In the review I noted several weaknesses of the IPad app that I thought I might be able to address with a MindManager Add-in (Omni2Map). As a Windows user, I particularly I wanted to avoid having all my plans stranded in my IPad. I also was interested in aiding my (occasional) weekly reviews with Next Action Analysis.

After a bit of debugging today and some help from a brave early adopter, I think the add-in is working fairly well now. The new menu tab added is fairly limited — just a launch button and ha help button:

Omni2Map will import your OmniFocus data into a MindManager map and mark up your projects and tasks with due dates, contexts, etc.

More information and screen shots are located on the Omni2Map page on the ActivityOwner.com wiki where you can download the latest version. It is only compiled for MindManager 8 and 9 at the moment.

Related posts:

1. OmniFocus for IPad Review
2. Import BaseCamp project information into MindManager
3. ButtonReader: 40 configurable buttons for MindReader

David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology provides a 5-step methodology to process and filter input into the the trash, "waiting for" lists, delegations, ticklers, calendars, plans and next actions lists.

But here is the problem.

If you are processing 100+ inputs per day, then you are processing 3000 inputs per month and over 36,000 per year. IF your methodology works 99.9% of the time in separating the wheat from the chaff, after a year of GTD you accumulate 36 items that take up space on your project and task lists. These are the items have developed antibiotic resistance to your methodology. The triple-digit ages of the tasks are the first give away – "What part of someday/maybe don't you understand?" Unfortunately many of these tasks are typically the "someday I really should/have-to" items.

A few dozen stale items may not seem like a lot, but it doesn't take much to take the vitality out of your next action lists. A next action list is most effective if you can chew through it like a three course meal rather than snack on it like a buffet.

In my experience, a good "GTD" day might involve knocking off 15 items from your list. You probably do a lot more than that, but many items are immediate or 2-minute actions that don't flow into the system. If you are knocking off 15 items, then a 100-item list is about 7 days of activity. If your 100 item list has 36 stale/"overdue" items that cause you to avert your eyes, your are not going to make as much progress on the vital ones. Even when you do make good progress, it will involve knocking your 100 item list down to 85. That doesn't feel like a lot of progress. What you typically end up with are a few fresh items (0-3 days old) flowing through a swamp of aging tasks.

I developed the Next Action Analysis system as a way to try to keep vitality in my lists with mixed success. When I checked my home lists a few weeks ago, I found that I had only 60 next actions, but over half were over two months old and 12 were over 6 months old. While I generally practice strategies for dealing with aging tasks (see fire the oldest 10% of your tasks), the antibiotic resistant strains had accumulated. I also had several projects with a waiting-for task that had gone stale.

I got an Ipad 2 this summer and was experimenting with syncing dashboards over to it using DropBox, but decided to use the occasion to try a different track.

I declared GTD bankruptcy.

There are a number of ways one might go about this. I decided to start from scratch in a (gasp) different GTD software package. This forced me to go through the "Chapter 11" process of entering in my projects and tasks from scratch. I would guess that folks that adopt paper-based GTD systems fare a bit better in keeping their stale items at bay through the process of transcribing them. You can do this without changing your system by just printing everything out and then working selected items back into an empty system.

This process facilitated some renegotiation with myself on some aging tasks. One example stale item was "reconcile credit card transactions in Quicken". In practice, changing this to "reconcile end of year credit card balance with placeholder transaction" was really sufficient. In the end, most of my "committed" tasks have migrated over, but a sizeable chunk of my stale tasks have been renegotiated or dropped. I'm surprised this concept isn't common out there in the GTD venacular beyond an entry from Penelope Trunk.

I'll review the software I migrated my home GTD system to as well as a new add-in that brings the content back to MindManager for visualization and next action analysis in future blog entries.

Related posts:

1. 2008 GTD Challenge Results
2. Six Components of a GTD Review
3. Fire the oldest 10% of your tasks

Related posts:

1. New Blogs
2. What is the Next Action for ActivityOwner.Com?
3. Here's how I use MindReader in Practice

After using this new feature for a bit, I found that having just 12 keywords accessible via the mouse wasn't so helpful, as I found I had to switch over to the keyboard and "mindreader" dialog for the less used keywords I couldn't fit on the ribbon. Reflecting on this I realized the ~40 keyword markup options provided by OutLinker was probably closer to what I needed day to day marking up tasks and projects for my MindManager maps.

This morning over an early breakfast I added a new floating form that gives you 40 configurable buttons that you can use for whatever MindReader keywords you like. You launch the form (pictured below) by hitting the "markup" button on the MindReader tab. To configure the buttons, you just need to check the "click to configure" box at the bottom of the form.

Hopefully the add-in is stabilizing now and I can spend more time Getting Things Done (GTD) than programming!

Related posts:

1. Buttons to send topics to other maps
2. OutLinker Contexts
3. New MindReader features: the "m" tag and explicit context

First comes Black Friday, then Cyber Monday, and then GTD Sunday, the first Sunday after the new year when GTDers try to climb back onto their systems and do a reasonable weekly (or yearly) review.

