RE: [MLO] Possibly a new user...feel lost LOL

[Richard Collings]

Just a quick reply,  Brienne (welcome, by the way).

 

I have similar sorts of problems and make extensive use of the Rapid Task Entry to try and stay on focus.   If a thought comes into my mind,  I hit Ctrl+Shift+R, up pops a dialog box and I enter it and it gets added to my inbox.   And yes you can assign contexts and even specify the parent (although this is not easy).

 

I feel sure others will be along with suggestions for templates, etc.

 

PS: Have you looked at the Pomodoro Technique.

 

From: mylifeo...@googlegroups.com [mailto:mylifeo...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Brienne
Sent: 16 July 2012 6:48 PM
To: mylifeo...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [MLO] Possibly a new user...feel lost LOL

 

Hi all,
I just joined this group because I am in the middle of my trial of this program and have to make a decision soon on whether I should buy it or not (as with everyone almost, budget is always tight, so we all think twice don't we? ;-) )

I feel a bit lost with all the options, though I am also intrigued by the complexity of this program. Oh and I hope it is ok that I started a new thread? I just felt it would be impolite to hi-jack someone's "New user" thread.

First of all, before I start with my questions, let me tell you a bit about myself and why I am so interested in a program like MLO. I have not read any of the books mentioned in this forum. I am not (yet) familiar with all the theories and methods of to-do lists, and I must say I guess I missed something good!

I suffer from ADD (yes, that attention thing ;) ) and my mind is constantly on the edge of bursting apart from ideas, do-not-forgets and what-I-always-wanted-to-do's. So I really really need a good way to sort things out and get them on paper sorted in a way that fits to my needs or, rather, thinking. I am very intrigued by the idea of having these contexts, projects and goals. That would cover a lot of the things that are on my mind; I had a bit of a hard time finding out how far automatic the program gets though: Is there a way to automatically asign contexts for instance, by typing an "@" in front of a word? Or are all these settings merely done manually through the properties dialog?

I also read somewhere that projects always have to be marked done manually, is that right? Sounds a little odd to me, since I do see the percentage changing with the subtasks getting done.

And lastly, I'd like to ask, in this group, is there anything like a files section where people share templates or something similar? I have often read people talking about some other user's template but I have a very hard time to find my way around these google groups.

I hope this wasnt much too long for a first introduction, and please excuse my mistakes in grammar and spelling. English is my second language and my ADD does the rest to my spelling ;)))

*waves hi to everyone*
Brienne

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[m...@grantsmiths.org]

Hi Brienne.

If you create a folder and assign a category to the folder, new tasks you create in that folder will inherit the category. That’s one way to avoid typing it in, does this help? The same thing happens if you create tasks with no context (for example, in the inbox) and drag them to a folder – but only if you enable this in the settings, on the page called “Behaviour”

 

Regarding completion of projects, yes after you have completed all the subtasks you still have to complete the project. For me, there’s always a task at the end for cleaning up, closing accounts, archiving files, etc. and I generally associate some part of that with completion of the project parent. You are correct that project completion tracks as tasks are completed, but try this experiment: create a project with two subtasks. Complete one, and the progress bar shows 33% complete. Complete the second and it shows 67% complete. All that’s left is the project itself, complete that and it goes to 100% complete. Does this make sense?

 

I don’t know anything about sharing templates. I know that people share themes but I don’t know much about that either.

-Dwight

[Bedrudin]

Hello Brienne,

welcome to the google group and the MLO user's. Thank you  for telling us about yourself and why you are trying MLO. From this we learn about your intentions for using MLO and can try to help you finding a way how MLO is a benefit for your life. First I want to tell you that MLO is usable in many ways, either simple, a bit more complex or very simle at all. A simple way, which is good for starting, is to use MLO only as an outliner without using the todo-tab or any of the properties in the properties dialog. Only open a blank new outline and begin typing all the things you want to do or you want to remember. Then if the amount of entries (so called tasks) is growing and you feel a need for more structure, then MLO's features come in turn. You can begin by grouping: create a task in the root (first level/top most level of the outline) as a folder (Properties dialog: Pane General: Task To-Do- Visibility: checkbox Folder) and move all the tasks that belong to this folder as subtasks. Then you can collapse or expand the subtasks and you can find your entries better.

The To-Do-Tab shows you a plain list of tasks (not a tree like the outline). Theses tasks come from the outline. You can filter the list in the To-Do-Tab so that less tasks would show up. As a first idea you can mark some of your folders as hidden so they won't show up in the todo list (Properties dialog: Pane General: Task To-Do- Visibility: checkbox Hide the branch in To-Do). This may be an idea for a folder that contains things you want to remember, but you don't want to do them now.

