Key Features of MyLifeOrganized Application

MyLifeOrganized is very lightweight, fast and uses minimum memory. All that you need to run MyLifeOrganized mlo.exe file (which can also be run from your USB thumb drive). Simply minimize the application to the system tray where it is available for your next task, thought or note.

The MyLifeOrganized team pays special attention to accelerate the application usage. There are special keyboard shortcuts for each of frequent operations.

Quotation from a review: "First of all, let me talk about the "feel" of this program. It is very lightweight, which I love, because most scheduling and task managing software tend to be very bulky and slow (I like to use the term "viscous"). This program starts up fast and moving around in the program (i.e., clicking on buttons and options and going through menus) is very fast. The design is minimalist, efficient, and very functional...just the way I like it." read more>>

MyLifeOrganized is a task outliner. It allows you keep track of all of the things you want to do now, tomorrow and ever. The outliner looks and works like the windows folder system.

The task outliner helps you to organize your tasks into projects and subprojects. The MyLifeOrganized application has an easy-to-use and intuitive user interface that includes drag&drop, undo, sort subtasks, search, font and color customization and auto save.

By clicking on “Hide completed tasks” you can hide all completed tasks from the task tree. You can also temporarily exclude a task (and all its subtasks) from To-Do list by clicking on the “Hide in ToDo” check box. Each task can be assigned a text note which supports URL links.

This is one of the key features of application. After you have entered all your goals, projects, and tasks into the Outline, MyLifeOrganized can select only those tasks which require immediate attention and place them to the To-Do List. This list is also called the list of Next Actions. The scheduled tasks appear in the list only at the most suitable time. You can filter the To-Do list by setting the appropriate place/situation. Each time you complete a task the To-Do list is regenerated to keep it updated and right ordered.

Sorting of the To-Do List depends on the parameters you set. Depending on your level of commitment to time management you have two options:

1. Hierarchical Priority. Use this if do not plan on being particularly accurate about setting task options. This is the simple way to get started with MyLifeOrganized.

2. Computed-Score Priority is the more advanced option, and you will get excellent results if you take the time to configure the tasks more or less correctly. You will find that MyLifeOrganized will do an excellent job in presenting to you to-do lists that are sensibly prioritized.

See help documentation for more details.

For each task you can specify its importance in relation to accomplishing the project that contains this task in the outline. Drag the importance slider up to increase the importance of a task for the project.

Note that when you set the priority of a task in most other To-Do programs you actually set the absolute priority that compares it to the other tasks in the list. In MyLife, however, you only consider how important it is to complete the task relative to completing the parent project.

Convert your MindManager mind maps to actionable to-do lists with single click.

Import and Export commands are used to exchange data between MLO and other applications.

Exporting:
At the moment, MyLifeOrganized can export to the following formats:
1) MLO XML document
2) Text tab delimited document
3) Excel XML document
4) MindManager XML document

Importing:
The following formats are supported for importing
1) MLO XML document
2) Text tab delimited document
3) MindManager XML document

XML and text tab delimited are standard formats supported by a
variety of applications.

After exporting to Excel XML document you can use Excel's power to create and print any reports. For example you can use Excel's Autofilter to select all the tasks you completed last week and print them.

Export function can be also used to duplicate tasks and entire projects, and creating reusable templates that can be imported into your main file any time you need.

There are number of templates included in MyLifeOrganized installation package (Standard and Professional edition only). For example:

• GTDZonesOfFocus - implementing of Getting Things Done® method
• Traditional-FranklinConvey - implementing of Franklin Covey method.
• ControlJournal - implementing Control Journal

Note: The only import/export formats supported by Light edition are MLO XML and Text tab delimited. Light edition can not read XML generated by Professional and Standard editions and does not contain predefined templates.

Simply minimize MLO to your system tray where it is always available for your next thought or task. You can set up any combination of keys to create a “system shortcut” to bring it back any time.

Since MLO is highly customizable, you can turn on only the features that are really needed for you now. It can be used as a simple outliner for any piece of information (check-lists, bookmarks, ideas, notes etc) or as advanced and powerful To-Do list connected to your Outlook.

Many tasks in your list can only be completed in certain places or situations (contexts). You can assign specific context for tasks so that you can filter these tasks later in the To-Do list. You can also think of the contexts as the categories for the tasks.

Since one context could include other contexts it is easy to construct a realistic model for your everyday places or situations. This model will help you stay focused on tasks which are appropriate right now.