The key to successfully using ResultsManager for GTD is to always have the output of an up to date Daily Action dashboard at your fingertips. One the best things you can do to achieve that is implement the "Put it in front of the door" scripts for scheduling regular dashboard refreshes and for emailing your context lists to you email account and smart phone. I hope to put out another blog post on that "someday" soon. I'm also hoping to summarize the steps needed to get Outlinker working with OutLook 2010. If you have questions on either of these topics just post a comment anywhere and I can try to help.

In the meantime, I wanted to share a new trick I've been working on to facillitate faster mid-day dashboard regeneration. Coming into this exercise my home dashboard refresh time was about 4:25 on a fairly fast 64bit desktop. My work laptop dashboard refresh was over 7 minutes when disconnected from the large network of shared group maps and probably on the order of 10-15minutes when connected (I didn't have a chance to time yet). For me, those wait times are just a bit too long and discourage me from doing the map mark up neccessary to clarify my priorities and commitments mid-day if I haven't had the dashboard automatically refreshed (particularly on my laptop).

On my home system, ResultsManager was scanning 1459 Activities found in 4267 Topics spread over 191 MindManager maps it needed to scan. You can check your situation by looking at the notes of the central topic of your daily action dashboard. Many folks probably don't have that many maps, but many are probably working on slower computers and also face the daunting wait for dashboard refreshes.

It occurred to me that after having used ResultsManager for several years, my active next actions were probably only coming from a small subset of the maps being scanned. I occasionally use the Multimap checker to remove some completed maps from the network of maps scanned and to clean up broken links and wanted to take that further to see what could be accomplished.

As it turns out, my home dashboard is only drawing active projects and next actions from 37 (20%) of the 191 maps being scanned. By generating a temporary map central that points just to those 37 maps, I found I could cut my dashboard refresh time down from over 4 minutes down to 1:40. On my un-docked work system, it reduced refresh time from 7:15 to 4:50. I anticipate a much larger docked improvement.

Gyronix may be able to leverage this strategy into future versions (I've shared the idea with them), but in the meantime, I will walk you through the steps I went through to achieve this and the new macro needed to identify the active maps.

1. Generate a daily action dashboard from your main map central and time how long it takes and note how many maps are being scanned.

2. Copy and past the text from the new macro "ao_tempmapcentral.mmbas" from the MindManager Macro Library into a text editor and save it into your "My Maps\AO" directory. If you are reading this I'm guessing you have already used some of the tools on the side and have that directory. If not, just download the "ao_common.mmbas" file and put it in same directory you save this macro into. I haven't put this into the setup program yet.

3. Open your daily action dashboard and remove the "In-tray branch. The intrays will lead back to inactive maps. You may want to just remove this branch from the dashboard template permanently if you don't make active use of it. To do this, just open your daily action dashboard, click on ResultsManager tab and "open template". Delete the in-tray branch and then save and close the template. While you have it open, you may want to add %time% to the central topic so you can see when you last refreshed the dashboard.

4. Run the macro on daily action dashboard. It will create a new map (My Maps\tempmapcentral.mmap) and generate a minimal set of links to point out to the maps that are active in your dashboard today. You don't want to use this temporary map central long term as new tasks with future start dates may become active on maps it skips over.

5. You can generate a daily action dashboard on this map and will likely see some speed improvement. Give it a try. Unfortunately what you will likely see is that ResultsManager will end up scanning more maps than listed there due to links from these maps out to inactive maps.

6. In order to avoid ResultsManager from searching these inactive maps, you need to next run the ResultsManager multimap checker on the temp map central. This will provide a picture of where ResultsManager is going. Make sure you check the option for "Show maps with completed projects".

7. Filter the map using the Power Filter to focus in on the maps that are done. Create a subdirectory called "done" whereever they are and move them there. That will break the link to them from whereever ResultsManager is finding them and give you a sense of accomplishment.

8. Filter the map for broken links and fix or remove them. This is just good housekeeping and probably speeds things up a bit as well.

9. Filter the maps for the "is referenced more than once" marker and track down the maps that are being linked to from multiple places. This will eliminate need for ResultsManager to have to deal with the extra links and help with the next step.

10. This is the big one. Ideally you want the network of maps that shows up in Multimap checker report on your temporary map central to be only 1 layer deep. You don't want ResultsManager's search to leak out to networks of inactive maps based on a link in one of the active maps. You want to track down these links and block them with stop icon or remove them. In order to do that, but still have them be found when you do a full dashboard refresh, you need to make sure they can be found from your map central. The strategy I adopted last year for that was to move away from using map specific hyperlinks but instead to link to folders from my map central. Even though I'd been doing this for a couple of years, the legacy "area map centrals" I had set up in my early years had lots of map links. In some cases I just created "My Maps\2011\area" folders and moved lots of legacy maps into them to be sure I didn't loose connections to them.

11. Repeat steps 4-7 until you get a temporary map central that yields a Multimap checker map that only goes one layer deep.

12. Generate a new daily action dashboard using the temporary map central and see what improvement you get compared to step 1 (and report in comments below).

I'd recommend you run the Next Action Analysis script on your resulting Daily Action dashboard to see what it recommends you do next. Note that you want to regenerate a full "Daily Action" dashboard every couiple of days to ensure any newly active maps are captured. We will need to explore how to make this more user friendly with scripts.

