What is the Inbox? I have searched help, the manual and this forum. Confusing?

[L E]

.

[Metta Zetty]

In the classic productivity model of Getting Things Done (GTD), the Inbox is the place where you initially drop in all new, unclassified (unsorted) data: thoughts, ideas, tasks, etc.  It is ideal for your initial "brain dump", i.e., emptying out data you are holding in your head.  It is also a great place to send data you add into the database using the Rapid Text Entry window.

Once items have been placed in the Inbox, you can then access each of these Inbox items either from the Inbox view or in the Outline view -- and then you can add:

-- all the additional classifying data for each task (date due, context, importance, urgency, flags, stars) and

-- any additional customization options available in the properties windows (reminders, formatting, etc.)

In addition, from the Outline view you can also drag Inbox items into other folders or projects as needed to keep everything properly sorted.  

I, myself, use the Inbox all the time, as my primary gateway for dropping in data because:

-- I like to drop in tasks and ideas quickly while I'm working on other things.

-- I customize my tasks heavily after they are added, and this takes more time than simply using the Rapid Text Entry window first and then customizing later

-- I also have a deeply nested outline with multiple folders and sub-folders, so I prefer to file tasks away after dropping them into the Inbox and then classifying/customizing them.

Hope this helps! :-)

[Stéph]

Hello LE. You're right, it's not mentioned in the help file.

The In-box is the folder which you select to be the default parent when you enter new tasks in the RTE (Rapid Task Entry dialogue box). It helps to identify a folder as an in-box, let any new tasks be thrown in there as you think of them, then organise and move your tasks over to the right parent tasks later on.

I'm sure that, in earlier versions of MLO, it actually used to be called an "in box" in the RTE window and in the documentation.

Stéphane

On Friday, 14 November 2014 21:58:52 UTC, L E wrote:

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[John Cesta]

Yes exactly right. The inbox in mlo is like any other inbox. Study the mlo outline to gain a foundational understanding of the system and how the inbox fits in.

[John Smith]

I am confused - how do you get stuff out of the Inbox? Do you have to Drag and Drop? Or is there some way of changing its status to 'Active' ?

[Dwight Arthur]

Please review my discussion about position in outline versus ranking in to-do list in a comment to your first post. The inbox is not a status, it’s a place in the outline. You could just leave all of your tasks in the inbox is a big unstructured heap but it would be hard to find them and “complete tasks in order” would not work very well. Many people will get tasks out of the inbox and into a relevant section of the outline soon after they show up in the inbox. Some people set aside a time every day for a daily review, others might do it weekly. Maybe some tasks are really just a standalone thing to do with no good home in your outline. You could leave such a task in the inbox, assign a context and priority and maybe some dates and later mark it complete and let it get archived, all while it continues to live in the inbox.

 

A great way to move a task or group of tasks is with drag and drop. Try this: open the inbox view, position it so that the tasks you want to move are visible, and hit F3. A helper window will open showing your inbox task list. The helper window is missing a lot of the functionality of the main window but it’s great for drag and drop. Move the helper window to one side of your screen and the main MLO window to the other, then bring up the Outline (or All Tasks) view in the main window. Position it so that the destination folder where you want to move your tasks is visible. Select the tasks in the helper window then drag them to the mail window and drop them onto the target folder.

 

Another popular way to do this is to select the tasks you want to move then right-click on them, select “Move to” from the context menu, select the target folder from the popup window and click OK.

 

Or you could select a task or tasks and use the left/right/up/down buttons on the MLO toolbar to move the tasks where you want them. This does not work as well once you start to have thousands of tasks in your profile.

 

I am sure that there are other, better methods, maybe another user will post some.

-Dwight

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[Andrei Bacean]

Hi Dwight
Thank you for detailed answer.
I want to add...Another way to move the tasks is to use hotkey Ctrl+M to open the MoveTo window.
To reproduce:
1 select the task you want to move
2 press ctrl+m
3 choose the new parent (you may also use the quick filter at the top
Best regards
Andrei B

[Wallace Gilbraith]

Re Moving tasks: in outline view, I select the task I want to move and use Shift-Alt-Arrow. Up and down arrows take me up and down, left and right arrows go in and out of the depth of my outline.
Shift-Arrow (up or down) selects multiple tasks for moving.
F6 then collapses the view, ready for the next one
My inbox fills up with items within the inbox folder. By selecting them all, and moving all to the top level of the outline (same level as inbox itself), my new items are visible when I collapse the outline, so I can see what is to be moved next.

Wol

- sent from my phone - please excuse brevity -

- phone sends from gmail account, but please always mail me at ho...@gilbraith.co.uk -

---

From: Dwight Arthur <m...@dwightarthur.us>
Sent: 29 November 2014 01:16:59 GMT+00:00
To: mylifeo...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: [MLO] Re: What is the Inbox? I have searched help, the manual and this forum. Confusing?

[Christoph Zwerschke]

Am 29.11.2014 um 02:16 schrieb Dwight Arthur:
> Some people set aside a time every day for a daily review, others
> might do it weekly.

This, by the way, is one of the most crucial things in the GTD
methodology. If you fail to do it, GTD and MLO will not really work
properly. MLO supports reviews very well.

Note that even though GTD uses a single, "trusted system", the MLO inbox
does not be your only inbox. You can also have a physical inbox, or an
additional folder in your mail client. All these are then part of the
"trusted system." You must only make sure that during the review, you go
through all the inboxes.

It is worthwile to create your own repeating tasks for the weekly,
monthly, yearly reviews and checklists for the things you need to do
during the reviews. E.g. process the inbox, check the "Review" view,
check the progress in your projects, check your goals, etc.

-- Chris

[John Smith]

Brilliant - thanks everyone.  :)

Either way in GTD theory it's extremely important to clear out your "In Basket(s)" be they real or digital. 

Suggestion: Control/M doesn't seem to be on they Keyboard Shortcuts page. (I am dyslexic so may be wrong!)
If true please add it.
In fact neither is Shift/Control/M for rapid text entry!

Further suggesion:

Mark up the hotkeys that are most popular with expert users, so that us newbies are drawn to them.  :)

J

[John Smith]

I'm not sure if this has been answered elsewhere but GTD has various fundamental list

- Inbox (unprocessed)

- Active (do ASAP)

- Scheduled (tickler)
- Waiting (delegated or cant start yet due to external constraint(s) ) 

- Someday/Maybe 

It bothers me somewhat that MLO does not have a field for these things. I am a newbie, so I am hoping to be able to work around this bit ideally would like to have master buttons to select each of those lists and whist there, that is all I see! And everything else seems quite fiddly and confusing to the uninitiated. (And that is a bad thing for sales!)

e.g. Things go straight into Active 

'Sheduled' does seem to be implicit in that if you create a Start Date then the Action is moved out of being active - Fine.

But (if I'm right) the "Waiting"  and "Someday/Maybe" are not implemented AT ALL !

This seems terrible to me.

The best I can do is mess about using special tags to simulate these lists. But OMG - considering that it is such a fundamental part of GTD - this is *insanely* hard/fiddly for the newbie.

My suggestion (which you won't like) is that you need some structural changes here. i.e. You need to add a new field to the underlying database called List. And have each item only able to be in one of these lists. Then with a single click somewhere highly visible (e.g.Top bar) the user can see ONLY those items that are in the list whose name has been ticked.  i.e. You have the 5 GTD lists as tick boxes.

What am I missing?

J