Getting Started (Part 2 of 3)

  1. Support
  2. 1. Turn Planning into Doing
  3. 2. Schedule, Prioritize and Categorize
  4. 3. Flexibility and Customizability

Schedule, Prioritize and Categorize tasks to get doable lists

Structuring tasks in Outline is good, but it is not enough. Your To-Do can get out of control really fast if you do not classify your tasks. See how you can add more information to your tasks.

Do the right tasks at the right time

Suppose, you need to 'Make a presentation' this week and you can start tomorrow. Add a Start Date and Due Date right in the Outline, in the corresponding columns:




Tip. You can choose which columns to display in the current View. Right-click any column header and select the column you need to see. The columns configuration is stored for each view.

This is what you get:

  • The task is scheduled, and you can see it in the big-picture view — All tasks.
    It shows you when you should start and finish it. If a task becomes overdue, its checkbox turns red.

  • If you switch to the To-Do tab, you won't see the task there. But don't worry, it will show up there tomorrow!

    This is because the view opened in this tab — Active Actions — shows only tasks you can do right now. Start Date is one of the parameters which determine when the task should appear in the Active Actions view.


    • View

    Each View breaks the whole tree of tasks into a specific list by a set of criteria. For example, the Active actions view shows a plain list of your current to-do tasks, Projects — all tasks marked as projects, Starred — list of tasks marked with a star.

    The order and place of tasks remains the same in the common outline, in the All Tasks view. Other views show just a certain portion of this outline. If you remove a star from the task, it will disappear from the filtered list 'Starred', but will stay in the common outline.

    Views can be hierarchical (Outline views) and non-hierarchical (To-Do views).

    Tip. Use Tabs with your commonly used views.



  • Due Date affects ranking in the Active Action view: the closer the Due Date, the higher position of the task.

Tip. Set Recurrency for periodic tasks. MLO allows to have a simple or complex recurrence pattern like "First Monday of every 3 months".


See prioritized on the top

If a task has no timelines, you can still affect its position in To-Do list by changing Importance or Urgency.


Ranking in To-Do

By default, MLO ranks tasks in the To-Do views according to their computed score priorities. MLO has built-in algorithms to determine a computed score priority, based on the task importance, urgency and start&due dates. So you don’t have to decide what to do next, MLO does it for you!

For more information refer to our help file.

Tip. Set reminders to be alerted about the task in advance.


Check what's due this week

You can pull up other short lists of tasks, filtered by dates. For example, pick the view Due Next 7 days and see what you've scheduled to complete this week:



More properties for deeper organization

You can bring more clarity to your planning system by organizing tasks into folders and projects, and also by assigning contexts.

Separate Home and Work

You can use Folders to separate tasks from different areas of your life:




Folder

Any task can be converted into a Folder. Folders, unlike tasks, do not need to be completed, they just store the other tasks and never appear in To-Do.



Track your Projects

Turn large tasks with set of multiple actions into Projects.


Project

Any task can be converted into a Project. Each project is highlighted blue and has a dynamically calculated status bar so you can track its progress. Also, you can select a Status for each Project: Not Started, In Progress, Suspended or Completed.

Tip. Project progress percentage is based on how many subtasks of the project are completed and what their Task Effort properties are. If a task has higher value of Task Effort property it adds more value to the completion percentage.


All projects are included in a special Projects view where you can review them in groups by status:

Projects

Tip. Under Effort in properties, you can also specify how much time you think it will take to complete the task (min and max time required). You can then filter your tasks by it in the Time section based on the time you have available.


See what you can do by context


Contexts

Organizing tasks by context is one of the main ideas in the classic productivity book "Getting Things Done". It suggests that you should be able to see tasks for each context you find yourself in.

Contexts usually refer to places, tools, people and even motivation. Read more about Contexts, or watch our video. Also, see how to get a location-based reminder on your phone by assigning a context with location.

Tip. With Context Hours in MLO you can set a time period when you can do tasks with that context. This way you conrol when to have them displayed in your To-Do.


Start with basic contexts like @Home and @Office or create custom ones in the Properties panel. To see what you can do right now, depending on the context, open the view Active by Contexts:

Active by Context



Need more classification? Check out Stars, Flags and Text Tags!

Tip. Use Notes to add more details about a task. Notes editor supports Markdown syntax for styling text.


Use Shortcuts

Alt + F1 – to open/close Properties pane

Alt + 1 – to toggle between Task List and Task Notes



Ctrl + Shift + S – to set Star on/off

Alt + C – to edit Context

Alt + D – to set Due Date

Alt + J – to toggle "This is a Project"

Alt + L – to select Context(s) for a task from the list

Alt + R – to set Reminder

Alt + S – to set Start date (Defaults to today's date)

Alt + W – to toggle Weekly goal

Alt + X – to set MaX time required

Ctrl + Shift + P – to toggle Project Status



Alt + V – to select View

Summary

Adding properties to tasks helps you better understand them, and make the best choice on what you can work on right now.