Note that you should run through the ResultsManager setup tips as well to make sure you have

Best wishes for a successful 2011!

Related posts:

1. MindManager Housekeeping with the ResultsManager Multi-Map Checker
2. Dashboard Refresh Speed Comparison
3. Focusing in on One Area of your Life

I left off at that point with a "Translate brainstorm into action plan @maps", which pops up in my daily action dashboard as a reminder to return to the project.

When I returned to the project the next evening, I sorted the tasks into a ResultsManager "Funnel Timeline":

The funnel timeline sets up a visual sequence of tasks. In contrast to typical mapping approaches which require a relationship link to set dependencies for tasks, ResultsManager also recognizes child tasks as precedent task as well as leveraging the "(list)" keyword that sets the task's precedent as the task above it.

With the map arranged in the manner above, my only next action is "translate brainstorm into project plan". Once that is marked complete, a new next action will activate being "Identify where to enumerate issues".

I also sorted some incomplete ideas to the "In-tray" for later processing:

This also included items added later as described in Part 3 (GyroQ Capture). At that time I decided that rather than dive into this project, the most efficient course of action was to "Wait for Mindjet to release SP1", so I placed that as the first item in the "List" of tasks.

Selecting this topic and processing it with the MindReader c tag, automatically marks it up appropriately:
.

Next I come back a month later when the service pack is release (having been reminded of it as it became overdue), and mark the task done with the d tag (mark task complete):

This stores the task completion in a monthly log map as well as in the reference section of the map:
.

"Mark Task Complete" is actually more convenient if you assign it to the topic context menu. In MindManager 8, this is done under "Tools, Macros, Organize Macros":

In MindManager 9, the tools menu and the underlying macro menu have disappeared?? It appears that you now need to add it to the quick launch toolbar manually in order to access it. I'll go down that rabbit hole here (diverting from planning focus) and add some screen shots so other uses are aware how to do it:

Unfortunately, MindManager 9 SP1 did not address the task issue. As I understand it, it did fix some bugs in the API related to task dates that might enable some of the issues to be worked around.

While more could be done in fleshing out a project plan, it seems the key next step is to enumerate issues in order to determine how feasible it is to work around them and how that might be done. In a collaborative corporate environment, a catalyst workspace map would be ideal for gathering information from multiple users. In our low-budget environment, a MindManager 9 Issues page on wiki.activityowner.com will need to suffice.

Feel free to add issues to the wiki page or comment below and I can add them. I have installed a MindManager 9 trial on my machine and will try to use it for day to day work to identify problems. Once the issues are identified, perhaps we can divide and conquer means to overcome them.

Related posts:

1. MindManager Project Management Part 2 – Brainstorming
2. MindManager Project Management Part 3 – GyroQ Capture
3. A different approach to marking tasks complete

I believe that certain creative/semi-ADD personality types are highly drawn to the use of GTD and MindManager for getting organized. The approaches and the tools can take a situation like this and help define a constructive and creative path forward when faced with a daunting problem. I thought it might be use this episode as a case study to share how I use the tools and along the way get reader input and collaboration on solutions.

This issue clearly isn't a "two minute action" and doesn't seem like something I can delegate, defer, or "trash", so it's a "project". If I was very busy at the moment and I was becoming aware on the issue via an OutLook email message, I would just use Outlinker on a email related to it and send the email into my GyroQ queue with an "isproject" keyword so that it would show up later in my dashboards as a project needing a next action to be defined. If the next action were clear I might include the first step as well using the << operator. In this case I know this is going to be a drawn out project that will require a dedicated map, so I'll toggle to the MindReader "nm" tag (new map tag) by hitting Control-Q to bring up GyroQ and then typing "nm" to toggle to the nm tag to set up a project map for it.

The first step is "To begin with the end in mind", and describe an ambitious desired outcome: "GTD tools working well with MindManager 9 next month"

I'll also tack on some quick markup using Mindreader keywords to set this as a priority 3 project I own in the "blog" area of my life:

"GTD tools working well with MindManager 9 next month [R:AO P3 blog]"

When I hit enter, the tag will first prompt me for where to save the map. I'll save it in my 2010\blog folder so that it will be automatically picked up by my map central link to that folder when I run dashboards.

The tag next prompts for what the next action is for the project. In this case I will take a convenient short cut and define the next step as "Brainstorm next steps and subprojects for MM9 compatibility".

Finally, the tag prompts as to whether I want to assign a keyword to the project map. Because this will likely be around for awhile and I anticipate needing to send ideas and email messages into the map, I'll assign a keyword that comes to mind "mm9project".

Now anything I send to MindManager with GyroQ or OutLinker will be directed to the in-tray of this map if I include the text mm9project, and the keyword will automatically be removed once processed.

In order to remind myself get back to this soon, I'll use the "m" tag to set the target date for the brainstorming as "next week" and I'm left with map below.

Coming Next: Part 2 — Brainstorming

Ideally we'd brainstorm together on a collaborative map using Catalyst, but I don't have an account set up that I could use, so if you have ideas on how to proceed, what needs to be done, subprojects, solutions, etc., just shout them out in comments below and I'll include in my brainstorming map. Remember 1st rule of brainstorming — don't judge others ideas.

