I can't decide how many Actions to create per project...

S

Ship69

0
Hi

I need some advice on how to handle too many tasks (using MLO).

According to GTD theory, you are supposed to list absolutely every task, right? But this can make for painfully long lists, even if you put a fair number of them into your Someday/Maybe list or use a future Start Date (to create a Tickler list)

But if I create say a few Actions for each project (which is helpful for larger projects), then things quickly get much worse!

So I can't decide how many Actions to create per project.

A.) Reasons to create MORE Actions:
a) For projects where I catch myself starting to procrastinate, I like to break them down into several small tasks (i.e. Actions). The smallness of the individual tasks helps make the project seem less daunting and helps me keep momentum.

b) Likewise having several potential Next Actions listed helps me chose between them depending on their importance/urgency, (and - if I am being honest - depending a little on my mood !)

BUT

B) Reasons to create FEWER Actions:
The trouble with having long lists of Actions is that even the act of giving every single action a Context quickly becomes a pain.

Fwiw, I have been experimenting with giving each Action an Importance and an Urgency as well (which MLO permits). This can keep help sight of important stuff in particular. However this makes entering data even more painful.

I have also tried using the manual dragging of items up and down the sort order of a list, as this creates a sort of relative priority and this helps in some ways, but is still clunky, as it's not clear how far to drag stuff.

I have also experimented by using stars - which MLO helpfully allows you to filter out separately. And I have also tried marking high priority items in colour - which lets the eye find things very fast but only if they are "above the fold". And/or making certain things bold. This works up to a point, although I find myself UN-starring and un-marking up certain uncompleted items...

However that fact is that when you have too many Actions it quickly become a pain to read them all whatever you do!

And worse, when statuses change (e.g. become more urgent) this can be disastrous because it's all too easy to lose track of important/urgent things when priorities shift around as they inevitably do.

- Any advice anyone?

J
 
If more than one action is truly actionable right now you should list them all as next actions. That's what GTD teaches, and I agree. But it sounds as if you are perhaps talking about listing actions that will become next actions at some later stage, but are not next actions yet, because other actions need to be completed first. These do not belong on the next actions list(s).

You may perhaps still want to list these upcoming next actions somewhere, since you have already identified them? GTD calls this place "project support", off your primary GTD lists. Some apps allow you to keep these actions listed within the app, visible within the project, but invisible on the next actions list. But many apps to not provide any means to distinguish between such upcoming next actions and real (current) next actions. Is that what the problem is?

(I know from my own experiments with MLO that it has the strict sequential mode as an option, with strictly one action at a time, but perhaps you have found, like I have, that this is not realistic enough. Your real projects often have more than just one next action. And then it has the other modes, with all tasks being active in parallel, which is usually not realistic either.)
 
Folke said:
...it sounds as if you are perhaps talking about listing actions that will become next actions at some later stage, but are not next actions yet, because other actions need to be completed first.
Click to expand...

No, mostly I am talking about genuine Next Actions that can be actioned right now. That said, I also often want a place to store the next 2, 3 or 4 future/upcoming Next Actions, that are ready to be used when the Actions above them in the list get ticked off. However for smallish projects keeping these Actions somewhere else in a completely separate "project support" makes no sense as it takes time to find these darned "project support" files/lists (or whatever).

Yes you are correct about MLO wanting you to work in a strict sequential mode i.e. showing only one Next Action at at time. And like you I HATE being forced into this way of working. (GTDNext where I lived for about 3 weeks before MLO, has a "Force Next" option which I miss baldly!). After some sweat I discovered a workaround on MLO, which is messy but does sort of work - which is to call your Action (that is within a Project) a Project itself, and sure enough it will then appear as a Next Action (so long as it has no children obviously).

One down-side is that it can start to mess with your head as to whether something is really a Next Action or is really a Project (as you need to us different naming conventions - e.g. if something is really a Project then in GTD, you need to describe the desired outcome/state rather than what the activity itself involves, right?!)

