Juan has been collecting on his 2008 Next Action Analysis Contest prize with some macro requests. This weekend he asked for a MindManager macro that could take a ResultsManager dashboard with tasks that had been manually set to 100% complete (not processed with the "d" tag or "mark task complete" macro) and process them [...]
Two of the biggest barriers to making good use of ResultsManager for Getting things Done (GTD) tend to be (1) the need to manually refresh dashboards and (2) the need to access to do list items away from your computer.
When you sit down to get too work, the last thing you want to do is [...]
I treated myself to an inexpensive Toshiba NetBook from Amazon on Black Friday so I am now in the mode of thinking how to use it to access and edit MindManager maps I've traditionally maintained on my desktop machine.
There are a number of options and I wanted to solicit readers for input. [...]
A reader writes by email…
Dear AO,
I use your "Put it in Front of the Door” script daily and I find it very useful. I would like to add a feature to the script, which is synchronizing the dashboard with my tasks in Microsoft Outlook using the “Export task info to Outlook” feature of MM. [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
While I haven't been at 10.0 level for awhile, I've been happily Getting Things Done (GTD) using MindManager, ResultsManager, GyroQ along with the Outlinker, MindReader, Next Action Analysis, and Mark Task Complete macros. In general I've found running the NAA script on the daily action dashboard points me at the right widgets to be crank [...]
Things have gotten a bit quiet in "gyrospace" lately. Perhaps this is because folks have given up on their new year's resolutions or moved on to other tools. I'm hoping it is because we are all successfully focusing on Getting Things Done rather than tinkering with our systems and surfing blogs.
After [...]
The Next Action Analysis macro has been updated to log your scores into comma delimited notes on a mindmanager log map each time you run it on your ResultsManager daily action dashboard. The central topic note contains the date/time stamp, the overall score, and each dimension's score. The branches contain tables with the [...]
It is actually more like version 122, but "2.0" sounds better. It has been about four months since my last post on OutLinker and I wanted to let folks know that several improvements and bug fixes have trickled onto the wiki since then.
The macro now defaults to routing transfers to MindManager through [...]
Chuck Brown posted some questions on GTD and MindReader as a comment on AO-Pack blog entry. I thought answering via a post would make sense as it provides some elbow room and an opportunity for others to chime in.
… I understand that GTD is not a set of absolute rules, but tools to [...]
Back on New Year's day I proposed Five Metrics for assessing the state of your GTD system. The idea was to assess the Freshness, Focus, Feasibility, