How 7 features of one organizer helped me get things in order

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

MyLifeOrganized (MLO) can dramatically change the quality of your life and help you get things in order. He offers an effective methodology for managing business and time.

All people who are planning or are just going to plan their lives are constantly in search of the most effective method of managing business and time. And this search can take years. It is difficult to argue with the saying "You either plan your life, or it happens to you."

Do you know how they plan in the army? Once a month, all the officers are seated in the class, where they must write in a special notebook the typical tasks of the month, the plan for the month and the plan for each week. All this is painted with colored pencils and approved by the unit commander. After that, the plan is forgotten until next month, and, to be honest, it was just for show. And if it's even simpler, then in FIG nobody needs it. I've been planning this for 13 years …

After leaving the army, my wife and I were invited to the training "Strategic planning for the next year." And the biggest discovery was that everything that I had planned for the year was completed in three months. Planning, now "real achievable," has become an integral part of my life.

At first it was all on paper. With the development of technology, he began to look for alternative options for a computer, and later for mobile gadgets.

In the book "How to get things in order" David Allen said that there is no such software that would completely control all the processes of life, business, etc. Perhaps at the time of writing this book it was. But not now…

I stopped this search for effective methods from the moment I got acquainted with MyLifeOrganized (MLO). This has dramatically affected the quality of my life, and now I am focused only on completing the planned activities.

How does MLO differ from other organizers?

Here is a list of the first seven points that I would like to share with you today.

1. Hierarchy

The appearance of the main organizer window is not limited by any templates or rules. You create your own structure diagram of goals, projects and other tasks, which are displayed schematically in a hierarchy and organized in a tree.

Over the course of three years of using MLO, I went through a lot of to-do list building schemes and eventually settled on a wheel-of-life hierarchy. The "wheel of life" is a very powerful psychological technique, versatile development of a person in all spheres of life, which does not allow a businessman to be unhappy in personal relationships, and a good family man and father to stay at home without money. That is, my diagram starts with life directions (of course, everything is painted in different colors):

• Work;
• business;
• House;
• family and relationships;
• health and sports;
• brightness of life;
• personal development, etc.

This allows me to see in which sector what goals I have set for myself, which one needs to be tightened up, and where the brute force is with an annual load. And even so, it is very convenient if you need to focus on any particular sector.

By the way, in such a hierarchy, the task will not be active in the To-Do list until all its subtasks have been completed, and for this special thanks to the internal To-Do to-do list building algorithm built into MyLifeOrganized.

2. Automatic scheduling of your affairs

The coolest MLO feature that I have not seen in any organizer is the automatic ordering of your to-do list, taking into account the priority of the task, which is set by the start date, due date, importance and urgency of the task. In the "Scheme" you set your task parameters, and that's it! The program then compiles an ordered To-Do list for you.

If you are an adherent of manual task sorting, there is such a thing for you …

3. Flexibility. Works the way you want: filters, views, focus, auto-formatting

The flexibility of the settings and functions of this organizer is simply amazing. Compared to martial arts, MLO is an "octagon with no rules" where literally everything is allowed. The main thing is that all this is effective and leads to the desired result!

Any kind of planning (GTD, Covey, Autofocus and others)! Management of current affairs! Achievements of goals!

You can:

• Create your own types of tasks and lists, which only your imagination can draw in your head.
• Color your system using auto-formatting (icons, colors, fills according to the rules you specify).
• With the help of focus, concentrate on one specific direction, goal, project.
• Using filters, customize the list of active tasks for any necessary conditions (contexts, deadlines, execution time, required effort, compliance with any other parameters).
• Anything you can do with the functions of this program. But the main thing is that all this can be used only when necessary. Need a simple to-do list - please. The program is not overloaded with settings that are unnecessary at the moment.

I am a strong visual! Therefore, for me everything related to "seeing" is very important for perception. And here it's not even about the beauty of your system, but about the fact that all this clearly helps me to be more effective.

In MLO, all of this is available through the auto-formatting functions. And most importantly, there are no hard and fast rules, only my fantasies:

• All important tasks are highlighted in red and bold.
• With the help of flags, I delegate tasks and fully control them (set a task, keep it under control, await completion), as well as perform and control the tasks assigned by the management to me (they are expected to be completed by me).
• Folders of different sections have different colors for me, and you can see if there are tasks in this folder or not. It is very convenient and saves time on working with tasks and folders.
• I assigned my icons to certain groups of tasks (calls, print), etc.

As they say, it's better to see once than hear a hundred times, so here's a screen of my personal working diagram in all its glory:

4. Dependencies

There are tasks that cannot be done until some other task has been completed:

• We cannot hang a picture until we bought a screw with a dowel and until we borrowed a perforator from a neighbor.
• We cannot cook porridge until we have bought cereals and other ingredients.

And there are many similar examples. MyLifeOrganized takes into account all these dependencies, organizes and shows clearly.

Moreover, you can not only configure the dependence of one task on another, but also specify the time interval after which the next task will become active.

5. Overview

There are tasks and ideas that cannot be completed at the moment. These issues in GTD are categorized as "Someday / Maybe" and are recommended to be reviewed in the weekly review so that you don't miss an important idea at the right time.

For such tasks in MyLifeOrganized there is a separate "Overview" view, where you can set the frequency with which you would like to view them (refresh in memory to make a decision to act or postpone more).

Agree, not all ideas, dreams and tasks for the future require a weekly reminder of yourself.

• What I want to buy someday, I set up in the program to view once a month before the salary.
• The places where I want to visit / relax / travel, I set up for annual or semi-annual viewing.

6. Parsing

For the convenience of quickly entering tasks at once with certain properties, the program has a parsing of text input.

What is it?

It is enough to write when entering the task "Run the assignment tomorrow at 10:00, remind-at 5 @ Work" and press Alt + Enter, and the program itself will assign the task "Run the assignment" the start date and due date, set a reminder, assign the highest degree of importance and the necessary context.

And this is just one example, and there are a huge number of such options in MLO.

Here are examples from the MyLifeOrganized reference manual of correct input that can be converted to a given number and time:

• tomorrow at 15:00;
• in 5 days;
• Friday (the nearest future Friday);
• Tue 11:20;
• Jan26;
• after 3 weeks 14:00;
• after 30 minutes;
• 2 months later;
• today in 1 hour 25 minutes;
• in a year.

7. Reminder in place

Reminders on Android and iOS devices can be not only time-bound, but also location-specific.

Remember David Allen's example of flashlight batteries? It's good, they say, so that the system reminds of dead batteries in the store, and not at home when you need a flashlight.

So, MyLifeOrganized will remind you exactly in the store.

Output

This organizer can be compared to a personal secretary who is constantly with you, completely fixes all the issues of your life and reminds you of everything on time.

In this article, I have focused only on the seven most important points of this organizer for me. I am sure that, having mastered the functionality of this program, you will be as effective and efficient as possible and will never forget anything.

If suddenly you cannot solve any planning questions with your used organizer or you have any individual requirements for your planner, write about it in the comments to this article.

I will prove to you that nothing is impossible in this direction!

Good luck and maximum results.

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