dogMelon Note Studio Forum Index dogMelon Note Studio
For discussion of all aspects of Note Studio
 
 FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   MemberlistMemberlist   UsergroupsUsergroups   RegisterRegister 
 ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 

GTD Question

 
Post new topic   Reply to topic    dogMelon Note Studio Forum Index -> Note Studio
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
JamesHenderson



Joined: 14 Jun 2006
Posts: 6
PostPosted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 8:15 pm    Post subject: GTD Question Reply with quote
Hi,

I am currently reading the book and have bought Note Studio, but I have a question.

Where do you put those simple miscellaneous "todo's" that don't really form a "next action" as part of a project? It seems quite wasteful to create a project page, put your simple todo in as the next action, only to delete the whole prject when that todo is done?

I;m thinong of keeping these in my Palm todo list - but then I haven't got everything consolidated into one area?

Next Question. It's OK to put next actions into contexts etc, but don;t you miss using an alarm every now-and-then for some of the next actions?

Regards,
James.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
lemayp



Joined: 24 Sep 2005
Posts: 246
Location: Laval, Canada
PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 12:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Hello James,

I personnaly have an "IN" page where I store those short time task that don't belong to any project.

Most of the task that I have don't require an alarm, but if I need something to be reminded at a specific date/time, then I would use outlook. Using the createGTDActionList plugin, if I have something that need to be done quite far away, lets say for July 15th, I might add an [@Date] entry in NS for such task. As I regularly check the [Actions List dated] report, at some point early in july I would move that [@Date] entry to become an [@Action] one, to be adress now/soon.

Hope this answer would be useful.

Pierre
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
JamesHenderson



Joined: 14 Jun 2006
Posts: 6
PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 5:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
lemayp wrote:
Hello James,

I personnaly have an "IN" page where I store those short time task that don't belong to any project.

...Using the createGTDActionList plugin...

...I might add an [@Date] entry in NS for such task...

...I would move that [@Date] entry to become an [@Action] one...

Pierre


Hi Pierre,

Thanks for your reply. Can I check a few things with you?

1. IS your "IN" page different your "INBOX" page?
2. I haven't yet fully understood plugins, but it seems that you can use it to trnafer things to Outlook?
3. [@Date] for you means a future dated Action? Is that like [@Waiting]
4. Does [@Action] mean for you "Do Today"?

Thanks!
James.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
HzR



Joined: 24 Jul 2005
Posts: 48
Location: Munich, Germany
PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 11:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Hello James,

I personally put 'loose' tasks in the context pages. Leaving it in the Inbox makes the list too long.
For instance, I need to write an email, I put it on the [@eMail] page. I like this a bit more because I have all the 'loose' tasks for a certain context in one place. I go to my [@eMail] page, and see all the 'loose' emails I have to write. When you have the navigator open on the PC and switched to back links, you can also see the email links on projects pages.
If I need to enter a task quickly, I usually put it in the Inbox. Then at a later point, I add information and move it to the appropriate page, or create a project page out of it. So when all is sorted, my inbox is normally empty.

Then I also have tasks in Agendus on my Palm. There are things that have to be done on a certain date, or are reoccuring. This is easier to automate in Agendus. I just like to keep those kind of tasks there so it pops up on the day I need it, and be able to set an alarm for it.
I look at my calender every day, and with the split screen view, I also see the tasks.
Don't know if this is completely according to GTD, but I like working that way.

Plugins are like macros in Excel or Word. You can write a small program to automate things in NS. Pierre has written quite a few useful ones for use with GTD. Check out the tutorial and download section of the NS website.

Robbert
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
lemayp



Joined: 24 Sep 2005
Posts: 246
Location: Laval, Canada
PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 2:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
JamesHenderson wrote:


Hi Pierre,

Thanks for your reply. Can I check a few things with you?

1. IS your "IN" page different your "INBOX" page?
2. I haven't yet fully understood plugins, but it seems that you can use it to trnafer things to Outlook?
3. [@Date] for you means a future dated Action? Is that like [@Waiting]
4. Does [@Action] mean for you "Do Today"?

Thanks!
James.


James,

1: I would think so. In GTD, what is important about an "IN" basket is to clean it, i.e. empty it and put things in proper folder or places. Meanwhile, since I immediatly attach a tag to what I put in the "IN" page (ex: [@Action], [@PC], [@Home], etc) I have already done some assignation of the task, and for this reason I fell OK leaving such task in the IN page, and not moving it to a more proper page.

2: No. There are several plugins that I have dedicated to GTD:

A) CreateGTDActionList: This is the more popular one. This plugin will scan all your NS pages and Book and generate a report to regroup all tasks from all projects into a single report page. Things are regrouped by tag.

B) AddGTDTask: when you are in a NS page writing something about a project, you might just get an idea of something that must be done for another project. Normally you would have to exit the page where you were and then find the page for the mentionned project, which is a high interruption. The AddGTDTask plugin will allow you the possibility to add a new task into your "IN" page (or whatever name you would like to use, this is configurable) without leaving the NS page you were. Very useful to avoid some kind of interruption.

C) CreateGTDSkipPageList: for the CreateGTDActionList, if you are sure that some of your page will never contains any task, you can put a special entry in such page ("[SKIP_GTD_REPORT]") and run this CreateGTDSkipPageList once to have the CreateGTDActionList plugin skipping all pages that have such tag entry. This is to speed up a little the report creation.

