Re: [MLO] Grouping tasks with multiple contexts

[m...@grantsmiths.org]

Hi again Kitus,

Try this:

In the context filter select (all)

Click the checkbox for “Add Advanced” and click the “setup” button

Click “add rule” if necessary

In the first dropdown select “ContextsText”

In the second dropdown select “contains”

In the third box type “@wait” (without the quotes. MLO will add its own quotes)

Click OK

Use the GroupBy button to group by context.

 

You will see listings for @wait, #john and #james. Each task will appear twice, once in @wait and once in #somebody. Note that if you have other contexts like @waiting that contain “@wait” they will be picked up as well.

 

Suggestion, if the every entry in @wait also has a #somebody context, you could make life simpler by getting rid of the @wait context and assigning a character like “]” to mean “wait” – then you would have contexts like “]John” and “]James” and your to-do listing would filter on ContextText that starts with ]. One advantage would be that each task would appear only once.

-Dwight

 

From: mylifeo...@googlegroups.com [mailto:mylifeo...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of kitus
Sent: Sunday, August 19, 2012 6:09 AM
To: mylifeo...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [MLO] Grouping tasks with multiple contexts

 

Hello again,

 

I would be glad if anybody could give me a hand with this.

 

Say I have one "wainting for" task which I want to track.

 

TASK: Waiting for John to set up a meeting | Contexts: @wait, #John

 

If I only display tasks with contexts @wait (filtering @wait on the left column), and now I want to group by John, James, etc., how do I do it? 

 

Thanks a lot in advance everyone, 

 

 

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[Mazey]

Out of sheer curiousity, does that #person'sname denote people in MLO? I am a complete newcomer to both MLO and GTD and this caught my eye. I find it very intriguing since I like the concept of contexts and being able to sort by something like a person's name.

Have a great (hopefully not so hot) sunday,

Brienne

[Richard Collings]

This is an opportune post – I was going to post something on this very subject.

 

I have been playing with Trello and it has crystalised a lot of my frustrations with MLO as a planning tool.  

 

MLO is very good for helping me keep focussed and telling me what I should do next but I have always struggled to use it as something to plan my work over the next few days, weeks, months, or years

 

I have found Trello the complete opposite in this respect – very good for planning; less good for day to day management.   

 

At the moment, I intend to use both but the problem is that there is a large amount of double keying – same things appearing in both products and then there is the problem of keeping the two in synch.

 

The reason for this post is that I can see way in which MLO could be made more like Trello – using Contexts.

 

The key feature of Trello is the concept of Lists    You can create these with whatever names you wish and they display side by side and you can drag tasks between lists to organise and manage your work.   This side by side view is very helpful for seeing where you are overloaded, etc.   And is clearly a very popular feature

 

Contexts are similar but a) there is no side by side view and b) if you have a task that is assigned to more than one Context it appears multiple times in the To Do view – once under each of the Contexts (as described by Dwight)

 

My  proposal is something along the following lines (to solve the second problem and as a starting point).   When you create a group on a Context, there is an additional option to a) choose the Contexts which that you want to appear as Groups Headings and b) to manually order these Groups.   

 

ie: you can select the Contexts that appear as Group headings and the order in which they appear.

 

This would allow us to simulate Lists in MLO using Contexts and the group view:

·        You would create a set of contexts which represent your lists (‘List Contexts’)

·        You could create a ToDo filter which groups by Context and displays and orders these ‘List Contexts’

 

For me this would be a big step forward.   The next step would be to have a side by side view of the Groups.

 

I have more to say on this subject (Trello has also crystalised what I want from the Calendar feature too) but this is a starting point.

 

Richard

[m...@grantsmiths.org]

[m...@grantsmiths.org]

Hi, Brienne. What part of the world are you in? Here in the suburbs of New York it’s 62F today, which feels positively chilly after the long stretch of days over 90.

 

Have you read the GTD book yet? It’s “Getting Things Done” by David Allen, available in many libraries and relatively easy to read. It explains a lot.

