How do you use folders, versus projects?

[Michael Emerald, CFA]

Hi.

 

Up front I’ll tell you I understand how each is implemented in MLO.  My question is how do you use them, for maximum benefit?  I’ll tell you how I use them, admitting that I get a bit confused now and then.

 

Projects:

When I want to see Active Tasks grouped in some order, rather than a plain simple list, I’ll often create a project, and then group by project.  The project, thus, isn’t really a project.  Rather, it’s more of a container for related recurring tasks.

 

In outline view, when I want to group tasks I use a folder.  Those folders don’t affect my active task list, since I don’t do anything with folders (group by, etc.) in my active task list.

 

Would you recommend a better implementation than what I do presently?

 

 

 

Michael Emerald, CFA

 

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[Lisa Stroyan]

Great question! I would be curious about the answers to this also, as I've never found a use for marking things as a project that I can both maintain and make worth remembering to check off the project checkbox.

I see them as somewhat separate choices. Folders, for me, are easy -- they are containers -- anything that is not a task in itself. They never become active or represent work, they just hold things that do. My folders only change when I'm reorganizing my tree. Parent tasks that are not folders, on the other hand, are bigger-level tasks that include the parts they contain (subtasks). They become active when all of the subparts are done and represent work. 

So when do you mark a task as a Project? Projects can have a status, which is mainly used for grouping in the Projects view. They can have effort which combines the effort of the subtasks (I think there is an inconsistency here --- projects aren't completed when subtasks are all completed, but the project itself can't have a separate time estimate?)

To blur the line even further, folders can also be projects. (I just was playing around with it, and if I want to group by project, I might want "Morning Routine" to be a project, so that everything is grouped, even though I'll never complete Morning Routine so it really does deserve a folder tag).

So for me the question becomes, what is the difference between a project and a parent task? What makes it worthy of clicking "Project" and manually setting it's status? Ideally, I think I would use them to represent the key idea of the work, rather than the actions involved. If you use GTD, "mom's birthday" is the project. When you are reviewing work, you sometimes want to work at the level of projects ("On my plate this week I've got Christmas dinner prep, Christmas gifts, making progress on fixing the back deck that is about to leak, house cleaning, etc"). With work it can be different clients, different checkpoint deadlines, meetings, etc. Then each project has actions, and sometimes sub projects. I need to buy gifts, wrap gifts, go online and order some gift cards, and mail some packages. Those are all actions -- but if I want to review my overall work I don't always need to see those details, so I can group by the project.

But -- what about all the strays? It's a lot of work to just figure out what belongs with what, and then not everything fits. What about all the routine tasks and the little bits of life?  so I get overwhelmed, and I don't trust that I'll see everything with the Project view. So the question for me becomes, how do I decide what to mark as a project and still make sure I see everything I need?  

What granularity works best to use projects and when does another feature work better? For example, "buy gifts" really isn't a project -- because I buy stocking stuffers at the same places I buy groceries and sundries -- so "@Errands" context works better to group those. (Also, in such an "ever connected world, I've moved from location-based contexts such as "@Computer", "@Phone", to contexts that are more categorical, "!SelfCare" -- and that starts blurring the line with folders and projects too!

So I tried an experiment...deciding which of my day's tasks (==starred) are projects, and which are part of projects, by grouping my Active Starred tasks by Project -- the tab system is *lovely* for this, by the way, because I didn't mess up my regular daily view. Interestingly, many of the project groupings I chose were also folders -- for example, "Morning Routine". If I'm going to group my work by what it is a part of, "Morning Routine" works as well as any for those.  But I still had a lot of strays. Where does "get tires rotated" fall?  Is it part of an Automotive Care project? Not really, but as much as Morning Routine I suppose. It's this blurry line that really catches me up. I want easy rules to apply because small decisions are exhausting when they add up.

I really like the idea in GTD that everything is a project until you break it down into actions. I wonder how it might work if there were an option to make everything a project by default. Then in order to get things off my "project" list I would have to figure out what actions they have. I suppose its six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Perhaps I could use the review feature to get myself to break things down...not sure.

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

[robisme]

hi Lisa,

Interesting indeed.

After after having wondered myself how to use it, here is what I do:

Folders:

In every views I create, I always add a criteria "OR is folder".

Folders are areas of life and not really tasks to accomplish. I have folders for clients, for someday/maybe lists, "book to read", "to buy", etc.

This way, I can always add a new task to a folder, even if it was empty (and thus would have not been displayed)

Projects:

A consider a project a group of multiple differents task, that will take time to complete.

ie: "construct a playstand for children", suppose to buy wood, to print the plans, to list the tools I need, etc. this are very differents actions, differents contexts, several days, etc.

Parent/children taks and subtasks:

I group tasks with subtasks without use of project status if they belongs to the same project, and are something like a checklist.

ie: in my previous exemple (project = construct playstand), then "Buy wood" would be the parent taks of the tasks -go to DIY Store, buy 2 large wooden boards, buy 3 small wooden boards, etc. 

I don't have a clear use of Review feature in mind.

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

[BOC]

For me:

Folders - organizational/containers and could be areas of life - Work,
Personal, Family. At work it could be departments (HR, IT, etc). A
folder organizing recurring tasks. This approach is blended with
contexts.

Projects - a group of specific tasks. When they're done, the project
is done. To me the beautiful secret of projects is encoding the
project name.

For example, Michael has four weddings to shoot. They all have the
same basic tasks but they're in different stages. Tagging the parent
task as a project could give you the following in your to-do list due
today.

[BOC Wedding] - Collect Money
[Lisa Wedding] - Verify Reception Location
[Robisme Wedding] - Upload proofs to website

[Lisa Stroyan]

This is a good description of folders vs. projects.

