Pictures of how you use MLO effectively

[Michael Mroczka]

Alright, so I know some of us have private things in our MLO lists, but I'm looking for this post to open up the secrecy of how you structure your personal MLO. In an effort to share I've provided some pics to get an idea of how I personally use it. You can always blur tasks that you want to keep private with a quick online tool like this ( http://www196.lunapic.com/editor/ ).

It took me forever to figure out how I wanted to structure my Projects and Folders so that they weren't a total mess. I finally stumbled across this amazing post showing how to use Omnifocus effectively by setting up folders by ROLES in your life. See the picture below.

After I had that revelation, I modified it slightly to better fit my life's priorities and ended up with this...

This is a cool configuration I've used for the last 2 years. The best thing about using this type of folder hierarchy is that if you prioritize these top level folders into what is most important to you then all your tasks in your default views will 'default' to this priority. So for example, if I looked for tasks due in the next 7 days it would first show me my '12 Week Year' tasks, then my 'Husband' tasks, then my 'Spiritual' tasks, etc. That is super cool! 

With this said, however, I've seen other people use simpler structures like just 2 folders Work and Personal with much success and many variations apart from this. The biggest drawback I've found with using this folder hierarchy is that there are many cases where a task could easily fall into more than one folder and you're left with either needing to duplicate the task (BAD) or only seeing it in one of the folders. For example, I may personally want to work on "Improving my Python coding skills", but should that go in the Hobbyist folder? Or perhaps Career Development? Or maybe Education? And if I need to "Do the dishes", should that go into the "Husband" folder or the "Owner" folder, or the "Misc" folder?

I also found a problem with identifying tasks that were relavant to do NOW vs. seeing things that I may someday want to do. Grouping them by context can work, but for me using folders seemed to work better, so in each major folder I have a 2 sub-folders. I keep projects and single tasks that I'm actively working on this week inside the major folder and then sort tasks/projects that are not in progress into a folder called "Someday/Definitely (But Not This Week)" folder and tasks that I have not started or even committed myself to doing into the "Someday/Maybe" folder. I then hide the 2 sub folders from the task list using the "Hide branch in To-Do" option so that none of those tasks show up in my views unless I move them into the active workspace in the folder. See below for a better understanding.

Please post a picture on how organize your MLO tasks folders so we can get some other ideas! Do you organize by ROLE like I do? Maybe by EFFORT? Or perhaps by TIME?

Let us know! Share your structure! :)

-Mike

[bird...@gmail.com]

Hi Mike:

What you see below is the tip of my iceberg. What it does not include, which I may screen grab at some later point are dozens of checklists I use for projects I do with many moving pieces. 

USE AUTOMATIC FORMATTING: 

Notice that I use Automatic Formatting quite a bit. Automatic Formatting changes the appearance of your tasks based on context and other variables. That makes things stand out. 

Just everything thing I do eventually winds up in a mindmap called Simplemind. But the hierarchy is similar to the screen grab above. 

IF YOU PROCRASTINATE HERE'S WHAT WORKS FOR ME:

Maybe this is a little off-topic, but it is integrated into my MLO usage. I have found, over the years, that it doesn't matter how fancy I get. I used to use roles, priorities, effort and urgency. The truth is that I spend more time maintaining the structure than actually getting important things done.

Where I'm getting the most traction has been:

1) Realizing that a mere list of tasks and projects does nothing to motivate me to get them done. 

2) What motivates me are things that I want in the here and now. 

So in MLO, I have a list of things that motivate me.

So, I use MLO and Simplemind to structure my flow of work as follows:

1) Prioritize tasks and projects

2) Group them in bite-sized chunks

3) Make a list of little things that you can reward yourself with. 

I will take a 24 oz of vanilla flavored coffee in a thermos and take one big sip. I will place it on the other side of the room. Then, I will not take another sip until a accomplish the set of tasks. The I'll do another set, using perhaps some other motivation. 

