…or begin with the beginning (next action) in mind. It's your choice.
Whether you are following Habit 2 of the Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People or the "Next Action" mindset of Getting things done (GTD), is all about learning to identify and break down the sequence of individual steps [...]
Like most MindManager users, I tend to be an early adopter, so it feels odd to have gotten on the twitter bandwagon just a few weeks before Oprah. There is a lot of noise, but I have found useful information I would not have otherwise come across. I use it as [...]
Mind map users need to deal with the rest of the world, which lives in lists and spreadsheets. Even MindManager users themselves often have a need to look at their map context in a less graphical format for analysis or printing.
Map2Excel is a simple no-frills macro for exporting a map [...]
Andrew Wilcox recently posted a entry on his blog asking readers What is the missing link for MindManager? The killer add in you really want!. Johan posted a request for a project template with variable dates using a training engagement as an example:
A : close the list with participant :x - 12
B : [...]
The new "calc" tag in the GyroQ tag library provides you with a popup calculator:
To install it, paste the "packed text" for the tag into GyroQ.
When you are faced with 100 messages in Microsoft OutLook, it will often be due to the presence of several conversations spread across the Inbox with various entries containing different replies and different attachments. Your first step in processing may be to thin the the list down to only the most recent messages in [...]
OutLinker has always worked with MindManager 7, but the recently implemented installer defaulted to using the MindManager 8 type library, so users would need to go in and set this reference in the visual basic editor themselves. There is now a dedicated installation program (download) for MindManager 7 users that eliminates that step.
Elizabeth Gilbert recently gave a talk at TED on "A Different Way to Think about Creative Genius". The subject of her talk is the stress and fear creative people experience in trying to meet the high expectations they set for themselves. While she jokes about these issues not impacting people [...]
I thought it was done, but one last someday/maybe feature creeped into OutLinker last evening. OutLinker now has buttons to allow you to set the context for the task associated with the message quickly.
Note that the contexts assigned with the buttons (or by just putting the @context in the next action) are now [...]
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A picture is worth a thousand words. If you have been on the sidelines, give OutLinker a try. Make sure you grab the latest version of MindReader to take full advantage of it.
A big thanks to all the victims beta testers of the new form-based version developed [...]
OutLinker came into being as a means for creating MindManager hyperlinks to archived Microsoft Outlook messages. It faccilitates the Getting Things Done (GTD) process of empyting your inbox and can be optionally enhanced by GyroQ and MindReader.
The program was recently enhanced with the option to create Outlook tasks with message [...]
Marco is working on creating Dutch Configuration maps for MindReader and Mark Task Complete. As part of that effort the language specific code was eliminated for Mark Task Complete and moved to the configuration map. The project also triggered a review of the keywords recognized by MindReader for setting [...]
Before the days of OutLinker, I optimized my inbox by diverting "bulk mail" to a separate OutLook folder for reading "in bulk" at a later time rather than having them provide mid-day distraction or swelling an otherwise full inbox. In this case I'm referring to legitimate bulk mail from vendors I'm largely interested in [...]
Awhile back an OutLinker user ran into trouble transferring a large Microsoft OutLook message into MindManager via GyroQ. We determined the shear size of the transfer was the problem. We don't know precisely how big is too big, but in order to minimize the risk of that happening, OutLinker now has an upper [...]
Outlinker has evolved quite a bit as I've gotten more familiar with the capabilities of VBA in Microsoft OutLook and gained the advantages that the installation program provides in making forms easier to deliver.
The latest release of OutLinker uses a form to set configuration options rather than the OutLook notes folder. The configuration [...]
Several new options have trickled into the OutLinker GUI interface as it has gotten some use. These are available in the latest Beta download from the OutLinker Installation page.
If you review the screen shot above most are self explanatory, but here is some background:
There are four ways you can "send" the [...]
The OutLinker script for processing your Microsoft Outlook inbox into GTD next actions and MindManager links now has the default option of using a form instead of an input box as a user interface:
The installation program for the software is on the wiki.
This means you can now:
Interact with messages directly while program is running [...]
The first draft of a MindReader user manualhas been compiled by one of the program's power users. The downloadable pdf file currently consists of a compilation of MindReader pages from the wiki.
OutLinker now has a user-friendly installation program (outlinker.exe) similar to the one developed for MindReader. This should enable you to get rolling with the software without fiddling with macro code or references as well as to update existing installations with latest code. Visit the OutLinker for download instructions.
An [...]
MindReader was running a big sluggishly on my MindManager maps, so went through it with a fine tooth comb and identified where it was spending its time. I made several tweaks so that it can load its options faster and skip over sections of code when not needed and avoid branches of [...]
After a few weeks of shakedown and clean-up, it seems the setup.exe program created to install MindReader, Mark Task Complete, and Next Action Analysis and their associated Gyronix GyroQ tags is just about ready for prime time.
If you are a MindManager user and have wanted to give these tools a try in the [...]
Thanks to all who responded to the GyroQ Tag Usage Survey. We had 29 respondents and the results were very useful. The results are included below as screen shots.
The m tag was the clear winner with more than 60% using it often or all the time, followed by the c and q [...]
The default GyroQ tag set distributed with AO-Tools.zip is full. There are a few inadvertent duplicates in it that can be removed, but otherwise some choices need to be made as to which to retain in the tag set in future installations so that users have some spare space to add other tags. [...]
I just noticed that today (December 3rd) is OutLinker's 1 year anniversary, at least by its current name. It evolved from a set of macros that Mike over at nodeglue.com had created.
It has changed my work practices significantly, with an empty inbox at home and work becoming more the norm than [...]
Gyronix Chief Rhino Nik Tipler has joined the blogosphere at www.chiefrhino.com. One of his early posts is offering a special pre-launch deal on GyroQ 2.
Jose Miguel Bolivar, an ActivityOwner.com power user who guest blogged on how he uses MindReader in practice back in January, has established a leading Spanish [...]
Activity in the MindJet/Gyronix space has been heating up recently with the introduction of MindManager 8 along with impending new releases of GyroQ, ResultsManager, and DecisionMill.
For the past year and a half I have been using wiki.activityowner.com as a convenient way to share MindManager macros, ResultsManager dashboard templates, and GyroQ tags. [...]
The Mark Task Complete macro evolved incrementally from a short GyroQ tag into a fairly involved macro and got inefficient along the way. The new version is streamlined and should perform quite a bit faster. If you are a regular user of this GTD tool, I'd recommend downloading it. This [...]
See the "Migrating to MindManager 8" page on the wiki for information on getting MindReader and other tools from the site running under version 8.
Although the activityowner.com blog has been quiet for a few months (due to the tools working too well for the author :-), several software updates have made their way onto the wiki. I wanted to post a quick note so that long-time users were aware of what has become available.
All these changes have [...]
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