Re: project encoding -- Good point, I need to utilize that more. I can do a similar thing with the task path options, though, so I'm back to trying to decide when to mark a parent task a project. How do you decide if a group of related tasks is "big" enough to merit being a project? (Not that I think there is a right or wrong way, I'm just looking for ideas). It sounds like in your model, projects are pretty big.

In GTD, anything with more than one action would be a project,IIRC. That feels too granular to me with my current use model. OTOH, I'm not breaking my tasks into actions like I should, so maybe it would come in handy there. 

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

[chuckdevee]

for me.. the project feature is really useful as it can be seperately formatted from a parent task and will appear in the ToDo list as such.. eg.. my projects are in bold.. when they pop up in the ToDo list, thety are asking the question, am I complete, or do you need to add more subtasks to get me done?..  I ted to use projets if I do not hae a clear idea of how to complete a major taks.. I just add some sub-tasks to get things started..when the project appears in the ToDo list, I add a few more t keep the momentum going.. Folders I use as containers to categorise tasks...

[Michael Emerald, CFA]

Hi.

 

After reading what you and other wrote, I came up with these simple user rules for me:

1.       (thanks to you) a folder is a container of related tasks

2.       A project is just that: a project. 

 

So, I can include folders in Active Tasks, understanding that they are merely containers of similar tasks.  For example, I don’t want to “Brush my teeth” followed by “return a client call” followed by “Paint the front porch”.  Instead, if I prefer I can group by folder. The only caveat is that Android MLO cannot group by folders.  And so, if I require to see tasks nicely organized in my active list, I am forced to use projects instead of folders.  Such projects have nothing to do with true projects, since they have no recurrence; rather, they are merely buckets of similar tasks.

 

My wish list would be to have: Active Tasks by Folder on the Android.  I am hesitant to request this, though, since it seems unique to me, and there is no reason one needs tasks grouped by similarity.  If they really want that they can use contexts.

[m...@grantsmiths.org]

Hi, Michael.

Try this on Android:

1.       On outline view, find a folder you want to work on

2.       Long-tap the folder and select “Zoom in”

3.       Switch to active-by-context or maybe active-actions

 

This gives a pretty good view of what’s going on in one of your folders. Disadvantage is that it shows only one folder, but if you want to show _all_ of your folders, that’s what the Outline view does.

-Dwight

[Lisa Stroyan]

A couple of points:

You can mark them as both, so that your "by folder" view still works on the desktop and then use the projects view on Android.

Projects and recurrence are completely separate in my mind; don't limit your idea of projects to "recurring". It's the relationships between the tasks that matters most (if at all, since you can use them however you want)...I've been playing with marking some of my Starred as projects, and grouping by project. I would encourage you to make the terms/definitions work for you, rather than being too picky about how they are designed.

Lisa

On Sat, Dec 29, 2012 at 8:32 AM, Michael Emerald, CFA <westpo...@yahoo.com> wrote:

I am forced to use projects instead of folders.  Such projects have nothing to do with true projects, since they have no recurrence; rather, they are merely buckets of similar tasks.

[Michael Emerald, CFA]

I knew that a folder can be a project, yet had forgotten to use it.  Thank you.  Now, in desktop it looks like things are grouped by folders and on Android it looks like things are grouped by project.  Perfect. Thank you.

 

 

 

From: mylifeo...@googlegroups.com [mailto:mylifeo...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Lisa Stroyan
Sent: Saturday, December 29, 2012 11:13
To: Groups, Email
Subject: Re: [MLO] Re: How do you use folders, versus projects?

 

A couple of points:

--

[Michael Emerald, CFA]

Thanks, Dwight.  Maybe it’s just me, but I avoid the Zoom In feature because even though I know what it does (sorta) my brain can’t get used to Zoom In being associated with tasks.  I like Lisa’s suggestion, that of creating Project-folders, so that on the desktop they read like folders of similar tasks, and on the Android they still group together (as projects).

[alan.limebeer]

I've recently returned to MLO a few months ago after buying it years ago (2005?) and never really using it to implement a GTD system. At that time, though it was useful because there was a pocketPC version it didn't really have all of the features to fully implement a proper GTD system so I moved away and every few years when I'd be overcome by the "Massive sweep and organize"-bug I'd take another look. I've now been using primarily as an inbox for now and an outliner because it's been my experience that in order to maximize the usefulness of this tool you really need to read the docs from end-to-end to get all the possibilities covered. 

Now that I've got quite the outline going I've started digging into how better utilize the all of the features to acheive my ultimate goal which is to, at any time or place, according to filters I've set on context, effort, and time see a list of no longer than 10 items that can be accomplished where I am.

As such I've started looking into these folder thingys and trying to figure out how to use them effectively. Like most in this thread I've questioned the purpose and utiililzation of the project and folder settings.

Going back to GTD, David Allen defines a project as any task that requires two or more physical actions to complete. By this definition, any task with a subtask would be considered a project. 

It seems MLO adds a little to this definiton in the sense that there are a number of features that checking off "This is a project" engaes. Mostly around organizing and completion stats it seems, but I do need to dig around a little more. 

Now that I understand the difference between an Outline View and To Do List View, I can really acheive digital GTD Nirvana!

Also, I really like what chuckdeavee wrote:

for me.. the project feature is really useful as it can be seperately formatted from a parent task and will appear in the ToDo list as such.. eg.. my projects are in bold.. when they pop up in the ToDo list, thety are asking the question, am I complete, or do you need to add more subtasks to get me done?..  I ted to use projets if I do not hae a clear idea of how to complete a major taks.. I just add some sub-tasks to get things started..when the project appears in the ToDo list, I add a few more t keep the momentum going.. Folders I use as containers to categorise tasks...

As this also embodies the planning phase of GTD and the nature of the project model it ascribes.