Another down-side is that if you use automatic formatting to show you whether it is a Project or an Action, obviously your formatting gets messed up (i.e. with Actions looking like Projects!)

Fwiw, what I do is I have my Actions in black and my Projects in bold (but also in dark grey to stop them shouting too much). And then if I (occasionally) want to do a "Force Next" on an Action (so as to make it appear on the Next Actions list), then I simply make the Action become Project (using Alt/J hotkey). This makes it go bold of course, but I can then remove the boldness by hitting Control/B twice! Rather clunky but it works.
 
TesTeq said:
No.

You should list as many as you need to stop thinking about the Project.
Click to expand...

Hang on there are two different issues. There is what data to store and what data to work from. Or do you mean both?

Either way for me at least and particularly for my larger projects, that number is fairly likely to be greater than one. But the problem is that is you list them all, then it can quickly become overwhelming - plus you start to lose the ability to quickly scan across multiple different projects.
 
You won't obtain any other answer than "write as many details as you need to get it out of your head". That's what I've learned from David Allen podcasts.
 
Ship69 said:
I need some advice on how to handle too many tasks (using MLO).

According to GTD theory, you are supposed to list absolutely every task, right?
Click to expand...
No clue on how MLO works, I'm using Omnifocus but you should only have on your next action lists the actions that you can complete right now. If an action is dependent on another action then it isn't a next action. If you want to plan out your projects that's fine but only the next actions go on your next actions lists by context.

I love working in sequential mode for most of my projects so I like that OF allows me to set up a series of next actions and the next one pops up as soon as I finsh the one before it. But I also have some projects that I need to work on in parallel and OF supports that as well. A lot depends on how well planned your projects are, how often that plan needs to change and how your system shows future actions.

Depending on your system though the future actions might be project support or even someday/maybe (if they are really projects dependent on an existing project to be finished).

Id'd suggest using the Natural Planning model to look at each project really carefully and verify that all your actions really are next actions. Then for what really are next actions think how display them. For that you'll need someone who uses MLO as I have no idea how to adapt that to your needs.
 
Oogiem
Interesting. How would you handle a project like this (entirely fictional) one ?

Project: Clean up my sitting room (in time for VIP mother-in-law visit!)
Actions:
1. Buy some new/ better brand of vacuum cleaner bags
2. Replace the vacuum cleaner's bag (which is not working as well as it used to)
3. Water plants [rapidly becoming urgent]
4. Sprinkle carpet-cleaning (anti-dust-mite) powder on carpet


5. Wait 10 to 20 minutes
6. Dust the high areas of room (pictures, light, shelves etc) [not crucial unless 4. has been done]

7. Vacuum clean the carpet [absolutely crucial]
8. Clean windows [important too]



Let me explain: The only absolutely crucial thing is "7." (vacuum cleaning the carpet) because it's a total mess!

However the only really important things that I'm hoping to do are the bold things (3., 7. and 8.) which I need to do at the very least.
And doing "3." (Water the plants) and "8." (Clean the windows) can start at any time during the preceding week.

Now it's not essential, but if time permits, then when I'm next on my @Errands, I might be able to do "1." and buy some new/better vacuum cleaner bags. And IF I have managed to do "1.", then I may as well do "2." and replace the vacuum cleaner's bag.

But if I have LOTS of time I could do a really good job and also "5." sprinking on powder and if I have LOTS AND LOTS of time I could even do "6." wait the full 20 minutes to allow it to kill the dust mites.


But wait, if I run out of time, then I can just go ahead and do "7." without doing 1. 2. 4. 5. or even 6. and I could go ahead and vacuum clean the carpet using the existing bag. It's a bit horrible and I fear rather smells of dog... So not ideal, but much better than doing nothing for my VIP visitor!

So what I want is:
- for 1. to be visible as my MLO Next Action (even though it is low priority)
- for 3. and 7. and 8. to always be visible (because they are both important and are not dependant on each other)
...I want for the other options to only appear sequentially (so as to avoid overwhelm etc)

So how would you enter the above into you system? All of them or just some of them or what?
 