See next entry in series: MindManager Project Management Part 2 — Brainstorming.

Related posts:

1. Import BaseCamp project information into MindManager
2. MindManager Project Management Part 4 — Project Planning
3. Set Relative Due Dates on a Project Map Template

You could use the next actions by area and context dashboard template in the way you describe but I would recommend a simpler approach (and minimize the risk of you falling into the rabbit hole of custom dashboard tweaking).

The workaround I would use for this is to follow the map central strategy I described earlier this year but go one step further and put the maps you care about in this area in 2010\AreaX.

Then create a map central that points only to that folder (or run dashboards on just that branch of a more general map central). That will enable you to use a vanilla daily action or review dashboard as is. The "Next Action Analysis" script run on daily action in this way will give you several breakdown lists (tasks by priority, time available, projects by priority, etc) that can be used instead of generating a separate custom dashboard to get them. The m2t (map2table) tag/macro run on these branches can give a nice tabular view of things.

Make sure you move any relevant items from your general daily capture map to a map in this folder first.

Related posts:

1. Building a Custom ResultsManager Dashboard
2. Committed Projects and Next Actions
3. Creating a ResultsManager Dashboard Template

When you sit down to get too work, the last thing you want to do is to tie up MindManager with a several minute dashboard refresh as this is a perfect recipe for going off on some web distraction.

One way to get around this is to make use of your computer's task scheduler to automatically refresh your dashboards on a regular basis. This approach was first described 3 years ago in in the "Put it in front of the door" post.

I recently got this running again on my new Windows 7 computer and did some work to clean up the script and make it easier for others to implement. The script is now installed as part of the MindReader Setup program and can be run by running the "rfd.bat" file in the "My Maps\AO" directory. MindReader and Mark Task Complete have also been updated to work better with multi-computer synchronization.

The script also does several other things now such as running next action analysis and a recently added capability of saving the dashboard in html format. If you are a hard core ResultsManager user, this script is for you.

For more information, see the "Put it in front of the door" page on the wiki..

Please comment below with questions/suggestions/problems.

Happy New Year,

AO

Related posts:

1. Put it in front of the door again
2. Put it in Front of the Door
3. You've got Mail…from ResultsManager?

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 to get from point A to point B.

I spend most of my time interfacing with capture tools (GyroQ or OutLinker), processing the input through MindReader, and then using Next Action Analysis to review and prioritize activities harvested from MindManager by ResultsManager. For better or worse, I actually spend relatively little time planning in the underlying project maps themselves.

This works fairly well with one exception. I typically only capture the "next action" associated with an idea or email. If it is not linked to a project or subsequent action and is subsequently marked complete from a dashboard, I sometimes forget to enter the subsequent step and risk having the project fall off my radar.

The latest version of MindReader can help address this issue with its new capability for it to recognize and process sequences of activities separated by << or >> delimiters. For example, you can now use the << delimiter to enter a sequence starting at the end:


which yields:

or you can use the >> delimiter to enter the sequence of actions starting with the next action and leading to the final action or project:

which yields:

MindReader processes each portion of the sequence separately based on keywords in each activity, so if you enter:

Report Complete isproject next month! << Review draft << Waiting for Bob to draft report << Ask Bob to write report tomorrow

you get:

You can use this functionality from the MindReader q or b tags or from OutLinker. I think it has a lot of potential uses that I haven't thought of yet. For example, you could conceive of having a library of "template" sequences that you queue in as needed for routine work flows.

You can download the new functionality by grabbing the ao_mindreader_common.mmbas macro from the macro library or running the setup program.

Related posts:

1. New MindReader features: the "m" tag and explicit context
2. OutLinker: A new tool for draining your Microsoft Outlook inbox
3. GTD and MindReader Q&A

OutLinker and OutLinker Lite now automatically detect conversation threads and allow you to navigate across them using the "nt" (next in thread) and "pt" (previous in thread) buttons. You can now also ThreadZoom(TM) your selection to focus on just the messages in the thread. You can "UnZoom" back to the full list as needed or wait for OutLinker to automatically "UnZoom" once you have whittled the thread down to one message.

Related posts:

1. Outlinker GUI
2. OutLinker Lite (OutLinker for "list" people)
3. GTDT (Getting Things Done Together)

Ironically, in developing and sharing a framework on how she might deal the fact that her greatest success may be behind her in the form of previous book "Eat, Pray, Love", she perhaps achieves a greater one. Procrastinate a bit and hear what she has to say…

My favorite quote – "I would please like the record to show today that I showed up today for my part of the job"

Related posts:

1. GTDT (Getting Things Done Together)
2. GTD Audio
3. Upcoming ResultsManager Webinar

Note that the contexts assigned with the buttons (or by just putting the @context in the next action) are now automatically set as the category if you choose to send the task to your Microsoft Outlook task list. This is particularly useful for OutLinker Lite users who are not yet working with MindManager or ResultsManager. OutLinker also recognizes some common "context verbs" and sets an associated context.

The text associated with the "context" buttons can be fully customized under the Options menu and can be re-purposed if desired to set different mindreader keywords (e.g. destination map keyword, alias).