D) ManageGTDTask: The new plugin. This plugin will read the report from CreateGTDAction and display its content in a GUI. Using such GUI you could alter any action/task without accessing any of the NS pages where the actions are store. Speed up the weekly review a lot.

E) GTDTimer: if you look at the book, David Allen will tell you to do immediatly any 2 minutes task and postpone/manage all longer task... But how long is 2 minutes? This plugin is there to let you know... Available as an NS plugin or full Window application.


3: No, for me it is different. The [@Waiting] represent for me something that I am waiting for someone/something else, i.e. that I don't have to do anything about. For instance, if I order a book at amazon, I will have a [@Waiting] entry to remind me that I am waiting for something,and once in a while, looking at such list of [@Waiting] entries, I might find something that I am waiting for too long and might decide to take an action about. The [@Date] represent something that I must do by a specific date. I have a lot of those with only the month registered, for example I could have a "[@Date] 06/06/00 Plant tomatoes", which is something I must do in June, and when the task is complete for this year I will change the date for "07/06/00" (i.e. change the year to 07). Somewhere in May, I will change my entry from:

"[@Date] 06/06/00 Plant tomatoes"

to something like:

"[@Date] 06/06/00 [@Home] Plant tomatoes"

This will add a new action entry in my [@Home] section of the report generated by the CreateGTDActionList report...

The CreateGTDActionList plugin generate 2 reports, one for action/task, and the other one for dates entries which is sorted.

4: Not necessarily. But if it is in my [@Action], it is because I must pay attention to it. While revising all "[@Action]" I will deceide which actions to prioritise... Normally, a task will get the [@Action] tag during my weekly review

Hope you will find those answers useful... Keep in mind that there are as many way to implement GTD as there are persons using it...

Have fun,

Pierre
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
JamesHenderson



Joined: 14 Jun 2006
Posts: 6
PostPosted: Fri Jun 16, 2006 10:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Robbert, Pierre,

Thankyou both for you replies - there is quite a lot of new information for me to use.

Thanks again,
James.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
JamesHenderson



Joined: 14 Jun 2006
Posts: 6
PostPosted: Fri Jun 16, 2006 1:11 pm    Post subject: Plugins are Awesome Reply with quote
Pierre,

I've now fully read your reply and systematically gone through your plugins, and my comment is simply ...wow. Shocked Cool

Thanks for providing such a useful set of Plug-ins! Very Happy

Do you think there would be any mileage in a plugin that set-up a new project page and formatted it so that all your Projects were formatted the same (with Success is, NA etc etc).

Once again, Thanks!
James.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Craig



Joined: 16 Jun 2006
Posts: 15
PostPosted: Fri Jun 16, 2006 4:13 pm    Post subject: Re: GTD Question Reply with quote
JamesHenderson wrote:
Where do you put those simple miscellaneous "todo's" that don't really form a "next action" as part of a project? It seems quite wasteful to create a project page, put your simple todo in as the next action, only to delete the whole prject when that todo is done?


At first, I just created a new page for each misc task, and put the task on that page. I didn't rename the page, so its name was just the date when I created it. Since they started with a number, they all sorted together and were easy to distinguish from the "real" projects that have names.

Since I started using the ActionList plugin, I now put all my misc tasks on the same page, which I've named "@-Misc". The only disadvantage to this method over the first one is that you won't see all the links if you use the backlinks feature on the Palm to find tasks for a context. Instead you'll only see the first link on the Misc page, not all of them like in the ActionList. Since I mostly edit my documents on the desktop and view them on the Palm, this isn't a big deal for me. I just make sure my ActionList is up-to-date just before I sync.

Hope this helps,

Craig
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
volker



Joined: 05 Jun 2004
Posts: 49
Location: Frankfurt, Germany
PostPosted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 8:39 pm    Post subject: Re: GTD Question Reply with quote
JamesHenderson wrote:
Where do you put those simple miscellaneous "todo's" that don't really form a "next action" as part of a project? It seems quite wasteful to create a project page, put your simple todo in as the next action, only to delete the whole prject when that todo is done?

James,

good point. Smile

After testing some alternatives, I found that "wasting" a page even for one-tasked "projects" is the most efficient way. It provides a seamless treatment for both types of steps.

Recently I adopted the nomenclature shown in the GTD video on DogMelon's homepage. That means, every project name is prefixed by "P: ". To distinguish those one-tasked projects, their names are prefixed by "O: ". If you choose the names wisely, there will be almost no typing overhead. E.g. if you have to feed your cat, just create a page "O: cat" and enter one single line:

[@Home] feed it

In my system, I am using the backlink feature to display context lists. This has the advantage that it works dynamically, on the PC as well as on the Palm. When I then display all the pages with links to page "@Home", I get all the information I need.

Hope this helps
Volker
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
JamesHenderson



Joined: 14 Jun 2006
Posts: 6
PostPosted: Tue Jun 27, 2006 9:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Craig, Volker,

Thanks for both your replies. Sorry for the delay in replying, but I have been in Japan on Business with no access to the internet.

James.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic    dogMelon Note Studio Forum Index -> Note Studio All times are GMT
Page 1 of 1

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group