Those are several projects not one.

1 project is Vacuum Cleaner in good operational condition

1 is Plants healthy and properly cared for

1 is Carpets cleaned and mite free

1 is all items dusted regularly

1 is windows clean and streak free

All are in the maintain the house area of focus.

For the vacuum cleaner put both on your lists Item 1 might be a project too, depends whether you need to research possible vacuum bag options but assuming not it might be Stop at store X and buy better quality vacuum bags on your errands list while change vacuum bag is on your inside the house list.

Plants is it's own project with an action on the inside the house list to water them. Other actions

Carpets has the sprinkle dust mite powder and then the vacuum set sequentially so that the vacuum isn't avail until after the powder is sprinkled.

I'd probably put the dusting on hold and the last item in carpets cleaned would eb go make the dusting project active and so it's actions would show up.

For me the windows cleaned would actually start with an action to locate the bucket and squeegee to clean the windows with, but that is because I have no clue where we put it after the last time we did that ;-)

It seems to me that you are doing what I used to do a lot. I had what I thought was a single project and the different pieces were confusing. What I learned is that with very few exceptions, if there are several items that can be done at the same time you've probably got several projects within an area of focus not a single project.

See if that works better.

As a lot of folks have said one thing about GTD is you have to get used to dealing with lots of projects. My own system usually have about 250 active current projects. I just did a quick check, I have 241 projects and 447 available actions right now.
 
Oogiem said:
Those are several projects not one.

1 project is Vacuum Cleaner in good operational condition

1 is Plants healthy and properly cared for

1 is Carpets cleaned and mite free

1 is all items dusted regularly

1 is windows clean and streak free

All are in the maintain the house area of focus.
Click to expand...

These projects seem to be rather micro-areas of focus. But I think Ship69's intention is different. His successful outcome is "make VIP mother-in-law happy during her visit". So the Project must be focused on some kind of easy and effortless fake cleanup. A long-term order, good condition of equipment and healthy plants are not important.
 
After reading the original post one more time it strikes me that maybe the underlying question is not really necessarily related to the number of actions in each project but to how you can keep a large number of next actions conveniently organized for the typical situations:

- picking some actions to do right now (done throughout the day)
- find any particularly useful and appropriate things to aim to get done today (done once per day, while also checking your calendar)
- weekly review
- thorough review (perhaps a few times per year)

Long, daunting next actions lists seem to be a common problem. I have heard this topic addressed countless times on various app forums, and people go to great lengths to limit the total number or to somehow break it all down in manageable chunks. It seems to me that neither the existing apps nor the existing methodologies (GTD included) fully address this problem. It becomes an individual challenge to find the least dissatisfying workaround, and there seems to be very little consent about what is best. Some of the common tricks - some uglier than thers - are:

- extensive use of tickler and calendar to artificially hide perfectly actionable actions
- extensive use of inactivation of entire projects for a whole week
- extensive use of Someday/Maybe even for things that are actually "Someday/Definitely" (less urgent/important next actions)
- separate next actions lists, perhaps titled Later or Upcoming, for the less urgent/important next actions
- serialization of project actions even when more than one action is perfectly actionable
- phasing/staging (ABC prioritization; don't touch B actions until all A actions are completed)
- flagging/coloring of high-medium-low priority actions ("soft prioritization"; to guarantee attention only)
- extensive use of miniscule "combination contexts" (e.g. "Out with Mary and the Dog in the Sunshine")
- extensive use of overlapping contexts and filtering (e.g. Out AND Mary AND Dog AND Sunshine")
- extensive use of list grouping, e.g. group next actions by context, by project, by area etc

Of these, I have personally settled for using "soft priorities" and "list grouping" only. My "soft priorities" - coloring for Hi, Med, Lo - helps me to at least see quickly what is urgent/important/late. I use this color differently or not at all depending on when and why I am looking at my lists (it depends on whether it is a weekly review, a morning review/scan, a project review or a regular task selection during the course of the day). I very much like this, and would keep this coloring practice even if I found the "perfect" app that also had other carefully thought-out alternatives.