Related posts:

1. OutLinker Lite (OutLinker for "list" people)
2. What are your next action verbs?
3. ButtonReader: 40 configurable buttons for MindReader

The program was recently enhanced with the option to create Outlook tasks with message attachments and/or links. It occurred to me that this tool might be useful to non-MindManager users. OutLinker Lite is a new version of OutLinker that removes dependencies and options related to MindManager and focuses on creating OutLook tasks. As time goes on, more "MindReader" functionality can be added to mark up those tasks in a manner similar to what is done in MindReader.

If you are an OutLinker power user, you might have a friend give "OutLinker Lite" a try. If you are not a MindManager user, but are suffering from a full inbox and struggling to avoid exceeding your Exchange quota, this could be a useful tool for you.

Related posts:

1. ThreadZoom
2. Synchronizing MindManager and OutLook
3. OutLinker Contexts

If you are a MindManager user and have wanted to give these tools a try in the past, but prefer your software installations to be "two-minute actions" instead of "projects", now might the time to give things a go. If you have used the tools, but haven't kept up with the incremental improvements over time, this also provides an opportunity to get caught up and keep up to date.

A big thanks goes to Hans, who developed the installation program using Inno Setup, and to Reenie, Marco, Stefan, Ron, Mike and others for testing out the early versions. The installer has performed well, with most of the glitches related to my overhaul of the tools themselves in preparation for use with the installer.

As part of this effort the wiki documentation for using and customizing the tools has been cleaned up with the help of Reenie. I'd recommend browsing the pages for MindReader, Mark Task Complete, and Next Action Analysis. In particular you might want to have a look at using the MindReader m tag in order to familiarize yourself with the full capabilities of MindReader.

For detailed instructions on downloading and installing the software, visit the Setup page on the wiki. Note that OutLinker still needs to be installed manually and should be updated as part of this upgrade if you are a legacy user.

If you do run into any issues, post comments below so they can be addressed.

Related posts:

1. Mark Task Complete Update
2. 2008 GTD Challenge Results
3. Next Action Analysis Updated

One other way to speed things up if you are a long time user is to clean up your completedlog.mmap file by moving all the branches to a separate mindmanager map. Frequently used maps may also have a lot of tasks accumulated in the floating completed topics, although speed issues associated with that are addressed with the move to project-based storage.

Gyronix has made great progress in their early beta versions getting GyroQ and ResultsManager adapted to MindManager version 8 and I imagine they will be broadly available (at least in beta form) soon.

I've been keeping notes on how to migrate use of tools from this site on the wiki Migrating to MindManager Version 8 page.

Related posts:

1. Mark Task Complete Update
2. Mark Task Complete Updated
3. SpeedReader — Faster Version of MindReader Available

The system and tools have been pretty stable from a development point of view, but I recently noticed an opportunity to slightly improve the default ResultsManager daily action dashboard template that I thought I would share.

A key concept of GTD is translating your projects into next actions and organizing them by context. Often the value of context assignment is the journey rather than the end. If you think about the specific "how", "where", and "when" of the next action, you will force yourself to translate it into a more "physical" action than it otherwise might be.

One area I am trying to improve is better defining contexts that match my personal situation and style. In practice there have been only a few lists that I proactively seek out from a context point of view:

• "phone" (short for "weekday 9-5")
• "errands" (particularly important in this era of high gas prices)
• "contact X about" (very useful in combination with the the "relationship central" "I owe" and "waiting for"

The problem comes when a "contact about" next action also involves a context. For example…

• Take ActivityDaughter to store to shop for camp supplies (@errands, ActivityDaughter@)
• Call TravelAgent about summer vacation (@phone, TravelAgent@)
• Call mom for mothers day! (@phone, mom@)

The default ResultsManager Daily Action dashboard filters are set up to avoid you getting a long list of "No Context" next actions that are really "Contact X about" items, by filtering out next actions that involve "partners" from the "@" lists and channeling all these to the "contact…" branch. The result is an errand or call that has a partner doesn't show up on the errand or calls list.

This can be addressed by breaking the context-list branch into two such that one captures specific contexts (regardless of partner) and another captures "no partner/no context" items. I thought I would share the procedure for those interested in learning more about customizing dashboards.

Assuming you already have a daily action dashboard generated, you can quickly open the underlying template by clicking on "open template" on the ResultsManager menu:

If you expand the "Next Actions" branch you can see there are parallel "partner" filters, with the first excluding any "contact about" partners from the next action lists and the 2nd to enumerate them:

What we have done here is leverage a lightly documented filter parameter of "_undefined" and "NOT _undefined" to channel defined contexts to the first branch and then "No Context" items to the 2nd, which are further filtered by the original "Partner=N" filter.

Once you have adjusted your dashboard template, you can save it and start using it. If you would prefer to keep the original, you can change the dashboard name (under application/prepare/properties):

and then save it in the "My Dashboards" folder (or elsewhere if you choose):

If you have chosen to save the template as new, you need to "install template" from the ResultsManager menu while it is active to add it to your list of available dashboards:

If you have questions, just comment below. If you want to learn more about how to build a dashboard template from scratch, see the 7 steps on the wiki. If you don't want to go through the "do-it-yourself" exercise above, you can just download the template from the ResultsManager Dashboard Library.