For example places "Phone" and "Internet" could be included to the place "Work" as well as to the place "Home". So imagine that you have the task "Call Bob" which is assigned to the place "Phone". Now if you select "Home" in the Place filter on the To-Do tab you will see this task in the to-do list. This is because place "Home" has place "Phone" included. The same situation will happen if you select "Work" in the Place filter: you will see "Call Bob" task in the to-do list because this task is assigned to place "Phone" which is also included to the selected place "Work".

A context may have hours schedule during which it is open or closed. If a context you select for To-Do filter is closed at the moment, the tasks associated with this context will NOT be shown in the To-Do list. Unless you check Include closed places check box on To-Do tab.

MLO helps you to organize your regular goal planning. You can indicate that a certain task is a weekly goal, monthly goal or yearly goal. The special “Goals View” is designed to easily review all your goals.

The weekly goal is what you should focus your activities on for the week. Monthly goals should be reviewed on a weekly basis to determine specific actions that can be done this week to achieve particular monthly goals. Yearly goals are usually reviewed on a monthly basis to determine if some of them can become goals for the current month.

Tasks in MyLifeOrganized can be scheduled for a specific date or time. If you indicate that a task should occur by a certain date, then it will appear in your To-Do list on the date you must begin the task in order to complete it by the scheduled due date. The closer the deadline is the higher this task will be in your To-Do list.

You can set recurrence patterns for tasks (available in Standard and Pro editions). For example you can create a task "Send status report" which reoccurs third Monday of every 1st month. There are also advanced settings for recurrent tasks like "Automatically recur when all subtasks are complete".

You can enter how much time required to accomplish a task. After that you can tell to MLO: "I have only 30 minutes now. What is the best thing I can complete from my To-Do list?" MLO will display all the tasks with appropriate time required in the To-Do list and you can select the one you want to do now.

MyLifeOrganized has advanced alert system. You can setup a reminder for any task and choose the type of the alerts for this reminder. For example you can run an application, send e-mail, show Desktop Alert dialog or just play a sound. MLO can repeat the alerts in a specific interval.

For example the following reminder pattern is possible: Send e-mail to my SMS each second Monday at 8:10 am. Repeat 3 times with 20 minutes interval.

If you have complex tree of tasks with many branches and want to concentrate on one project and temporally hide all the others, you can use Zoom in command.

Note: when zoomed in you won't see items from the other parts of the outline, in the To-Do list and the outline. Even if they need to be done during the time window you are currently in they won't appear. This is the trade off for being able to zoom in and focus on just the work stuff. If you zoom out back however those items will reappear.

You can print the tasks from the outline or To-Do list. The current view is used to generate print report.

There are number of predefined print options and templates. You can select the information you would like to include to your print report.

MyLifeOrganized print subsystem is basing on templates which can be customized to meet your specific needs.

It is very handy to use this dialog for rapid entry of tasks into the MyLifeOrganized application while you are working in other Windows applications.

Once configured the Rapid Task Entry dialog will be accessible by right-clicking on the MLO icon in the system tray and via specified hotkey.

Text entered in Rapid Task Entry could be parsed to set specific options of a task before placing it to MLO. For example if you enter text like:

"Call Jim tomorrow 3pm remind me 10 min in advance"

the task "Call Jim" will be added to MLO with specified date, time and reminder.

You can drag'n'drop items like e-mails, tasks etc from MS Outlook to MLO tasks. The notes of the Outlook item are placed to MLO task notes together with additional parameters and link to the original item in Outlook. Multiple Outlook items could turn into multiple MLO tasks.

In MyLifeOrganized you can set an option “This is a project” for a task. In doing so, you will include this task into ‘Projects View”. In this view projects are grouped by statuses and are easy to review.

There is also dynamically calculated completion percentage for a project. This percentage is based on how many subtasks of the project are completed and what their Effort properties are. If a task has higher value of Effort property it adds more value to completion percentage for the entire project.

MLO can import tasks directly from a specified folder in your Microsoft Outlook and then keep them synced.

Only one click is needed for smart synchronization of MLO tasks with your task storage in Outlook so that you can take advantage of features from both products.

Outlook sync could be effectively used to share your MyLifeOrganized tasks with another devices which are using Outlook (Smart Phones etc).

There is special preset in Advanced Sync options to configure MLO to share tasks with Palm devices.

(Note: Outlook is not required to use MyLifeOrganized)

Do you need access to your to-do's and personal projects information while on the road? No problem!

There are the following mobile versions of MyLifeOrganized available right now: MLO-iPhone, MLO-iPad, MLO-Android, MLO-BlackBerry, MLO-PocketPC. These mobile applications can be synced with MLO Windows Desktop Professional edition.