Automatic list grouping is also a way to get the next actions manageable. I usually view them grouped by area/project in my initial morning review and by context later in the day (or go into a specific project or area if I want to focus on that, in which case I need no list grouping).

As for contexts, I use only five non-overlapping contexts. This works well enough. I would probably abandon this if I had the "perfect" app, though, but I have never seen an app that has overlapping contexts (which is more flexible and realistic, and is a common feature) and also has adequate filtering capabilities (e.g. be able to exclude unavailable contexts; this is a feature that no app seems to have).
 
Folke said:
- extensive use of inactivation of entire projects for a whole week
- extensive use of Someday/Maybe even for things that are actually "Someday/Definitely" (less urgent/important next actions)
Click to expand...

That's what helps me most.
 
I think it is important to observe that most of the things on that long list that I made above (of common tricks that people use) are in fact prioritizations. For example, putting committed and actionable next actions in Someday/Maybe is nothing other than a form of ABC prioritization in disguise (in effect making them a C priority if you hide them among wild dreams and other non-committed Maybe actions where you cannot easily find them, and perhaps B if you put them on a separate "B" list or "hot stand-by" Someday list). Likewise, inactivating a project for a week, or tickling it for the future etc is also a form of "staging" (A to B or A to C prioritization of some tasks/projects).

I do not object strongly to prioritization as such, even though I avoid it. It seems most people feel they need it (in one form or another), and David Allen talks a lot about it, but it seems that many people have got the impression from him that prioritization in all of its forms is something bad and strictly "forbidden", whereas David Allen condemns just a few of the varieties. For example, he condemns "ABC prioritization" but at the same time condones and even recommends it if only you avoid the term "prioritization" and call the lower priority Someday/Maybe instead of B or C.

As you may have heard me say before, I personally prefer to not hide any committed, actionable things away, but just keep the "low priority" ones marked with a separate color etc for easy identification.
 
Folke - You have obviously thought deeply about prioritization. If I understand you correctly every single one of your 'live' actions & projects all have A, B, C priorities allocated to them. If priority is lower i.e. "D" in effect, then you put them in the Someday/Maybe list (on the basis that priorities may shift around before you get on to them such that they MAY not get done at all).

Incidentally do you have a different list for Someday/Definitely?

Personally, for small stuff, on top of entering a context, I find that explicitly entering any priority at all is a potential waste of time and often I dont have that time! And the only time I start adding priorities to stuff is when after much time has passed and they are not getting done. But I guess if you are doing it with hotkeys in your application (remind me was it "doit.im"??), then maybe that would work...

I am interested to see that you have abandoned the distinction between importance and urgency. But how then do you make sure that you are getting onto the stuff that is genuinely extremely important as opposed to merely moderately important but urgent.

Also I am interested to know what you do about overwhelm. Typically how many projects & actions do you have on your screen at once?

* * *

Personally I had a rather sleepless night last night, but I keep an voice recorder by my bed to record my (entirely brilliant) late-night/early morning thoughts... and this morning I added just under 30 items straight into my inbox and immediately felt... rather overwhelmed! (And that was even without looking at my existing list that is currently well over 200 tasks). [Yes I know I need do a weekly review and stuff a number of them into my Someday-Maybe list, plus a few of them into my Tickler list using Start Date - your comments above notwithstanding but I need to cut it all down somehow!]

I read slowly and only with difficulty and I find that the only way that I can successfully handle 'priority' with such a large number of tasks and so much fluidity in my life is to use "relative priority" i.e. to use sort orders. i.e. I rapidly drag the more important stuff up and down the screen (using keyboard shortcuts). [I would like to be able to do things like "up 5" or "up 10" in single keystrokes but such a thing does not seem to exist in my software (MLO). ]

The result of using this 'relative priority' is that the stuff near the top is always either the higher priority stuff or new stuff that will be bumped down over time as I work if it's not important/urgent enough. This approach saves me entering importance and/or urgency for each task. And more importantly it saves me from updating them all the time as priorities of life shift around.