Related posts:

1. Map2Table — Export your map branches to a linked web page table
2. Putting Things in Context
3. Focusing in on One Area of your Life

After three years of exploring and tinkering (I bought ResultsManager in May 2005) and collaborating with many of you, I feel I've finally developed a balanced "trusted system" approach that works for me utilizing OutLinker, MindReader, Next Action Analysis, and Mark Task Complete. These macros have finally allowed me to fully leverage the MindManager, ResultsManager, and GyroQ applications.

The Next Action Analysis approach has been pivotal in proving a look at things in a more balanced and comprehensive way. The "game" of trying to empty Outlook inboxes and raise my NAA score has provided just enough incentive to get me to plug my GTD leaks and attack those lingering "high cringe factor" items clogging up my dashboard.

Previously I would spend all my dashboard and review time at the top of the Daily Action Plus Dashboard trying to empty in-trays and deal with items past their deadlines or targets, and neglecting other aspects. Now I feel like my focus shifts appropriately to the 5F that needs the most attention.

After using this set of tools for four months, this week I finally hit a perfect 10.0 on my personal maps and also got my work maps up over 9. If only I had got here during the contest :-).

A trend of my score over time is included at the bottom of the post based on the data collected in the NAALog.mmap. I tend to work with my personal maps on the weekend while doing chores and errands and paying bills :-(. Along the way I spent a lot of time fighting back the tide on each of the 5F's in turn. Once the macro gave me my "perfect score", the question became "what is the next action"?

To celebrate I took a break this evening to create the diagram above, which captures the NAA framework concisely and graphically. This may be helpful to you whatever GTD system or tools you actually use. What makes the next action analysis macro useful is that it generates quantitative metrics for these components and links out to the items that impact each of them (e.g. overdue or aging tasks) rather than requiring separate dashboards for these purposes.

The figure adds a 6th component to the five covered by the NAA tool, which is asking whether you are capturing the "Full Picture" of your work. You can't automate that, although GyroQ can be used to run a full "MindSweep". The other aspect captured in this component is the need for a regular review of "someday/maybe" lists to see what deferred projects merit activating. You might implement this by using a weekly repeating task reminder and then ensure that it stays fresh!

Of course for me what really remains now is finally giving more attention to "non squeaky wheel" projects and actions not currently in the penalty box. I won't be at 10.0 for long if I don't attack the 60 next actions on my home list and 80 on my work list. Unfortunately blogging isn't on either of them :-).

All the best,

AO

Related posts:

1. 2008 GTD Challenge Results
2. Next Action Analysis 2008 GTD Challenge
3. Logging Next Action Analysis Results

Note that the scoring has been adjusted to encourage more context assignment. For background on the tool see previous posts or its wiki page.

Related posts:

1. Next Action Analysis Updated
2. Next Action Analysis: 5 Metrics for Assessing your GTD System
3. Next Action Analysis 2008 GTD Challenge

The macro now defaults to routing transfers to MindManager through GyroQ, which is much faster. I didn't want to publicize this until I'd tested it out on a few thousand messages. It is working well now that issues with escaping quote characters have been resolved. If you choose, you can avoid use of GyroQ by setting the "usegyroq" setting to 0 and just have items transfer in real-time. You can also avoid use of MindReader by setting "usemindreader" to 0. All you really need is Outlook and MindManager.

The script now uses session variables and a cache to hold information in memory between uses, which has improved speed quite a bit — thanks for the tips Mike! The menu of commands has been expanded as shown below:

I use the macro by selecting anywhere from 1 to 250 messages at a time and then dispatching them quickly by either deleting (d), archiving (a), or by typing in an action item to send to MindManager. Non-action reference items can be sent over by adding a "isinfo" keyword.

It can be mentally challenging to transfer "urgent" items over to MindManager, but if you resolve to get all the way to "zero" and add short term target dates to urgent items, you can move over to MindManager and use your ResultsManager "Daily Action" dashboard and the
"Next Action Analysis" macro to guide your day.

All settings and counters for the scripts are kept in a "OutLinker Settings" Notes folder:

If you are currently using the script, I'd recommend pasting the latest version of OutLinker.bas into your macro file. If you have tried it in the past but ran into bugs or glitches, give this version a go. If you haven't tried it yet, have a look at the installation instructions on the wiki and post below if you have any questions.

Related posts:

1. Outlinker Update
2. OutLinker Setup Gets Easier and New Attachment Feature
3. How long is a typical email message?

… I understand that GTD is not a set of absolute rules, but tools to use to your benefit, but am not comfortable with something key in the Next Step, concept. We're told that if something will take more than say, two minutes, stick it in the system. I assume this leads to documenting every step that will take more than two minutes? But it can't, or we would document going to the grocery store as 200 steps, obviously making the process more laborious than is beneficial. So how do you know how to break projects down?

Is it entirely arbitrary? The system is very keen on next steps, but what about all of the 'other' steps? So, I'm going to build a house myself, and the Next Step is to draw blueprints. But I know that to draw blueprints I need to buy big paper, and when I have them I'll need to go to the copy store and make copies, and I'll need to look in the yellow pages for contractors, and I'll need to make a list of contractors to call, and I'll need to call each one, and, and, and… By breaking this into discrete components (especially if I'm going to take the time to enter them into an electronic system), I would seem to exponentially increase the time it will take to get the project actually done. Maybe I'm missing the bigger picture, and I admit, I'm on the very outside edge crawling towards the center of all of this…

David Allen has a knack for ironic phrases like "the center is the edge", "being complete with your incompletions", etc. Perhaps the analogous phrase he might use to answer your question would be "Getting things done is about getting things done".

