010/3/22 Task 4 30 Important Not Urgent
Personal 2010/3/22 Task 5 30 Important Not Urgent
Career 2010/3/22 Task 6 15 Not Important Urgent
Career 2010/3/22 Task 7 30 Important Not Urgent
Career 2010/3/22 Task 8 15 Important Not Urgent
Career 2010/3/22 Task 9 15 Important Not Urgent
Family 2010/3/22 Task 10 15 Not Important Urgent
Career 2010/3/22 Task 11 15 Important Not Urgent
Career 2010/3/22 Task 12 15 Important Not Urgent
Personal 2010/3/22 Task 13 15 Important Not Urgent
Personal 2010/3/22 Task 14 15 Important Not Urgent
Friendship 2010/3/22 Task 15 15 Not Important Not Urgent
Finance 2010/3/22 Task 16 120 Important Urgent
Family 2010/3/22 Task 17 15 Important Not Urgent
Personal 2010/3/22 Task 18 15 Important Not Urgent
Friendship 2010/3/22 Task 19 15 Important Not Urgent
Personal 2010/3/22 Task 20 15 Important Not Urgent
Personal 2010/3/22 Task 21 30 Important Not Urgent
Career 2010/3/22 Task 22 30 Not Important Urgent
Personal 2010/3/22 Task 23 60 Not Important Not Urgent
Personal 2010/3/22 Task 24 60 Important Not Urgent
Career 2010/3/23 Task 25 30 Important Not Urgent
Friendship 2010/3/23 Task 26 15 Not Important Not Urgent
Career 2010/3/23 Task 27 15 Not Important Not Urgent
Friendship 2010/3/23 Task 28 5 Not Important Not Urgent
Career 2010/3/23 Task 29 30 Not Important Not Urgent
Career 2010/3/23 Task 30 30 Not Important Not Urgent
Personal 2010/3/23 Task 31 15 Not Important Not Urgent
Career 2010/3/23 Task 32 30 Not Important Not Urgent
Career 2010/3/23 Task 33 15 Important Not Urgent
Personal 2010/3/23 Task 34 15 Important Not Urgent
Friendship 2010/3/23 Task 35 15 Important Urgent
Career 2010/3/23 Task 36 60 Important Urgent
Career 2010/3/23 Task 37 15 Important Urgent
Friendship 2010/3/23 Task 38 15 Important Not Urgent
Personal 2010/3/23 Task 39 30 Important Not Urgent
Career 2010/3/23 Task 40 15 Important Not Urgent
Family 2010/3/23 Task 41 15 Important Not Urgent
Personal 2010/3/23 Task 43 30 Important Not Urgent
Career 2010/3/23 Task 44 30 Important Not Urgent
Career 2010/3/23 Task 45 30 Important Urgent
Personal 2010/3/23 Task 46 120 Important Not Urgent
None 2010/3/23 Task 47 100 Not Important Not Urgent
Career 2010/3/24 Task 48 15 Important Not Urgent
Personal 2010/3/24 Task 49 60 Important Not Urgent
Personal 2010/3/24 Task 50 60 Important Not Urgent
Personal 2010/3/24 Task 51 60 Important Not Urgent
Career 2010/3/24 Task 52 30 Important Not Urgent
Personal 2010/3/24 Task 53 15 Important Not Urgent
Finance 2010/3/24 Task 54 15 Important Not Urgent
Finance 2010/3/24 Task 55 15 Important Not Urgent
Finance 2010/3/24 Task 56 15 Important Not Urgent
Finance 2010/3/24 Task 57 15 Important Not Urgent
Career 2010/3/24 Task 58 30 Important Not Urgent
Personal 2010/3/24 Task 59 15 Important Not Urgent
Personal 2010/3/24 Task 60 15 Important Not Urgent
Friendship 2010/3/24 Task 61 15 Important Not Urgent
Career 2010/3/24 Task 62 30 Important Not Urgent
Career 2010/3/24 Task 63 15 Important Not Urgent
Personal 2010/3/24 Task 64 15 Important Not Urgent
Career 2010/3/24 Task 65 30 Important Not Urgent
Friendship 2010/3/24 Task 66 15 Important Not Urgent
Personal 2010/3/24 Task 67 15 Important Not Urgent
Personal 2010/3/24 Task 68 15 Important Not Urgent
Career 2010/3/24 Task 69 15 Important Not Urgent
Career 2010/3/24 Task 70 15 Important Not Urgent
Finance 2010/3/24 Task 71 15 Important Not Urgent
Friendship 2010/3/24 Task 72 180 Not Important Not Urgent
Career 2010/3/24 Task 73 30 Important Not Urgent
Urgent Important Not Important Grand Total
Urgent 4.0 1 5
Not Urgent 21.75 9.25 31.00
Grand Total 25.75 10.25 36.00
Urgent Important Not Important Grand Total
Urgent 11% 3% 14%
Not Urgent 60% 26% 86%
Grand Total 72% 28% 100%
I am looking forward to see this feature in MLOViewer
Frenya
this is really an impressive approach. I can definitely understand
your frustration of having to do all the transfers manually :(
I am going to have to disappoint you though. MLOViewer is intended to
be just a sort of a briefcase - you can load it with your tasks, use
it while you're away from your computer and then synchronize the
changes back. It does not track all your tasks, so providing any
statistics would be misleading.
Anyway, I can propose two alternatives
1. For time tracking, I am using a program called PTimer (...). It's
pretty neat, so you might want to check it out.
2. Have a look at my message titled "Workaround for the impatient" on
the MLO-iPhone forum at
http://groups.google.com/group/MLO-iPhone/browse_thread/thread/995cbdb43157c8b0/858c960ff9a6fd7e
It is not directly usable for you "as is". However, if you play with
the XSL template a bit, you might be able to make it produce something
that is importable into excel. And since exporting XML from MLO can be
automated using command line, you might be able to produce your "daily
report" without basically any manual work.
P.S. I noticed there is a typo in my message - the tool is not MSXML,
but MSXSL (freely available from Microsoft).
Best regards,
Frenya