Moreover for stuff that has been around for a while (including larger projects) separate process kicks in and I then enter importance and urgency for everything. I then use this data, particularly during my weekly reviews, but sometimes also during my daily reviews, to look at my projects & task sorted by each of importance, urgency plus a combination of both. This is particularly helpful to make sure genuinely important stuff if being done.

For completeness, I also use stars to pull out stuff to do immediately/today. And there is also a colour highlighting tool to flag up genuinely v urgent/important stuff - which is particularly useful for flagging stuff up as urgent for tomorrow.

I am new to GTD and my processes are not brilliant... but this approach stops me from going absolutely insane looking at lower priority stuff repeatedly!.

* * *

>(it depends on whether it is a weekly review, a morning review/scan,
> a project review or a regular task selection during the course of the day).

You say you have a:
- Weekly review
- Morning review/scan [grouped by area/project ?]
- Project review
- Regular task selection during the day [grouped by context?]

So do you have a different 'View'/'Report' (i.e. a different view of the data using different sort orders, filtering, layout, markup etc) for each of your four listed processes?

If you had time & were prepared to share, I would find it interesting to see some screenshots of exactly what you mean.
 
@Ship69: Maybe the issue isn't where you're keeping your next actions vs. project support and is instead one of applying the natural planning model. With respect to your hypothetical mother-in-law's visit, ask yourself what you really need and want to do to make her stay pleasant. Is she highly allergic? Is she the type to crab about dust or dead plants (and do you care)? Then add the right next actions to your context lists. If there are dependent actions that require something else to be accomplished first put those wherever you keep project support. But ask yourself: once you get vacuum bags are you really going to forget that you need to vacuum? GTD isn't about completely removing spontaneity from your life.
 
Ship69 said:
You say you have a:
- Weekly review
- Morning review/scan [grouped by area/project ?]
- Project review
- Regular task selection during the day [grouped by context?]

So do you have a different 'View'/'Report' (i.e. a different view of the data using different sort orders, filtering, layout, markup etc) for each of your four listed processes?
Click to expand...

No, I use the standard lists of the app for all of these.

For example, I click into and review my projects quite often, definitely every week, but also whenever I check off an action or feel uncertain about whether it is up to date. I may need to dream up some new actions or manually transform a dependent action (project support action) to "current".

In my morning scan I always check
- High and Medium Next (using the standard Next list, usually grouped by area/project and subsorted by priority)
- High and Medium Waiting (using the standard Waiting list, usually grouped by area/project and subsorted by priority)
- unless I am very busy or know by heart I also check High Someday/Maybe for "very hot and tempting" things that I have not yet decided I should do at all (afraid it might backfire).

Ship69 said:
Incidentally do you have a different list for Someday/Definitely?
Click to expand...

No. My "Someday/Definitely" actions would be my Low Next. Most actions are "someday" in the sense that they will happen "some day, no fixed date". Therefore, my criteria for putting something in Someday/Maybe is the Maybe part, i.e "not even sure I ever will".

Ship69 said:
If I understand you correctly every single one of your 'live' actions & projects all have A, B, C priorities allocated to them.
Click to expand...

Well, yes and no. The actions all have one of three "priorities", but these are not "execution priorities" as in normal ABC prioritization, just "viewing priorities" telling me how often I must remember to look at them. For example, my Low Next and Low Waiting I "guarantee" a systematic review only once per week, during my weekly review.

Ship69 said:
Personally, for small stuff, on top of entering a context, I find that explicitly entering any priority at all is a potential waste of time and often I don't have that time! And the only time I start adding priorities to stuff is when after much time has passed and they are not getting done. But I guess if you are doing it with hotkeys in your application (remind me was it "doit.im"??), then maybe that would work...
Click to expand...