Now about your three questions I want to add to Richard and Dwight:

• assigning a context by writing @ in front of the word is possible if you use the parsing feature of MLO. You tell MLO to parse your entered task caption by pressing "Alt-Enter" instead of the normal way pressing "Enter" only. Make sure to place the @-things at the end of the entered text. By this parsing feature you can set a lot of other properties like "mark as project: -p", "folder: -f", "star: -*", "start: today 17:00, or tomorrow 14:00" und due date. You can find an explanation of the parsing feature in the help of MLO. An easy way to open the page is to open the rapid task entry dialog (Menu -> View -> Rapid task entry window) and click "learn more" near to the checkbox "parse...".
• The templates mentioned in the google group could be found as follows: Open MLO, then click in the Menu -> File -> New... and a dialog pops up with many entries. There you have the option to open a blank new file or one of the built-in templates. I have personally gotten some useful ideas from these templates by the years I use MLO. From time to time I open one of these templates and play around with it to find inspiration for new useful ways to use MLO. And a big benefit for improving my use of MLO's power is this google group.
  

Hope this helps a bit,
best wishes
Bedrudin

[robisme]

@Bedrudin, thanks a lot for that "parse" functionality I was not aware. That's huge.

[Brienne]

Good evening :)

Wow, thank you so much for your plenty replies and the warm welcome! I feel like I've come to the right place to look for inspirational ideas on getting a bit more organized with my to-dos.
I had a good look at the user manual today and also checked into some of the suggestions from your postings:
The inheritance of settings such as contexts I already have found, but here I really do have a hard time to decide what is useful for me. I ticked that inheritance  and ended up with all tasks being one or another context - not helpful for overview I guess :-) !

For now I mainly work with the outline view and my tasks usually revolve around 2 main areas (which I set up as folders): Computers and home. Okay, there is also a category for shopping, wish list (books, other house items, software ;) you get the point :) ) and one or two I found by looking at the templates from the program which I have to get used to, such as a backlog and that strange "inbox": I am not sure I know how to use these, as funny as it sounds!

Since all of the things I do at the computer are rather projects that contain several steps/tasks and take some time, I almost have nothing but projects. And since those tasks contain subtasks, I feel I should set them to folders too, I am not sure whether this is useful? Tasks that are not folders and not goals, in other words, that have no icon at all beside the checkbox (right from it) somehow irritate me when looking at the list.

For now I just see mostly folders and projects, but on the other hand, even when I have mostly only projects, that way I can keep track of all things at the same time, set weekly goals (for instance, one of the subtasks could become a weekly goal). I do feel that the category project fits best to most of the things I do.

I guess I have to work with priorities much more to set things like daily tasks. When I still used paper and pen for my list, I used to have just a daily list and three tasks had to get checked off for the day (for instance, three household chores had to be done). I find it a bit of a pity there is no daily goal, because that would be fitting for setting the long term project tasks apart from the chores that need to be done.
(One question concerning these: is there a way to set the words that are used for priority, importance and urgency? I feel these categories could be a lot more helpful if I could assign shorter words, or icons in place of the words).

Another thing I would love to hear your ideas on is the use of icons. I found out you can setup almost any icon as a custom one. After playing around with the settings I realized that too many icons are not good for me - I for now tend to merely use the flags column to mark things aside the icons that are inserted for projects and folders.

Today I took a very close look at the automatic formatting and I must say - wow! That opens plenty of possibilities too. But to be quite honest with you, I sometimes struggle hard when I have too many possibilities. That is one pitfall for someone with ADD. Everything is intriguing and needs to be looked into - and in the end you find yourself spending the whole day on writing and playing with your to do list ;)
I mainly have problems with the mentioned icons (their positioning such as 0, 1, 2 etc is a riddle to me still) and deciding which automatic formatting is useful. Right now I have such a colorful list full of icons that my head is spinning just from looking at it! LOL.

And two things about projects still remain unclear to me, even after I have worked with the settings now quite a bit: One is the usage of the strings for projects; does that have to do with the parsing in the rapid task entry? By the way, thank you so much for that hint, it was exactly what I had been looking for!
Question number two is the setting of the required time for a project: No matter what I check or un-check, those boxes are not available for me. I was thinking maybe I could use that estimated time to sort all projects into short, middle and long projects.

I guess it all boils down now to decide what is helpful to get a clearer view on things. And that is the point where your ideas and personal preferences are a good source of inspiration, thank you for that!

I apologize for this scattered reply, but here comes my ADD and tells me it had enough of computer work today lol!

warm regards,

Brienne

[robisme]

Hi,

You say a lot of intersting thing, and I will answer you on 2 points:

- INBOX is the place where you might "empty" your brain. You just put a task, whatever the due date, the context, the project or not, it's just a way to forget about it in a trustful place. The when you'll "organize your organization"  (be careful not to be caught in the game, ugh) you will "process" your inbox, moving each item in the convenient outline, setting due dates if necessary, context, etc.