There's a lot more to than that. But that gives you the gist. 

It's a big paradox. Most motivational experts tell you that the key to success is delayed gratification. But really, it can be used to way of tricking yourself into getting things done.  

I know this will sound stupid to a lot of people. But this is the only approach that consistently enables me to step away from my computer at the end my work day patting myself on the back. 

Eddie

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mylifeorganized+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to mylifeorganized@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/efb98d18-7c74-4d48-be13-11be77e43b77%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Michael Mroczka]

Eddie, I love that! It is such a different way to use MLO than what I do — and I like seeing the difference! One of the truest things you said was that 'realizing a mere list of tasks and projects does nothing to motivate you'. That is what I'm coming to realize as well. Following GTD so anal-retentively has done nothing for my productivity because all the traction I gain by using the system is lost in setting contexts, urgency, importance, start dates, due dates, reminders, flags, dependencies and appropriate subtasks. I love how you use the system and may consider adopting certain aspects of it! Your tricks to motivate yourself are also inspiring. :)

Please if anyone else wants to share I'd love to glean more insights from other users as well! I can't imagine that I'm the only one that could benefit from this discussion!

-Mike

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mylifeorganiz...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to mylifeo...@googlegroups.com.

[bird...@gmail.com]

Thanks Mike! That's beauty of MLO. There's so much there. It's like a sandbox where you can build whatever you want. 

Thanks,

Eddie

-------------------------------

818 338-6061

Skype: major.billion

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mylifeorganized+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to mylifeorganized@googlegroups.com.

Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/264f324f-9bb2-43ff-b2c2-032c07414592%40googlegroups.com.

[Lasse Pedersen]

I agree it is a good idea with this kind of examples.

I am still in the process of setting up a lot of structure, so I don't have something very illustrative to share yet.

I assume those "roles" you found are inspired by Covey's 7 habits or something?

Anyway, there are many "lenses" one can apply on life. It can be good for focus to make these kind of "silos" such as work/private or any kind of more refined look. 

This helps in most tools, because some sort of zoom/focus/filtering is available.

Also, if one has a job with any sort of administrative- or office element to it, there will be different (types of) communication lines for action items (electronic or physical). E.g. separate mail systems and of course separate ways to receive physical messages and particles too.

That speaks a lot for separating work from private. In reality, my "private" is overarching everything else. And a particular work/job would be a subset of it.

So I might separate them as "parallel" in a task management tool but in reality they overlap. For work, the high level strategic planning merges with my private career/entrepreneur plans.

Anyway - my view is that no matter what silos or compartments are applied, there will always be some level of overlap. And in most cases, it is useful to be able to reflect that.

So while an overall folder structure can separate them for "zooming" etc., I use contexts with inheritance to signify it also.

This way, if I am doing e.g. a private project with something, I can also tag it with something under "Work" if I find it relevant.

The votes are still out on how to do this best with the tool(s) though. The most "practical" would be to be able to completely work with "zoomed views" into each compartment. But I doubt I can "get away with that" because of the overlaps.

My personal structure is not final (I start from the perspective of "private" first) - but "Work" will just be one of several "life activity areas". Spiritual growth and family/love relationships are just as important and will have their own area as well.

[Ed Wallace]

[Mun Thung Lew]

The below is how I structure my top level folder for 2018, they represent life areas, I find there are tasks rarely fall into 2 or more folders for myself. For example: "Do the dishes" will always go to my physical environment that I have to make sure my surroundings always to be clean and organized. Whatever activities related with my kids and siblings always go to family folder, whatever church or volunteering activities or friend gathering go to social & community, etc. Whatever buying activities or grocery list go to my Finances folder that is area for me to plan how and when I spend.

Spiritual 

Personal development 

Health 

Romance   

Family   

Business/Career  

Finances   

Fun & Recreation 

Social & Community  

Physical Environment

  

Regards,

LEW