 

The idea of contexts would be that they define an environment in which certain tasks can get done. For example, most of us have tasks that have to be done on the computer, so there’s no point in wasting time thinking about those tasks when you are, for example, out driving around. So you assign the context “computer” to those tasks, and maybe the context “errands” to other tasks that you do while driving. Then you can use a view like “active by context” to quickly check for stuff to do in whatever environment you find yourself. MLO goes further with concepts like the hours a context is open. I try to spend as little time on the computer as possible on Saturday, so my Computer context is closed then – if I look for things that need to be done, the Computer tasks will not show. Also, on my Android, contexts like my home and my mother-in-law’s apartment are associated with a location, so those contexts don’t show up (in the Nearby view) unless that’s where I am.

 

I think that the at sign (@) at the beginning represents the traditional GTD idea that contexts are generally places. Other leading characters such as # or ! are used mainly to cause the sort to work a certain way. There’s no need for a leading character, you can just say “Home” or whatever, if you like.

 

All that said, you are free to imagine other uses for contexts that reflect the way you want to organize your work. Kitus is using contact names, at least in his example. That’s an interesting idea but not one I will be using myself. Richard is using contexts as list names, in order to create headings. If you think of something new, please share it with the forum.

-Dwight

[Lisa Stroyan]

No, prefixes (@, #, etc) are just notations by the user. MLO doesn't do anything special with them (other than sorting them as characters), for the most part, though @ is used in the Rapid Task Entry box if I recall correctly.

Lisa

--
Lisa

---

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

[m...@grantsmiths.org]

If I hit the “contexts” button in RTE I see a list of all of the contexts I have defined, some with prefixes including @, others without. If I enter a new context in the text box, MLO offers to create a context with that name and does not appear to be paying any particular attention to the leading character.

 

 

>>>Lisa wrote

[Mazey]

Hello :)

Thank you very much Lisa, once again you have the relevant info right away :) I am still trying to figure out the sorting process, so these infos are very useful to me.
Dwight, I envy your temperature a lot lol! I am located in Europe and we currently have a heatwave with temperatures of 86F and up even at nights!! Needless to say I did not get a lot of sleep this weekend ;)

I have not yet read any GTD book; I looked a couple of definitions up on Wikipedia as soon as I heard a new term relating to this or another time managing system. I must admit I have a very, very hard time reading due to my ADD (attention deficit). Whenever possible, I try to find videos, video tutorials or even entire courses on DVD - that works very well for me.
Right at the moment I work my way through MLO's manual and the info on the website, but I have also seen (and bookmarked) some videos on GTD that seem interesting.

I just started using MLO about a month ago and I am not settled with "my" way of organizing things. In the beginning I over-used contexts a lot; right now I try to assign and create them in the light of the sorting logic in the to-do view.
I have I guess a hierarchical setup, with the basic two branches of @computer and @home. Since I work a lot at the computer I have several contexts concerning some programs (I usually have projects, some are simply revolving around learning a software or adjusting it). There for I think it makes sense to have an entire context for one software, plus I see all my tasks that are computer related grouped together and alsotogether in the sub-field were they belong (all tasks that belong to or can be done in Photoshop, for instance). That reflects a bit the way I work; it is more important for me to organize, group my thoughts & ideas together  so I can use my time a little more effective instead of starting here, and there, and then over there (typical ADD problem that I have :( 'Driven to distraction' is the name of a book on ADD and it fits to a T if you ask me! ;) )

Since I liked the idea that you can write contexts also in a different way, I currently try this out. I only have two people on my context list, but it is very important for me that I have all things I need to ask or tell that person together. And the #contexts stand nicely out :-)

My biggest problem is trusting the structure through contexts and getting away from my old another-folder-for-each-thing strategy. That was very confusing after a while. But of course, I need to build a logic and useful structure first :-D It is hard, but I hope I am getting there :)

Thanks for your detailed reply Dwight, very much appreciated :)

Have a great day,

Brienne

[kitus]

I would so much love Andrey jumping in and giving his thoughts on this. At least, if a solution for this is planned with MLO 4.0 that would be already good news. A simple switch would do the trick... Something along the line of "do not show tasks with multiple contexts more than once"

[Richard Collings]

But how would this work? If you had a Task with multiple contexts, what
rule would MLO use to determine which Context the task appeared under?

Does my suggestion of providing a mechanism where the user chooses which
contexts appear in the group headings (and ideally is also able to control
the order of the headings) work for you?

