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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 tab at the top of the screen.

Color bars

The color bars to the left of the task are a quick way to identify the origin of a task's Outline section when you are looking at the Outline, To Do List or Balance sections. The same colors are used in the pie charts in the Balance section, and in the events in the calendar.

Entering Tasks and Subtasks

There are two New buttons, one for creating new tasks at the same level, and one for creating new subtasks one level deeper. The new task is positioned relative to the selected task. If no task is selected, the new task will be created at top level in the Outline. You can create up to eight levels of tasks in your outline.

When you create a new task, its name is automatically selected so that you can type over it with your description of the task. At a later time, you can edit the name directly in the Outline simply by selecting the text. Editing the name of a task does not affect the task’s relationship to other tasks or any of its other properties.

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.

To create subtasks under an outline item, click on the task to select it, click on the New Subtask button, and then type the name of the task. The outline can contain eight levels of indentation, but usually three or four levels are sufficient. A good structure is to place your life goals at the top level of the outline, break the goals down into projects at the second level of the outline, and use the third and fourth levels to list the tasks needed to complete those projects.

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.”

Selecting Tasks

Many operations in Life Balance work on the currently selected task. Clicking almost anywhere on a task will select it, except that clicking on the triangle icon will collapse or expand a section of your outline without selecting the task.

When a task is selected, any linked calendar events will be framed in the same color as the bar to the left of the task.

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. Click on the triangle to hide them. When the triangle points to the right, the subitems are hidden. Click on the triangle to show them.

There are also commands in the Task menu to collapse or expand the Outline as a whole or a selected section.

Checking off Completed Tasks

To check off an item, simply click on the box beside it. A check mark will appear in the box and Life Balance will regard that item as done. Click 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

If you click and hold on the bullet in front of an item, a border will appear around it. Once this border appears, you can drag the task (along with any subtasks) to another part of the outline. 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.

There are also commands in the Task menu to move the selected task left, right, up or down. You can trigger these commands from the keyboard by holding down Command-Control and using the arrow keys. Again, you can only move a task to valid positions in the outline.

When the task's original location and the destination are inconveniently far apart in the Outline, you may want to drag the proxy icon for the task rather than the task itself. First select the task that you want to drag so that it appears in the task details. Then scroll to the part of the outline you'll be moving the task to. Then drag the proxy icon from the task details to the new location in the outline.

Duplicating a section of the Outline

To duplicate a section of the Outline, select the task you want to duplicate and choose Duplicate from the Edit menu. The duplicated section is identical to the selected section, except that none of the tasks are checked off, no credit has been awarded, and there are no links to the calendar.

Duplication is helpful for quickly starting up projects that are similarly structured to a prior project, but that vary by due date, client, or in some tasks. You may think of the original project as providing a template for the new project.

Dragging tasks into the Life Balance calendar

You may drag a task into the Life Balance Calendar, where an event will automatically be created on the day into which you drag. The event details panel will open so that you can work with the calendar date, time, repeating patterns and event note.

Dragging tasks into Word Processing and Email Documents

You may drag a whole section or a task from your Outline into an open word processing or email document. The dragged tasks will appear in outline form in the external document. This operation does not affect your Life Balance Outline.

Deleting Sections From the Outline

To delete a section of the outline, select the first item in the section and choose Delete Task from the Edit menu. This will delete the selected task and all of its subtasks. If you change your mind, just choose Undo Delete Task from the Edit menu. Life Balance supports ten levels of undo.

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.

You may also wish to use the Purge feature to have Life Balance clean up old, finished tasks. For more information, see Clearing the Decks: Purge. Note that the Purge command cannot be undone.

Printing

You can print your outline by choosing Print from the File menu and then selecting Outline from the submenu. The entire outline will be printed with sections collapsed or expanded just as they currently are on the screen.

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