I would prefer it to be set to Medium (Normal) by default, automatically, but yes, as you say, there are plenty of other ways, including a hotkey; no big trouble. And I only enter priority and project for those actions that I know I will keep on my list for some considerable length of time. Quick action notes on my Today list I do not mark with anything except context (just to get them in the right group). Yes, I use Doit.

Ship69 said:
Also I am interested to know what you do about overwhelm. Typically how many projects & actions do you have on your screen at once?
Click to expand...

I typically have about 50 next actions an 25 waiting, but it fluctuates a lot, say between 15-150 next and 10-100 waiting (usually in opposite directions; if have managed to shuffle a lot to others I have less on my own next list).

Of these I would say, on average, that I have 10% High (urgent or important), 40% Medium (normal) and 50% Low (uncritical).

Ship69 said:
I am interested to see that you have abandoned the distinction between importance and urgency. But how then do you make sure that you are getting onto the stuff that is genuinely extremely important as opposed to merely moderately important but urgent.
Click to expand...

The main reason I keep it down to just one is to cut down on entry time, and I do not need both. I have very few High ones, and they are very easy to see (regardless of grouping and sorting; they always have a red bar on the left), and I need to always consider whether I could somehow manage to do them now. At that stage it is usually pretty obvious what the whole situation with them is (importance, degree of urgency, necessary tools, people, locations etc), and I can usually remember, too, as it is usually not the first time I see them. It is I myself who marked them red, following a decision on my part that they are running dangerously late etc. These priorities are not fickle or fast-moving in any sense. Usually I try to do my red tasks as soon as possible, if I can, but it can sometimes take days or even weeks before I get into the right context or mood etc.
 
Ship69 said:
Yes you are correct about MLO wanting you to work in a strict sequential mode i.e. showing only one Next Action at at time. And like you I HATE being forced into this way of working. (GTDNext where I lived for about 3 weeks before MLO, has a "Force Next" option which I miss baldly!). After some sweat I discovered a workaround on MLO, which is messy but does sort of work - which is to call your Action (that is within a Project) a Project itself, and sure enough it will then appear as a Next Action (so long as it has no children obviously).

One down-side is that it can start to mess with your head as to whether something is really a Next Action or is really a Project (as you need to us different naming conventions - e.g. if something is really a Project then in GTD, you need to describe the desired outcome/state rather than what the activity itself involves, right?!)

Another down-side is that if you use automatic formatting to show you whether it is a Project or an Action, obviously your formatting gets messed up (i.e. with Actions looking like Projects!)

Fwiw, what I do is I have my Actions in black and my Projects in bold (but also in dark grey to stop them shouting too much). And then if I (occasionally) want to do a "Force Next" on an Action (so as to make it appear on the Next Actions list), then I simply make the Action become Project (using Alt/J hotkey). This makes it go bold of course, but I can then remove the boldness by hitting Control/B twice! Rather clunky but it works.
Click to expand...

It sounds to me like you might be living in your MLO Outline view (where all of the tasks are visible all the time) and not using the TODO view to view your next actions.

MLO has a very easy way to designate next actions out of sequence, which sounds like it would solve your issue. I gave up on MLO because it is so customizable I just kept tinkering with it. But it is incredibly flexible and, to my mind, has better "next action" management than any other app I've tried.

In MLO, each ask can be assigned a dependency. If nothing is assigned in that field, then it will show up on your todo list. If you TASK 2 dependent on TASK 1 being completed, TASK 2 won;t show up in your todo list at all until TASK 1 completed. This way, it's very easy to have multiple next actions in any project. For example, suppose you have listed the following tasks and dependencies in your project:

TASK 1 - no dependency
TASK 2 - dependent on TASK 1 being completed
TASK 3 - no dependency
TASK 4 - dependent on TASK 3 being completed

Set up this way, the TODO view in MLO would show only TASK 1 and TASK 3. TASK 2 would be invisible on your TODO list until TASK 1 was completed, when TASK 2 would magically show up on your TODO list. Similarly, TASK 4 would be invisible until you check off TASK 3.

Just look up "dependency" in the user manual to see what I'm talking about.
 
