Does anyone here use MLO to plan out their whole day/week or for projects only?

[Holmes245]

I'm at a "crossroads" of sorts with my use of MLO and was wondering if anyone out there could help me. I've been using MLO for at least the past five years but I'm at a point where I need to be able to use a task manager with a calendar because I want to see my time-block schedule along with some dated tasks throughout the day. I'm testing out another task manager app that 2-way syncs with Google Calendar but the task manager app isn't that good, nothing near MLO so it made me wonder how others use MLO. I was wondering the following: 

1. Do you guys use MLO only for projects or do you use it for your daily/weekly/monthly routines and agenda as well? 
2. If you use it for more than just projects, how do you set it up to see both your daily schedule along with your tasks and projects for that day? Could you share your workflow?

I know I can use Google Calendar with MLO for Android but looking at two different panes doesn't help see my whole day or week. I'm basically needing the Day View that you get in GCal/Outlook calendar with dated tasks showing up alongside. Right now, there currently isn't a workable solution with using MLO with any calendar out there. Anyone have any ideas or workflows on how to use MLO to help with this? 

(As a side note: I'm familiar with the core concepts of GTD but have never fully implemented it so I'm not sure if using GTD with MLO would solve this problem.)

Thanks, 

Joel

[Laurence Glazier]

I use categories with prefix time of day, like 1300 Lunch, 1400 Admin, 1500 Coding, and assign tasks to one or more of these. I have a view which groups by context, showing tasks which are due on or before today. Weekly tasks can be nudged forward to the future when done, and will appear at the right time.

The view gives a full schedule list, but in practice I filter on the context for the current time slot.

This approach works best if most of your days have a similar schedule.

Hope this helps

Laurence

[Stéph]

Hello Joel,

The iOS version of MLO gives a schedule view (accessed by the little stopwatch icon, just under the inbox). This gives a list of events for the day, above a list of tasks. It also shows a timeline, showing you what times of the day are blocked out, and a chart to show you the total numbers of items on upcoming days. It's not quite the drag-and-drop task scheduler that some might want, but it helps.

On the desktop, you can synch tasks with Outlook (older versions of Outlook, or the latest version if you make an edit to Outlook's settings in the Registry), then have the task pane visible at the bottom of your weekly calendar view. Again, that falls quite far short of a task scheduler, but it might help. The other option is to look at a grouped-by-date task view alongside your favourite calendar app.

It's amazing how few apps out there do task scheduling. If you use a Mac, then Things has recently introduced task drag and drop scheduling, or OmniFocus might do it, but for us Windows users there's nothing. As far as I know, no time management apps allow us to differentiate between due date and scheduled date (two very different things). I used to be trialling Timeful, but that got swallowed up by Google and since then they haven't incorporated it's innovative scheduling functionality into any of their apps.

This would be a good way for MLO to get ahead of the crowd, but it would need compatibility with more than just Google calendar. For, it would need to be able to work with all my iOS calendars and Exchange server - a step too far, perhaps?

Stéphane

[Holmes245]

Hmmm, Android doesn't have this view at all, I don't think and now I'm wondering why. There is no stopwatch icon or view, only the Today view which allows me to see my Google Calendar events in one pane but I have to hide that to see my dated tasks for today in another. Also, I'm a Windows user so I can't use Things. Right now there aren't really any apps/software out there that does both yet I see articles online about using task managers with calendars. Don't understand why, for those who do, one would want to see both separately. If I'm going to schedule any hard dates on any of my tasks in MLO, I want to see them alongside my events in my calendar.

Anyway, thanks for letting me know that Steph.

[robisme (Olivier R)]

On windows, EssentialPim does it : you can create a task from any other pim item, and drag it to the calendar. Moving it from a day to another one will change the due date, you can also turn it into an appointment

It is not as powerfull as MLO as task manager, but has very robust features I'd like MLO to have:

- contacts, agenda, mail, task, notes, passwords manager

- hyperlinks betwin each item in the app, even a single mail can be linked to a task or a note ot wathever.

I use it as mail client, contact and calendar manager, but I still prefer to use MLO as a task manager.

The androi app is not as powerful as other apps (I obviously use MLO for tasks, but also Aquamail for mails, Business Calendar for calendar, Evernote for notes, and no password manager at all)

Olivier

[Joel Fannin]

I've used EssentialPim. The program can't handle what Google Calendar can handle with ease, though. I use GCal for time-blocking my week which means there are a lot of repeating events that repeat from week to week. When I was trialing it, EssentialPim had a hard time handling that many repeating events in the calendar. It would freeze the software up and it was terrible when I tried to sync it to the mobile app. A web calendar like GCal or Outlook on the web handles that sort of thing with ease whereas an installed app doesn't. I may have a project slotted for 9am to 12pm which is something I'd just schedule in GCal where the tasks are handled for that in MLO but I do have separate tasks in the day apart from those projects that need to be done. For example, if I realize I need to go to the store at 9am in the morning for a quick run, I would add that to MLO and ideally have that show up on my calendar at the 9am slot. If I had to change the time for that to 9:30am or later, I could just move it in the calendar and the change is reflected in MLO. That's bi-directional sync and I don't think that would come anytime soon. I would just take seeing those two things together though even if it wasn't bi-directional sync. I'm willing to make the change in MLO so it's reflected in GCal. 

