My Life Organized is a cool little Android application that lets you treat your life like a project. Think of MLO as a to-do list on steroids. Let me explain. With a regular to-do list, there are the basic options: task, due date and maybe a sub-task. This is great if you have things on your list like get milk, pick up dry cleaning and fill out permission slip for Jimmy’s field trip. What if you are planning a party or you are remodeling the kitchen though? These will have multiple mini projects that need to be completed before the main16 project can be completed. Does this sound like your life? While there is a desktop application (both free and paid versions, I will just be talking about the Android app here) Here is how MLO can help. The paid desktop applications will let you sync with Outlook or the Windows app.
Starting out with My Life Organized
When you download and open the app, you will have a bunch of sample text to show you how to use the app. This can be easily erased or marked as completed.
There really isn’t an obvious menu to switch between the different modes oalign=”left”r sorting options. To switch modes, touch the left side of the top green bar.
This will pull up a list of options. You start in the Inbox, but some other options are:
Outline Goals Active Actions Due next 7 days Start next 30 days Nearby
Using MyLifeOrganized
When you start adding goals, tasks and projects, you will see you can add in as much or as little information as you need. For example, when you are adding a task, you can add the usual info and add reminders, but if you look at the picture below, you will see more options. Urgency, which Goal the task is for and Context.
Goals
The goals feature is great. You can add a goal and select timeframe for the goal. If you read any kind of success or productivity book, short and long term goals are talked about a lot. This is a good way to set a goal then add in all of the tasks you need to complete to reach that goal.
Context
Context is a cool feature. It kind of goes with the Getting Things Done (GTD) style of managing your time. You can set a context of @OfficeComputer or @Home to a task. Then, when you are at your office computer, you can use the menu to sort by this context and see everything you need to do while you are at your desk. I thought this was a great way to stay focused.
Conclusion
What I like about this super to-do manager is that it works well if you are following the GTD time management method, but it also works for those of us who do not. The goals and context feature really set this organizational app far apart from the others I have tried. Do you think this is overkill for a to-do list? If so, what apps do you use to manage your time?
