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The Outline

Think of your life goals. Go ahead and think on a large time scale. Six months or six years or twenty years, whatever you feel comfortable with. What do you long for? How do you wish you were spending your time? What are your current responsibilities and obligations?

These large goals are the underlying framework for the sculpture that you form out of the simple clay of time and effort. The top-level items in your Life Balance outline represent your overall life goals. To enter your life goals, switch to the Outline section by choosing the Outline at the top of the screen.

Entering Tasks and Subtasks

There are several ways to add one or more tasks to the Outline in Life Balance. To create a new task from the Outline view, first Tap on the Edit button. The Outline becomes editable. You will notice that a green button to "add new task" appears at the bottom of the Outline view. A plus sign also appears at the top left of the navigation bar. You can use whichever of the buttons is convenient.

If you have many tasks to enter, you may find it helpful to use the "Add Task" view. See Add Task for details. Add task allows you to quickly add many tasks to the same section of the Outline, or to add tasks that share similar properties in their task details. You can also move the Add Task to be one of the primary tabs. See Settings for how to customize the tabs.

Tip: Tap the blue arrow next to the parent project to "drill-down" to the section of the Outline you want before you add the task.

You can create tasks when you are drilled down to a subsection of the Outline. If you select a task with no subtasks yet, the screen will be empty except for the "Add new task" item. When you choose "Add new task" the Task Details appear. When you done editing the Task Details, choose Done and return to the regular Outline view. You can rearrange tasks and projects at any time.

It’s a good idea to state each goal starting with a verb, like “Earn a living” or “Keep in touch with friends”. Try to capture your motivation in the descriptions you use for your goals. If you are unsure of your motivation when you are getting started, keep in mind that you can change the name to refine the meaning later. The goal of “Earn a living” has a different motivational flavor than “Make a million dollars” or “Retire early.” Each will suggest different ideas for subtasks to accomplish the goal.

Making Tasks Manageable: Baby Steps and the Journey of a Thousand Miles

Those top-level life goals can look unattainable, but every top-level main goal can be broken up into smaller subgoals, and subgoals can be broken up into tasks, by introducing new levels to your outline. As a rule of thumb, if a task will take longer than an afternoon, break it into smaller steps. Not only will these small steps seem easier and less intimidating, but you will be able to adjust your long-term plans and priorities as you move closer to your goal. The technique is a standard for successful managers of all kinds of projects; using it for personal planning is sure to help you reach your goals, too.

As you work with Life Balance you will see new paths and ideas for ways to steer yourself through what may seem an unmanageable thicket of equally important tasks. For example, you may have difficulty remembering to pay your bills and then never remember to file away the paid bills. The unpaid and paid bills may have developed into two large piles on a desk covered with heaps of unidentified paper and unopened envelopes. You might want to start a top level task for handling the mail, to be done in order:

If paying bills seems automatic and easy to you, you may only need a more general entry, perhaps one that reads “Handle the mail” or “Pay bills.” In Life Balance you determine the level of detail you need to get the task done.

Alternatively, you may find that you don't know what the top level main goals are right away and you need to start by entering all the small tasks like "Throw away the junk mail." The larger structure of "Handle personal finances" may take time to identify and place within the context of your overall life goals.

You can successfully use either strategy to build your Outline structure. You can change which strategy you use according to the project particulars, and move tasks around in the Outline easily. You may find that your top level goals and the Outline structure for projects will evolve over time. See Rearranging the Outline.

You may not be able to analyze a large life goal completely at first. You will probably find that you need to add new levels, change descriptions and priorities, or separate closely related goals. Unlike conventional project planning tools, Life Balance easily accommodates projects where you don’t know all the steps that are necessary for completion when you start.

For example, if you have a vague goal like “Retirement” you may gradually discover that what you really want is not “Retirement” in general, but a more specific goal like “Paint in Paris.” You have only to change the name of your goal to accommodate your new goal definition and add new subtasks to remind yourself to “get out the sketch book.”

Hiding and Showing Sections

Sometimes it's easier to work with the outline when certain details are hidden. The triangles in your outline allow you to hide and show portions of your outline. When the triangle points downward, the subitems are visible. Tap the triangle to hide them. When the triangle points to the right, the subitems are hidden. the triangle to show them.

You can also drill down to a section of Outline by tapping on the rounded blue button to work with a specific project. This is especially helpful when adding tasks to a project, since the new tasks will automatically be added to the selected project rather than being placed at the top level of your outline.

Tip: You can customize the Outline to perform certain actions when you tap, double-tap, or tap & hold. See the Settings section Outline and To Do list for details.

Checking off Completed Tasks

To check off an item, simply tap the box beside it. A check mark will appear in the box and Life Balance will regard that item as done. Tap again to uncheck it. When you update your To Do List, only unchecked items will appear in it. Checked items are listed in the Balance section.

Repeating items will uncheck themselves and appear again on the To Do List when they are two lead times away from their next occurrence.

For more information about checking off tasks and how they affect the rest of Life Balance, see Checking off Completed Tasks.

Rearranging the Outline

Tap on the Edit button in the Outline view to rearrange the Outline. When you tap on the grey buttons to the right of the Task, the Task will be selected and draggable. Dragging up and down changes the order of the outline. Dragging left and right changes the level of the tasks. The software will only allow you to drag a task to valid positions in the outline.

If you drag past the top or bottom of the outline, the outline will automatically scroll so that you can put the item anywhere.

Deleting Sections From the Outline

To delete a section of the outline, tap on the edit button to rearrange the Outline. Tap on the rounded red "Delete" button on the left to delete the task.

When you delete a task from Life Balance, any credit that you received when completing that task is transferred to its parent. This allows you to keep your outline clean by deleting old completed tasks without affecting the balance of the pie charts.

Tip: If you want to delete the credit for a task when you delete the task, move the task to the top level of your outline before you delete it. Since there will be no parent task for Life Balance to transfer the credit to, the credit will simply go away.

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