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[Damo Skees]

I have the same problem. I've just been testing GQueues, which has two-way sync with GCal so you can drag/drop tasks around the day. Since GCal syncs to iCal, iOS cal, it means I can see the tasks in my calendar view, and just drag them around there if I need to reschedule-  really easy. It's weaker in other areas though. Apparently Todoist offers this too for Gcal users.

I agree that the iOS MLO Calendar view is pretty, but not useful for situational awareness of tasks and meetings (compared to, say, week view on iCal).

Damo

[David Gorecki]

You can use a product called Taskline. It takes your tasks in Outlook and schedules them into blank spaces in your calendar and sets them as "Free Time" appointments. 

Your workflow could be:

1. Create tasks in MLO

2. Sync with Outlook

3. Update tasks in Outlook with durations (not sure if this can be synced to MLO?)

4. Run taskline on a periodic basis to populate your outlook calendar

5. When task is completed, mark it as such in the calendar item

6. This will then auto complete the related task in outlook

7. Syncs back to complete the task in MLO

I've used this product over the last few years and it's great. Added benefit is that it now syncs these "tasks" to your Android / iOS calendar app.

David

[nilo de roock]

Isn't that what Context is for? - I mean create Contexts Admin and Coding and schedule these contexts in the context weekly planner... 

[Wallace Gilbraith]

Does anyone here use MLO to plan out their whole day/week? Sure …

 

I have all kinds of stuff in MLO – work projects, personal projects, appointments, family activities, domestic routines, someday/maybe, notes

Inbox gets processed at least daily, sometimes more, to give all tasks a Due Date and a Context, and move them to the right place in the Outline

Every night, anything Due tomorrow (or not completed today) is reviewed, and either Starred or deferred

The Starred list (of Due Tomorrow) is then manually sorted to suit the day – morning routines, appointments, working day, errands to run, calls to make, evening routines

 

Yes, the daily review is a bit of work, but for me it’s way easier that devising a system that’s fully automatic

And yes, I keep deferring the same things – but at least I know what I’m putting off, and why

Now and then, Projects get reviewed, to make sure I’m not missing anything, and mostly I’m not

Occasionally, but not often, I view by Context – but everything gets a Context, just in case

 

All this is managed in 4 main views – Inbox; Outline/ All tasks; Due next 30 days; Starred – and occasionally in Outline/ Projects

Processing is usually done on the PC, Windows version, and cloud-sync’d to Android for getting through the day

On the go, tasks are often added to the Inbox via the Android ‘Input by Voice’ widget

 

I love how everyone can use MLO differently, there’s no one way – and I marvel at some of the ways described on here :- )

 

Wol

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[Nilo de Roock]

"I love how everyone can use MLO differently, there’s no one way – and I marvel at some of the ways described on here :- )

 Wol"

Thank you for your describing how you work with MLO. - I think assigning Context is the key in successful applying MLO to your life.

[TS OGrady]

Wallace,  

You mention the Android 'Input by Voice' Widget.  That sounds useful, but I can't find any information on this.  Can you say more about where you got this widget?

thanks

another Happy MLO user

TS

[Wallace Gilbraith]

I'm Android 9 on a Huawei Mate 10 Pro

I long press the home screen, and get a choice of what to add to the home screen - wallpaper, widgets, transitions, home screen settings

I scroll through the widgets till I get to MLO Shortcut 1x1

Shortcut name =MLO, although I L you can rename it

Shortcut action = Add task by voice

Choose the profile to use

New task in = inbox

You may be able to add several of these widgets to your home screen, for different Shortcut actions, different profiles, different task locations

I don't use any other widgets, for any apps, but this voice one is great

Wol

- sent from my phone, please excuse brevity -

- please mail me at ho...@gilbraith.co.uk -

Sent from BlueMail

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From: TS OGrady
Sent: Fri Jul 19 11:17:15 GMT+01:00 2019
To: MyLifeOrganized

Subject: [MLO] Re: Does anyone here use MLO to plan out their whole day/week or for projects only?

[TS OGrady]

Thanks, I had that widget but hadn't explored the options on it. Yes it is good.

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