Or do you have some other mechanism in mind?

Richard

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[kitus]

I'm bringing this up again because I've notice I never responded to Richard.

Let me recall my example:

TASK: Waiting for John to set up a meeting | Contexts: @wait, #John

I usually use @wait/@delegated/@borrowed as general contexts. Then, I use "#" for referring to people.

If I could design this from the bottom up, I would suggest "@" contexts would be hierarchy more important than "#". Of course, YMMV so it would be best if the user could modify these rules to match his/her needs.

Assuming contexts have different weights, I would then modify the "Group by" feature in order for it to be able to group low hierarchy context ("#" in my case).

Does this make any sense to you? Sorry for overlooking your answer dated December 2012 (I've just noticed I had not ticked the "Email updates to me" field).

Regards,

[kitus]

I decided to go ahead and use Jira for requesting this capability to be added. After a few days I got a response from that specific feature request moderator, asking me to try and achieve a certain consensus. Would you guys care to help me out here?

He thinks that the following questions must be addressed in order for the moderator team to consider this request fully discussed. What do you guys think? Do you also encounter the same problems as I do? How do you go about this?

Thanks

[Dwight]

Hi, Kitus. Personally, I'm fine with the way a task with multiple contexts will appear multiple times in a view that's grouped by context. But I can see how it could be annoying.

I think it's clear that any scheme for picking which of the contexts should be displayed, will have to be configurable. User preferences will vary too much for any one-size-fits-all scheme. How about allowing the user to reorder the list of contexts, and then going with the context that appears highest in the list?
-Dwight
MLO Betazoid & Moderator
Via k@mail on sgn2

[kitus]

Hi Dwight,

You are right, one of the pillars of a productivity system is user customization. What works for your may not work for me and vice-versa. If I have to read something when I'm not at work, that something will have two context. Displaying the task twice causes me to mentally filter one of the tasks... I really think that MLO should enable context management so that one can fit it to their needs.

Let's see what others think. So far some of the users have already indicated here what their opinion is.

[Dwight]

Hi, Marc. The hard question in making this kind of recommendation is, would
there be a single customization scheme that will be able to meet the needs
of every user? Or will there be different groups of users each looking for a
different customization scheme?

To explore this I'd like to ask everyone who reads this (including Marc) to
answer the following two questions:
1. When displaying tasks grouped by context, do you ever prefer to have a
task with multiple contexts limited to just a single appearance in the view?
(currently it would appear multiple times, once for each context it has)
2. If yes, would you be able to define a hierarchy, so that if a task has
contexts A and B, and you say that the task should appear in the B section
and not the A, that B _always_ takes precedence over A? Or does it depend on
circumstances, for example B takes precedence when you are at home but A
takes precedence when you are at work>
Thanks for your reply,
-Dwight

-----Original Message-----
From: mylifeo...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:mylifeo...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of kitus
Sent: Sunday, October 13, 2013 9:45 AM
To: mylifeo...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [MLO] Grouping tasks with multiple contexts //reply to Lisa &
Dwight

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[kitus]

Hello Dwight,

yes, I could answer those two questions easily:

1. Yes, I could definitely configure my preference permanently. But, again, I wouldn't mind more customisation options so that anybody can pick and chose their preferred settings.

2. Yes. any tasks carrying more than one context and being one of the context @agendas, @wait, @borrowed OR #whatevercontext, should be displayed under the main context @agendas or @wait or @borrowed, etc. AND the different tasks should be displayed under each #whatevercontext

This would be my scheme. Maybe once I configure it, I realise it does not work as expected. But at this point, that would make me happy.

[Dwight Arthur]

Here's a recap of the discussions in this thread. If anyone has something to say or to add, or would have summarized it differently please say so no later than end of day Saturday October 26. In lieu of any further discussion items my next step would be to revise the existing JIRA item for consistency with this discussion.