Barriers to getting things done

What barriers get in the way of getting things done? Not capturing the "things" in the first barrier. "Things" can sit in your inbox, on your desk, workbench, garage floor, or mind. GTD stresses capturing all your "stuff" in a trusted system of some type. This is where tools like GyroQ and OutLinker come in. The "2 minute" rule relates to the trade-off of the time needed to process something into your projects and next action lists versus just doing it. I think with advent of fluid tools like those covered on this site, that guideline might need some revising, but that's for another post.

Once something is "captured", the next "not getting done" barrier can be lack of clarity on what is the first baby step to get it moving. This is where "next physical actions" come in. Although it has evolved to do quite a bit more, MindReader was initially conceived as a way to try to automatically assign "contexts" based on action verbs in phrases going into GyroQ or in MindManager topics. Sometimes the thought process of identifying the "next physical action" involves a backward sequencing process (replace tires – schedule visit – call store – lookup phone number) that generates a string of next actions. Once you have gone through that thought process, you might as well capture it in a map so that checking off the 1st step automatically queues up the next, but its not essential. Often just getting that 1st physical next action identified early catalyzes the rest of the process to move ahead quickly and naturally.

The third barrier to getting things done can be lack of having all those unrelated baby steps organized by "context" so that you can advance them efficiently. Among its other capabilities, ResultsManager excels at harvesting all your next actions from a network of project maps and laying them out for you in a single dashboard of next actions by contexts. Having a convenient "context" list can make you more productive in the little snippets of time that might otherwise be used inefficiently or go to waste. With gas prices being what they are, an "errands" list is all the more important.

The Chess Analogy
So how you do you break projects down? When I envision GTD, I think of what it could be like to be one of those grandmaster chess players who can run around a room and play 30 games (projects) at once. Now perhaps they do that by instantly recognizing the pattern on the board each time and the best next move. If I was going to do it, I'd have a project map for each game with some working notes and reference links on it, and a task reminder that the other player had the next move and to make sure I came back to it. I might also have a "next move" lined up based on the previous "review" of the situation for that game (project).

Thinking about this in another way, "Getting things done is not about what you are getting done". You don't need to document each completed action, or plan each next action for a project you are actively working on. You just want make sure you set projects up (or set them aside with) at least one next step to keep things moving.

Next question: Just want to make sure I understand something about the technology. I understand that MindReader requires MindManager/MindJet and Gyroq, but does it REQUIRE ResultsManager? (I have all of these tools, just trying to wrap my head around what does what). If I understand correctly, RM is really just a reporting tool (maybe an important one, but still a reporting tool). Is this correct?

No, technically MindReader doesn't require ResultsManager or even GyroQ (it has some limited functionality running directly on topics as a standalone macro), but there is a lot of synergy amongst the tools. MindReader enables GyroQ to capture and set the context, due date, priority, etc of a large quantity of tasks and spread them across many maps in one step. This is most useful if you have the ability to pull all that information back together into a dashboard with ResultsManager.

Other readers can provide additional insights below.

Related posts:

1. Six Components of a GTD Review
2. GTD Phone Home
3. 2008 GTD Challenge Results

The Next Action Analysis macro calculates and sorts these metrics for ResultsManager users by harvesting information from the Daily Action Dashboard. It also creates lists of actions and projects associated with the various components (e.g. aging tasks) as well as provides targeted advice on how to attack and improve your situation.

To have some fun with this, and provide readers with a framework for "climbing back on the GTD horse" in the new year, we initiated the "Next Action Analysis 2008 GTD Challenge". The goal was to get an initial assessment in the 1st half of January and then work to improve it by the end of the month.

Thanks to everyone who entered. It isn't easy to share the state of your "system". I think it was helpful to everyone to see that others are in the same boat. The entries and results are summarized below (Courtesy of Map2Table):

	Initial Score	Final Score	Improvement	Current Score
Juan	2.00	6.07	4.07
AO	6.40	7.50	1.10	9.59
Arkadiy	6.77
Bill S.	7.60
DW	7.95
Jose-Miguel	8.20	9.82	1.62	9.41
Mal	7.00
Renaldostheold	7.40	9.22	1.82	9.96

And the winners of the 2008 GTD challenge….

• Highest Final Score: Jose-Miguel
• Biggest Improvement: Juan
• Random Drawing: Renaldostheold

I think a few of these folks may have already claimed their prizes :-).

Here are some random thoughts and advice on use of the tool…

Context is King
In general it felt like the revised scoring was well balanced, and put me on the areas needing focus, but the one area that probably merits more weighting is the penalty for actions lacking context. The "no context" list is always with ripe with "blobs" that need more thought and review. Eliminating items from this list tends to help several others scores. For example sending them to someday/maybe, defining a new/younger physical next action, marking already complete items done, can be impactful on several dimensions. I am looking at raising the weighting here but need to decide where to steal the points from. Thoughts? My guess is "project proritization" or "Target Dates".

