Manage Your Now Michael Linenberger

[rodxmas]

Hi Everyone!

I have been practicing GTD for 13 years and feel comfortable with yet always learning the methodology. For a variety of reasons, I am switching my set up from Todoist to a MS office 365 system with Outlook as the base task list. In doing my research I came across Michael Lineberger's book and methodology. Has anyone had experience with either transitioning to or incorporating any of the MYN principles with GTD? Trying to decide if it is worth it to me to finish the book and or buy the video series. BTW I found the Outlook Webinars fantastic and they made my transition very easy.

 

[Longstreet]

Hi Everyone!

I have been practicing GTD for 13 years and feel comfortable with yet always learning the methodology. For a variety of reasons, I am switching my set up from Todoist to a MS office 365 system with Outlook as the base task list. In doing my research I came across Michael Lineberger's book and methodology. Has anyone had experience with either transitioning to or incorporating any of the MYN principles with GTD? Trying to decide if it is worth it to me to finish the book and or buy the video series. BTW I found the Outlook Webinars fantastic and they made my transition very easy.

I know of his work. I don't think there is anything wrong with integrating his approach with GTD. If it works well for you and allows to to focus better, then go for it!

 

[mcogilvie]

Hi Everyone!

I have been practicing GTD for 13 years and feel comfortable with yet always learning the methodology. For a variety of reasons, I am switching my set up from Todoist to a MS office 365 system with Outlook as the base task list. In doing my research I came across Michael Lineberger's book and methodology. Has anyone had experience with either transitioning to or incorporating any of the MYN principles with GTD? Trying to decide if it is worth it to me to finish the book and or buy the video series. BTW I found the Outlook Webinars fantastic and they made my transition very easy.

Linenberger has a free ebook on his website, plus several books in print. The free ebook explains his method for organizing todo’s into “Critical Now”, “Opportunity Now” and “Over the Horizion”. He mentions David Allen approvingly in his books, and I think you can incorporate at least some of his ideas into gtd without too much of a problem. I’ve tried the list organization he advocates, and it was ok but not as productive as vanilla gtd. Your mileage may vary.

 

[Longstreet]

Linenberger has a free ebook on his website, plus several books in print. The free ebook explains his method for organizing todo’s into “Critical Now”, “Opportunity Now” and “Over the Horizion”. He mentions David Allen approvingly in his books, and I think you can incorporate at least some of his ideas into gtd without too much of a problem. I’ve tried the list organization he advocates, and it was ok but not as productive as vanilla gtd. Your mileage may vary.

I really do like those categories - the over the horizon would be my later or someday list. Opportunity now is my standard next actions list. Critical now are starred show they show up in my focus list in Nirvana - actions that are due today automatically do.

 

[mcogilvie]

I really do like those categories - the over the horizon would be my later or someday list. Opportunity now is my standard next actions list. Critical now are starred show they show up in my focus list in Nirvana - actions that are due today automatically do.

Yeah, Things and Nirvana are very similar that way so that functionality is kind of already there for both of us. Linenberger also advocates limiting both lists, and that doesn't work well for me.

 

[OF user]

I have used Linenberger's system in the past. It has its issues, especially in that it is designed for a work system only, so it works best if you don't use it for personal stuff or if you run two systems using ML's techniques. That is a deal breaker for me right there. As far as integrating with GTD, you would have to alter the organize, review and engage parts of the GTD system, so it will diverge greatly from GTD.

 

[TesTeq]

Yeah, Things and Nirvana are very similar that way so that functionality is kind of already there for both of us. Linenberger also advocates limiting both lists, and that doesn't work well for me.

In Things you can star an Action for today (“Critical Now”) but as far as I understand you have to use tags for “Opportunity Now” and “Over the Horizon”. Why? Because Things uses dates for moving items from Anytime to Upcoming. There is no "Upcoming" sliding window in the calendar. Am I right?

 

[mcogilvie]

In Things you can star an Action for today (“Critical Now”) but as far as I understand you have to use tags for “Opportunity Now” and “Over the Horizon”. Why? Because Things uses dates for moving items from Anytime to Upcoming. There is no "Upcoming" sliding window in the calendar. Am I right?

In Things, items move into Today for three reasons: a start date of today, a deadline of today, or manual selection. Items with a deadline of today show that due date in red. Due today is what I think of as corresponding to Linenberger’s Critical Now, and on the today list without a deadline of today is Opportunity Now. If an item has a future start date or a future deadline, it shows in the Upcoming view on the start date, or not the due date if there is no start date. Everything is accessible from Anytime and nothing is moved out of it; Today, Upcoming and Someday are filtered views.Does that make sense?

 

[TesTeq]

In Things, items move into Today for three reasons: a start date of today, a deadline of today, or manual selection. Items with a deadline of today show that due date in red. Due today is what I think of as corresponding to Linenberger’s Critical Now, and on the today list without a deadline of today is Opportunity Now. If an item has a future start date or a future deadline, it shows in the Upcoming view on the start date, or not the due date if there is no start date. Everything is accessible from Anytime and nothing is moved out of it; Today, Upcoming and Someday are filtered views.Does that make sense?

Yes. So "Over the Horizon" items shouldn't have "When?" dates or "Deadline" dates because - I suppose - there shouldn't be uncontrolled, automatic movement of items between lists.

 

[mcogilvie]

Yes. So "Over the Horizon" items shouldn't have "When?" dates or "Deadline" dates because - I suppose - there shouldn't be uncontrolled, automatic movement of items between lists.

Things has its own method for handling “someday” items, so I guess “over the horizon” would be just stuff in Anytime that you will do, just not today (unless you have extra time). Items with scheduled start dates do move at the scheduled time onto Today, which is consistent with Linenberger’s Manage Your Now ideas. Items with deadlines do much the same. Things doesn’t map perfectly to either a vanilla GTD implementation or to Linenberger’s ideas, and I’m ok with that.

 

[John Ismyname]

Trying to decide if it is worth it to me to finish the book and or buy the video series.

My rule of thumb is that if you are questioning if a book is worth finishing, it is not!

I read one of of his books a decade ago. My big take-away was the Outlook has a lot of functionality that most users are unaware of. I can't recall any specific takeaways from MYN.