When an active task has more than one context defined the task will appear in multiple places of a view that's grouped by context. It will appear once under each context that has been defined to the task. This presents a distorted picture of the number of opened tasks and can interfere with the user's orderly management of tasks. Some but not all users wish for an ability to cause such tasks to appear only once. Each user has distinct preferences regarding which of the multiple contexts on a task should be chosen for display of the task. Therefore, there is a need for some method of defining a hierarchy of needs.This is combined with a separate request for a way to determine the order in which contexts appear in a group-by-context view to produce the following recommendation:

1. When defining group-by options for an MLO view, when grouping by context in addition to ascending and descending there should be a third option, user-defined.

2. The Manage Context popup has a triangle next to the word "context" in the header. when the triangle points up the contexts are sorted in ascending order. When the triangle is clicked it moves to point downward, and the contexts are re-sorted in descending order. There needs to be a third value for user defined. When this value is selected, users whould be able to re-sort the contexts, either by dragging context entries and dropping them into the desired order, or by using move-up and move-down buttons

3. When displaying a view in which entries are sorted by or grouped by context, the contexts should appear in the order in which they appear in the Manage Contexts popup.

4. When group by context is selected, provide another new option, "items with multiple contexts appear only once". If enabled, each item will appear no more than once; For an item with multiple contexts, the context which appears first(highest) in the view will be where the task appears.

Please comment on this proposal. Lack of comment on your part will be taken to mean that you are not interested, so if you want to see this happen please add your comment here.

-Dwight

[Lisa Stroyan]

I am strongly in favor of the features discussed here, and I think your proposal covers most of it. 

Two comments:

ONE:UI for determining sort: It seems odd to have two completely different UIs for manage tasks and manage flags. The manage flags dialog doesn't allow clicking on the Flag name (perhaps this is only for me? Since I've rearranged my flags manually).  I think it would be confusing to click on a "sort by" column and change a static behavior throughout MLO. I'm used to seeing "click on column" to only effect the display, never behavior / static list position, but I'm not a UI gal currently :) I don't remember having any problems understanding this interface, and I think it could be copied for Contexts. Then, dragging tasks around would set their order.

SUGGESTION: Merge the sort functionality from "Manage Flags" look and feel, into Manage Contexts. There could be a new menu in the Manage Contexts box, similar to "Sort Tasks" in the Outline, that confirms re-ordering the sort. Menu: "Sort Contacts ....<options>" --> results: "Are you sure you want to reorder your Contexts alphabetically? This will reset your current sort order."

TWO:Selecting Contexts on tasks:  (Eventually) To reduce confusion about contexts throughout MLO, should Context sort order be a static property on the Context, as it is (I think) for flags? Ie, used in the Context selection popup, etc when you want to change the context for a task?. (Though then, people are going to be upset that it is not on mobile platforms...)

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[Richard C]

I am strongly in favour of doing something but I am afraid I am not keen on this idea of having some sort of context hierarchy. (if I have understood the proposition correctly - I have limited time to read all the postings).     I would argue strongly in favour of my Context List based approach - see here for details:

 

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mylifeorganized/tLufHVry73g/vny44wRU2B4J

 

or something similar where you can defined an ordered set of mutually exclusive contexts which then form the grouping.  When you assign something to one of these contexts, it automatically removes any other contexts in the group.

 

This gives you a 'quasi-list' capability which could be further enhanced by laying an optional Trello like interface on top so that you can drag and drop tasks between diferent named lists.

 

I have a very powerful argument in favour of this approach - it is the word:  KANBAN.

 

This is very much 'flavour of the year' (or years) and would allow MLO to be targeted at the KANBAN community - which has a major and growing following.   "The only product that allows you do GtD and Kanban at the same time"    "The only product that allows you to build outlines and do KANBAN at the same time"  - the possibilities are endless.

 

I rest my case,  m'Lud  (see here for explanation of this phrase:  http://www.englishforums.com/English/WhatsIRestMyCaseSMeaning/vkkrr/post.htm)

 

Richard

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

[Richard C]

For those are not familiar with Trello, here is a useful video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7najSDZcn-U

 

 

To summarise my recommendation,   in MLO you can create any number of boards (which would be implemented by a new feature:  Context Lists)  with each board being made up of any number of lists (a list equates to a context).     