- REQUIRED TIME is not intended to be set within the project, but for each subtask. Thus the project will automatically be populated with the sum of each subtask required time.

BTW, I'm completely caught in the game, lol !

[Emerelle]

Hi Robisme,

 

I totally understand what you mean - this is what I think of when I say too many options are a total pitfall for someone like me. I spent so many days, even weeks on finding the perfect PIM, task manager and the like! I am obsessed with organizing things, especially because this is one of the most difficult things for me due to my ADD.

Thanks so much for clearing up the inbox and the project time setting, now it does make a lot of sense.

 

regards,

 

Brienne

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[Lisa Stroyan]

Hi Brienne, and welcome!

On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 11:48 AM, Brienne <maz...@googlemail.com> wrote:

I feel a bit lost with all the options, though I am also intrigued by the complexity of this program. Oh and I hope it is ok that I started a new thread? I just felt it would be impolite to hi-jack someone's "New user" thread.

Yes, please start a new thread any time you have a new topic-- no problem. 

I suffer from ADD (yes, that attention thing ;) ) and my mind is constantly on the edge of bursting apart from ideas, do-not-forgets and what-I-always-wanted-to-do's. So I really really need a good way to sort things out and get them on paper sorted in a way that fits to my needs or, rather, thinking. I am very intrigued by the idea of having these contexts, projects and goals. That would cover a lot of the things that are on my mind; I had a bit of a hard time finding out how far automatic the program gets though: Is there a way to automatically asign contexts for instance, by typing an "@" in front of a word? Or are all these settings merely done manually through the properties dialog?

My brain also feels bursting a lot of the time :)  If I'm at my PC I use the Rapid Task Entry as someone else suggested. On Android I have the MLO  microphone widget that starts a voice recording and translates it to text. 

I actually don't try to figure out what context to put the task in, etc, in that moment. I find it takes two different modes of my brain for this, and if I let myself worry about, "where should I put this, what context, etc" then I get distracted from whatever I was doing before and start thinking about task management.  Instead, I try to regularly empty my inbox by (1) assigning a context, (2) assigning a goal if appropriate, (3) deciding if I want to break it down into smaller tasks, and then (4) moving it to the right place in my task outline tree. 

My tree has numbers in front of the sections, so when I'm ready to move I hit "Ctrl-M, 4" and it goes to the right place.

I also read somewhere that projects always have to be marked done manually, is that right? Sounds a little odd to me, since I do see the percentage changing with the subtasks getting done.

Rarely is a project done just because the subtasks one has already thought of have gotten completed.  Usually there are more tasks to finish up and so the Project task itself serves as that reminder. I often word my Projects as actions that remind me to finalize. "Complete the kitchen re-organization" for example. That is why, when a project's subtasks are all completed, the Project task itself becomes Active.

I hope this wasnt much too long for a first introduction, and please excuse my mistakes in grammar and spelling. English is my second language and my ADD does the rest to my spelling ;)))

Not at all!  

--
Lisa

---

Lisa Stroyan, mailto: lstr...@gmail.com

[Lisa Stroyan]

Sorry to duplicate other's posts -- somehow I missed most of the replies as they were marked "read" by mistake.

Lisa

[Lisa Stroyan]

Don't feel you have to find the perfect "set up" right now. One of the ways I motivate my brain to stay interested is by changing up / "improving" my system. There is so much power with MLO that it's usually easy. For example, I was using Flags but decided to use Goals instead, so I created a view for all tasks with flags, selected many at once, and changed them in bulk. 

I actually think it works well to add new bits to your system as you go. Maybe have a basic setup to start, then slowly add more to it. It should work for you, you don't work for it :)

Lisa

[robisme]

I think that the first "tweak" you have to do, is making th app TRUSTFUL.

I mean, being sure that if you input a task somewhere, it will never be lost.

For that purpose, "create" a todo view with all you really need to focus on : dated task, etc

I have create exactly the contrary : a view with all thask that neither have context, date, goal, subtasks, etc : all the not classified task at all, all the possibly lost task, and its part of my weekly review to process them (I mean, sometime, task are toom quicly moved from inbox to a convenient place, but then, they belong to a kind of infbox in each "tree" of the outline).

[Bedrudin]

Hi Brienne,

you wrote you want to set daily goals. Have you tried the star function? You can display a column with a star which can only be on or off. Then you have a to-do-view which displayed the starred items (name of view is "starred"). This is good for daily goals I think.

Best wishes,
Bedrudin