You schedule, prioritize and categorize your tasks and MLO does the rest - it automatically places the most immediate tasks on top of your To-Do list and pulls up other short lists (views) of the tasks you need. Just pick the view and get cracking!

Schedule, Prioritize and Categorize tasks to get doable lists

Structuring tasks in Outline is good, but it is not enough. Your To-Do can get out of control really fast if you do not classify your tasks. See how you can add more information to your tasks.

Do the right tasks at the right time

Suppose, you need to 'Prepare a presentation' next week. Set a Start Date and Due Date for the task:



Tip. Use Swipe Actions for setting due date quickly.

This is what you get:

  • The task is scheduled, and you can see it in the big-picture view — All tasks.
    It shows you when you should start and finish it. If a task becomes overdue, its checkbox turns red.

  • If you switch to the To-Do views, you won't see the task there. But don't worry, it will show up there when its Start date comes next week!

    This is because the view — Active Actions — shows only tasks you can do right now. Start Date is one of the parameters which determine when the task should appear in the Active Actions view.


    • View

    Each View breaks the whole tree of tasks into a specific list by a set of criteria. For example, the Active actions view shows a plain list of your current to-do tasks, Projects — all tasks marked as projects, Starred — list of tasks marked with a star.

    The order and place of tasks remains the same in the common outline, in the All Tasks view. Other views show just a certain portion of this outline. If you remove a star from the task, it will disappear from the filtered list 'Starred', but will stay in the common outline.

    Views can be hierarchical (Outline views) and non-hierarchical (To-Do views).

    Tip. Use Workspaces with your commonly used views.



  • Due Date affects ranking in the Active Action view: the closer the Due Date, the higher position of the task.

Tip. Set Recurrency for periodic tasks. MLO allows to have a simple or complex recurrence pattern like "First Monday of every 3 months".


See prioritized on the top

If a task has no timelines, you can still affect its position in To-Do list by changing Importance or Urgency.


Ranking in To-Do

By default, MLO ranks tasks in the To-Do views according to their computed score priorities. MLO has built-in algorithms to determine a computed score priority, based on the task importance, urgency and start&due dates. So you don’t have to decide what to do next, MLO does it for you!

For more information refer to our help file.

Tip. Set reminders to be alerted about the task in advance.


Check what's due this week

You can pull up other short lists of tasks, filtered by dates. For example, pick the view Due Next 7 days and see what you've scheduled to complete this week, grouped by Due Date:



There is also the calendar view Today. It shows your daily task load on a graph, making it easy to see how much you have to do at a glance.



More properties for deeper organization

You can bring more clarity to your planning system by organizing tasks into folders and projects, and also by assigning contexts.

Separate Home and Work

You can use Folders to separate tasks from different areas of your life. See how you can turn tasks into folders 'Home' and 'Work' using multiselect:



Folder

Any task can be converted into a Folder. Folders, unlike tasks, do not need to be completed, they just store the other tasks and never appear in To-Do.



Track your Projects

Turn large tasks with set of multiple actions into Projects. Use multiselect to edit several tasks at once:



Project

Any task can be converted into a Project. Each project has a dynamically calculated status bar so you can track its progress. Also, you can select a Status for each Project: Not Started, In Progress, Suspended or Completed.

Tip. Project progress percentage is based on how many subtasks of the project are completed and what their Task Effort properties are. If a task has higher value of Task Effort property it adds more value to the completion percentage.


All projects are included in a special Projects view where you can review them in groups by status:



Tip. Under Effort in properties, you can also specify how much time you think it will take to complete the task (min and max time required). You can then filter your tasks by it based on the time you have available.


See what you can do by context


Contexts

Organizing tasks by context is one of the main ideas in the classic productivity book "Getting Things Done". It suggests that you should be able to see tasks for each context you find yourself in.

Contexts usually refer to places, tools, people and even motivation. Read more about Contexts, or watch our video. Also, see how to get a location-based reminder on your phone by assigning a context with location.

Tip. With Context Hours in MLO you can set a time period when you can do tasks with that context. This way you conrol when to have them displayed in your To-Do.


Start with basic contexts like @Home and @Office. Or create custom contexts:



To see what you can do right now, depending on the context you are in now, open the view Active by Contexts:



You can also be notified of tasks that can be done nearby! See an article or watch a video how you can set a Location-based Reminder.



Need more classification? Check out Stars, Flags and Text Tags!

Tip. Use Notes to add more details about a task. You can add links, contacts, and other text information to notes.



Looking for more views? See the other built-in views in the app: main menu → Edit. If you can't find the view you need, learn how to create a custom view in the next part.


Summary

Adding properties to tasks helps you better understand them, and make the best choice on what you can work on right now.

You schedule, prioritize and categorize your tasks and MLO does the rest - it automatically places the most immediate tasks on top of your To-Do list and pulls up other short lists (views) of the tasks you need. Just pick the view and get cracking!