My Favorite?
If I personally had to give up using all but one tool from this site, this would be the one that I would keep. I have found it has kept me focused on all aspects of my system and forced me to address the stale tasks that were bogging it down. The delay in getting this contest entry posted is a testament to that as the "game" of improving your score can keep you focused on your important projects (rather than your blog :-).

How Many Next Actions are Too Many?
In order to get 10.0 on the "feasibility" scale, you need to knock your next actions down to 80. You'll only get a 5.0 on that dimension if you have 150 actions. That's a pretty stiff penalty, but the purpose is to reinforce the concept of actually doing the items on your list rather than carrying them around for weeks or months at a time. The scoring make your next action list expensive real estate that you want to populate with things you are committed to doing in the near term.

Do you Trust your Trusted System?
I've found the key to using tools like GyroQ, MindReader, and OutLinker to capture commitments into MindManager, is knowing that you maps are not black holes. If you don't trust it, you'll tend to keep "important" items piled up on your desk or in your OutLook Inbox. Keeping your NAA score up, and reviewing the flags it raises regularly, can help you build that trust into your system such that it become closer to 100%.

Are your Projects Projects?
It is very easy to fall into the trap of throwing all your tasks under "area" buckets (e.g. "Home Repair") that last forever rather than defining specific projects. The project priority and target date metrics are there not so much to yield benefits to your dashboard, but to help you decide whether a project should go to the someday/maybe list or be broken out as a smaller/more specific project.

Are your Targets Targets?
As mentioned above, the purpose of the target date assignment metric is not so much for the value of setting targets, but for forcing as many items as possible into defined/do-able projects. One thing you want to avoid is perpetually setting unrealistic targets such that you spend your time discouraged by them or postponing them.

If you use "Mark Task Complete" to set up routine "good habit" reminders, try setting just the start date rather than both the start and due date. For example, if you have a daily reminder called "empty in-tray", set it as a "daily" with just a start date. That way it will show up on your next action lists, and you'll take satisfaction in checking it off, but it won't clutter your "overdue" lists.

How to Deal with In-trays?
Based on my experiences with this tool, I've begun setting up my in-tray's with a "project" icon, particularly on "map central" maps. The key advantage of this approach is that it ensures that its parent "project" flags as needing next actions if it becomes empty. It also helps you avoid letting random "bits and pieces" actions find there way in under a map central map. I'll blog more about this later. You can also remove a central topic from the project list by giving it a category of "mc*", but this option should be used with care.

Have you tried it?
The script has improved quite a bit over the last month, so if you haven't done so recently I would recommend downloading the latest copy. Recent versions provide the option of opening a wiki page dedicated to providing advice on improving the weakest aspect of your score. If you are a routine dashboard user, or have ResultsManager, but have "fallen of the GTD horse", give this a try. It doesn't require that you have any other "AO" tools. All you need is ResultsManager for generating Daily Action Dashboards.

Next Steps?
Any interest in further contests? Are there any other aspects of the DA dashboard that could be assessed? I'd write more, but I need to get going on some procrastinated "next actions" so I can improve my "Freshness" score :-).

Related posts:

1. Next Action Analysis 2008 GTD Challenge
2. Six Components of a GTD Review
3. Next Action Analysis Updated

Related posts:

1. Mark Task Complete updated for MindManager 9
2. Mark Tasks Complete Faster
3. Mark Task Complete Update

Here are four options for getting items into your maps from a mobile device.

1. Use bitbucket.org to mail yourself task from the PDA and then pull
   the tasks in via an RSS map part (see A MindManager-Based RSS News Reader.

2. Take that approach one step farther, and call in your tasks verbally
   to Jott with the phone rather than typing them in. This is handy for
   use when driving (see GTD Phone Home. ActivityDaughter also uses it to remind Dad of things like the need to get started on her upcoming Volcano project.

3. If the phone's task list is Outlook synced, you can pull the Outlook tasks into MindManager using OutLinker.
4. If you capture the tasks in a note, you can paste the list into the
   MindReader GyroQ "q" tag, and it will process and parse each line separately into
   separate tasks. You don't need to paste them 1 by 1. See Feed your todo list into MindReader.

   I personally tend to just carry two thin Moleskine notebooks (one work/one personal) in my pocket and log things there for later manual transfer with GyroQ.

   Related posts:

   1. GTD Phone Home
   2. Feed your to-do list into MindReader
   3. Synchronizing MindManager and OutLook
   ]]> http://www.activityowner.com/2008/02/15/four-ways-to-add-tasks-to-your-maps-from-your-phone/feed/ 1 http://www.activityowner.com/2008/01/24/mindreader-turns-1-gets-its-braces-taken-off/ http://www.activityowner.com/2008/01/24/mindreader-turns-1-gets-its-braces-taken-off/#comments Fri, 25 Jan 2008 02:47:45 +0000 ActivityOwner http://www.activityowner.com/2008/01/24/mindreader-turns-1-gets-its-braces-taken-off/
5. Alias
6. New MindReader features: the "m" tag and explicit context
7. Delay or Extend an Activity with MindReader