 

To set up a Context List (in Trello:  Board), there would be a dialog box which would allow you to choose and order an collection of contexts (in Trello:  List)

 

In setting up a Grouped by View, there would be an additional option, Group by Context List.   This would create a view consisting of the Contexts specified by the List.     In the first instance, this would just be like a nomal view.   The only difference would be that when you drag items from one group heading to another,  MLO would automatically remove it from the old context and assign it to the new context (ie: the contexts in a a list are mutually exclusive - so irrespective of how a context is assigned,  MLO would check whether the new context is an a list and then check whether it was assigned to any other contexts that are also in the list and remove it).

 

This would provide the same functionality as that outlined by Dwight but allow you to have multiple lists with different orders for each list - and as indicated allow people to set up their own Kanban boards in MLO.

 

At some later stage,  MLO could implement a 'Board view' which presents tasks as cards' and allow people to move items by dragging cards.

 

Examples of lists might include:

• A Kanban board:   with contexts:  To Do, Doing, Done
• A Week Planner:  with contexts:  Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri
• A Prioritisation board:  with contexts:  Critical, Urgent, High, Medium, Low
• etc

I think this would be a brilliant new feature which would attract a lot of new customers as it allows MLO to use a new 'buzzword' in its marketing.

 

Richard

[Richard C]

PS:  There are over a million users of Trello  - some of these will be looking for something more sophisticated for their own personal use but which allows them to implement the Kanban  lists/cards metaphor.

[Dwight]

As a person who has no stake in this issue, I'd like to share my assessment of where it stands.

If I'm counting correctly there are three people who believe that this issue warrants an investment of development resources. Simce the summary I wrote, two alternative suggestions have been made, one imho modest in scope, the other extensive. There have been no responses to either suggestion, either affirmative (that's a good suggestion, I agree) or negative (I can't support your suggestion, here's why, and here's a new idea that perhaps would be good for both of us). So at this point I would have to say that you have three suggestions, each with the support of one person. This doesn't seem likely to attract much developer interest.

My suggestion foir you is to try to use the forum to reach a consensus, meaning a single write-up, preferably not very complex, that all of you can support. Also, I think you should use the forum to present a compelling description why other users should be interested in supporting this suggestion.

[kitus]

Dwight,

thanks for your response, and thanks for taking the time to summarise what has been discussed here.

Democracy is a cool system, but it can get tricky when you provide the population with a blank sheet of paper. Everyone will speak their mind differently and reaching a consensus can get rather hard. We all tend to diverge and see things our way.

I suggest we hope to reach a consensus on identifying whether or not some of us consider MLO development should pay attention and define their position with regard to a specific situation or workflow that is causing people to be less productive than they are with the current behaviour. Suggesting a solution can be the least convenient way in terms of coding it because we don't know how MLO works from the inside.

If you think we have reached a consensus in identifying something that could be improved, I think it now is time for MLO team to take it up from here. For that, I think that my example should suffice.

Just my 2 cts

Thanks

[Rachel A]

I don't know what the best way to fix the problem would be but I would just like to add that I think it is a problem. Now I sometimes have to erase the context which I think is less important or just deal seeing items repeated, which I find quite annoying.

I could see benefits of having a list of contexts that are prioritized with the first context in the list being the one that's displayed. I think that would be better than having items coming up multiple times in the same view but could imagine that it might be hard to set these priorities and that they might change for different situations.

I also like the idea of having separate lists of contexts that are mutually exclusive, as in the Trello example described by Richard C. I could imagine something like that being very useful. Then instead of choosing "group by Context" you could choose something like, "group by Place Context" or "group by "Day of the Week Context" and these would not have repeats. But I guess someone might want an activity to have multiple places or multiple days of the week, which may create the same problem as currently exists. However, I'm not sure what type of lists people would have, but repeats in these customized list examples might not be as much of a problem as repeats in the current muddled list of contexts. As in, if an activity was listed as being for Tuesday and Thursday, I think a repeat in list broken up by days of the week would make sense. In the current system, I have contexts which are place specific and those are related to other aspects of the activity (that I use for filtering different views) and now my "Grouped By Context" lists have @Office: items A, B and C then right below say something like Research Activities: Items A and C. The repeat is unnecessary and it really does make the lists hard to read and much longer than they really are. 

As I said, I'm not sure how to fix it but I agree with Kitus that it would be interesting to see a potential solution from MLO.