Interestingly enough MLO was my first list manager and I was a project / product manager at the time. I also had a tendency to list more actions than what was absolutely next. For me this could get frustrating because I had project plans and even program plans in other project management systems which led to duplication.

What helped me was realizing that my GTD lists are not a project plan. They are simply a place to park what I can't do right at this minute, and what I'm waiting for from other people. So if it's on my brain, and it takes more than 2 minutes to do, or I am not in the right context ... I park it. And there are two places I park it. If I'm going to do it next, it's an action. If it's something I may or should do later for that project, I park it in my project information sheet (part of my project support material).

For project plans ... especially things I am working on with other teams, I use a project management tool or a collaboration tool for those projects and just park my next actions in my GTD lists.

So my recommendation is to keep it simple. Park actions you cannot do at this minute. If it's a next action then create a task, if it's a later action then store the action in your project support document.

One things that may help with the sizing of projects. I also try to scope projects if I don't have a good feel for what it is or how long it will take. Having the natural planning model and especially defining the outcome helps. And I do this in the project information sheet OR occasionally a mindmap.So I brainstorm what I think needs to be done and then that becomes an inbox item. When I process it, I pull out the next actions and create those.

The other thing I do, is size the project in pomodoros. I use o for each pomodoro (25 minutes). And when next to the project name, I add in the pomodoros. e.g. House move completed | o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

I complete and add on pomodoros as needed, so I always have an idea of how much work is left on the project.

Hope you got some ideas out of that. gl!

Cheers, Enyo
www.enyonam.com
 
JD-on-GTD said:
It sounds to me like you might be living in your MLO Outline view (where all of the tasks are visible all the time) and not using the TODO view to view your next actions.

MLO has a very easy way to designate next actions out of sequence, which sounds like it would solve your issue. I gave up on MLO because it is so customizable I just kept tinkering with it. But it is incredibly flexible and, to my mind, has better "next action" management than any other app I've tried.

In MLO, each ask can be assigned a dependency.
Click to expand...

I both love and hate MLO is almost equal measure. It's core list management and depth of hotkeys is superb. Howev G*d alone knows how much time I have spent tinkering with it. As such it is a tool for geeks, productivity obsessives, and creative avoiders. It's actually a fantastic PLATFORM for experimenting to find out what a decent productivity APPLICATION should look like. That is in effect you are required to build your own application.

Yes I love the ability to show Next Action - however in real life most projects are simply NOT that linear and my largest gripe with MLO is that there is no mechanism to have more than one Next Action visible. i.e. I love having most of a project's future actions/tasks able to be hidden (for fear of overwhelm), however there are times - esp on a larger project when I want to show 2 or 3 Next Action at once.

The young pretender GTDNext has a brilliant way around this problem which it calls "Forced Next", which lets you do exactly this. A couple of months ago I lived in GTDNext for a couple of weeks (as a GTD new user) but it was still too clunky and missing powerful enough hotkeys. And there was no Android app... But I am intending to back move in there in due course.

Yes in theory Dependency could do solve all sorts of problems... but in reality it's just too fiddly to even thing about setting up. I find I barely have time to set up Contexts and frankly Dependency is just a step too far (for now at least). If it was DEAD easy (drag n drop) AND there was a video showing me how to do it, then I might consider it.

Enyo

1. "... If it's a next action then create a task, if it's a later action then store the action in your project support document. "

2. "So I brainstorm what I think needs to be done and then that becomes an inbox item. When I process it, I pull out the next actions and create those."

3. "The other thing I do, is size the project in pomodoros. I use o for each pomodoro (25 minutes). And when next to the project name, I add in the pomodoros. e.g. House move completed | o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o"

Yes three excellent tips - thank you.

One thing - I hadn't heard about pomodoros before (although I had evolved my own personal techniques which I "DNB" ["Do Nothing But"] which turns out to be remarkably similar!)... but when you enter your "o" s - is that how much time is left to do, or how many 25 min chunks will be needed in total?

Must dash. Things to get done :)

J
 
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