Schedule, Prioritize and Categorize tasks to get doable lists

Structuring tasks in Outline is good, but it is not enough. Your To-Do can get out of control really fast if you do not classify your tasks. See how you can add more information to your tasks.

Do the right tasks at the right time

Suppose, you need to 'Prepare a presentation' this week and you can start tomorrow. Set a Start Date and Due Date for the task:



This is what you get:

  • The task is scheduled, and you can see it in the big-picture view — All tasks.
    It shows you when you should start and finish it. If a task becomes overdue, its checkbox turns red.

  • If you switch to the To-Do views, you won't see the task there. But don't worry, it will show up there tomorrow!

    This is because the view — Active Actions — shows only tasks you can do right now. Start Date is one of the parameters which determine when the task should appear in the Active Actions view.


    • View

    Each View breaks the whole tree of tasks into a specific list by a set of criteria. For example, the Active actions view shows a plain list of your current to-do tasks, Projects — all tasks marked as projects, Starred — list of tasks marked with a star.

    The order and place of tasks remains the same in the common outline, in the All Tasks view. Other views show just a certain portion of this outline. If you remove a star from the task, it will disappear from the filtered list 'Starred', but will stay in the common outline.

    Views can be hierarchical (Outline views) and non-hierarchical (To-Do views).

    Tip. Use Workspaces with your commonly used views.



  • Due Date affects ranking in the Active Action view: the closer the Due Date, the higher position of the task.

Tip. Set Recurrency for periodic tasks. More complex recurrency patterns like "First Monday of every 3 months" are available in the versions for Windows and Android. You can set up the required reccurrence there and sync it to your iOS app.


See prioritized on the top

If a task has no timelines, you can still affect its position in To-Do list by changing Importance or Urgency.


Ranking in To-Do

By default, MLO ranks tasks in the To-Do views according to their computed score priorities. MLO has built-in algorithms to determine a computed score priority, based on the task importance, urgency and start&due dates. So you don’t have to decide what to do next, MLO does it for you!

For more information refer to our help file.

Tip. Set reminders to be alerted about the task in advance.


Check what's due this week

You can pull up other short lists of tasks, filtered by dates. For example, pick the view Due Next 7 days and see what you've scheduled to complete this week, grouped by Due Date:



There is also the calendar view Today. It shows your daily task load on a graph, making it easy to see how much you have to do at a glance.



More properties for deeper organization

You can bring more clarity to your planning system by organizing tasks into folders and projects, and also by assigning contexts.

Separate Home and Work

You can use Folders to separate tasks from different areas of your life.



Folder

Any task can be converted into a Folder. Folders, unlike tasks, do not need to be completed, they just store the other tasks and never appear in To-Do.



Track your Projects

Turn large tasks with set of multiple actions into Projects:



Project

Any task can be converted into a Project. Each project has a dynamically calculated status bar so you can track its progress. Also, you can select a Status for each Project: Not Started, In Progress, Suspended or Completed.

Tip. Project progress percentage is based on how many subtasks of the project are completed and what their Task Effort properties are. If a task has higher value of Task Effort property it adds more value to the completion percentage.


All projects are included in a special Projects view where you can review them in groups by status:



Tip. Under Effort in properties, you can also specify how much time you think it will take to complete the task (min and max time required). You can then filter your tasks by it based on the time you have available.


See what you can do by context


Contexts

Organizing tasks by context is one of the main ideas in the classic productivity book "Getting Things Done". It suggests that you should be able to see tasks for each context you find yourself in.

Contexts usually refer to places, tools, people and even motivation. Read more about Contexts, or watch our video. Also, see how to get a location-based reminder on your phone by assigning a context with location.

Tip. With Context Hours in MLO you can set a time period when you can do tasks with that context. This way you conrol when to have them displayed in your To-Do.


Start with basic contexts like @Home and @Office. Or create custom contexts:



To see what you can do right now, depending on the context you are in now, open the view Active by Contexts:



You can also be notified of tasks that can be done nearby! See an article or watch a video how you can set a Location-based Reminder.



Need more ways to classify your tasks? Check out Stars, Flags, and Text Tags!

Tip. Use Notes to add more details about a task. You can add links, contacts, and other text information to notes.



Looking for more views? See the other built-in views in the app: main menu → Edit. If you can"t find the view you need, learn how to create a custom view in the next part.


Summary

Adding properties to tasks helps you better understand them, and make the best choice on what you can work on right now.

You schedule, prioritize and categorize your tasks and MLO does the rest - it automatically places the most immediate tasks on top of your To-Do list and pulls up other short lists (views) of the tasks you need. Just pick the view and get cracking!

Questionnaire (select the correct answers)

  1. The task is not displayed in To-Do. What can be the reason?
  2. Which of the following has a completion percentage displayed?
  3. To see the tasks you scheduled to complete this week, you should open the view:
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