How We Collect Tasks (and how MYN saves us)

May 13, 2016

Now that I am updating my Toodledo training, I have completely switched over to Toodledo again and am using it as my main MYN task system. I did that a number of years ago, used it for about 2 years, then switched back to Outlook when I starting updating the Outlook book in 2013.

It’s good for me to make this switch periodically for many reasons. One is it keeps me fresh in both systems. And it reminds me how good both systems are. Right now I am marveling at how good Toodledo is with MYN. If you are not using Windows Outlook (say you are a Mac user), I even more now recommend Toodledo as your MYN tasks system.

But another good outcome that I noticed this time is that making the switch (and transferring tasks) forced me to see how many tasks I’d accumulated. I had nearly 600 tasks deferred to way in the future in Outlook!  

Nearly all of them were low priority defer-to-review tasks that I never deleted and should have. So I decided to do a major attention purge and I only transferred about 20 tasks total into Toodledo. I did save the old Outlook task folder and will watch it to see if some things pop up that are important, but in general I am going to say goodbye to all those old things that at one time I thought were important, but really aren’t.

Doing this reminded me of one of many reasons MYN works so well. One thing MYN does well is it protects us from the fact that we tend to accumulate a ton of tasks, most of which lose steam within weeks, but we can’t admit that. We tend to latch on to all those old tasks and won’t let go. So MYN gives you tools to highlight only the important ones (while giving you a way to save and periodically revisit the old ones). That’s one reason MYN works so well.

Now, ideally, we’d delete tasks immediately when they lost relevance, but that’s so hard to do. We keep hoping we’ll get time to do them. So the tools that MYN gives us essentially saves us from our own worst habits. Using MYN’s defer to review with long review cycles lets us let go of old things without worry.

BTW, if you are a 1MTD user, and your task list has gotten too large, this it the main reason to switch to MYN, so you can get your visible list down to size.

Michael

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5 Responses to How We Collect Tasks (and how MYN saves us)

  1. markus says:

    Hi MIchael,

    now that you moved to Toodledo again i would like to know what advanced MYN concepts you use yourself in this system, for exapmle: Intrinsic Importance or the additional category based goals & projects Views, the more & pig methods ?

    • Michael Linenberger says:

      Markus. From what you listed, only the more method. But nearly all could be used, I just don’t use that many of the advanced things in outlook or td. I guess that’s why I plopped most of them in the last chapter! Michael

  2. Harold Rheems says:

    Hi Michael,

    Any rough ETA on the update for the Full-MYN ToodleDo Video Training set? Waiting anxiously to purchase!

    Thanks!

    • Michael Linenberger says:

      Hi there, ETA maybe one month out. Michael

      • Mark says:

        I’m looking forward to the update on using Toodledo. I originally started with Toodledo and 1MTD but went with Outlook for MYN. Despite some advantage with Outlook (my company uses Exchange) I still prefer the look and feel of Toodledo. When you’ve finished the Video course update Toodledo I will be switching back. Thanks for keeping your products uptodate!

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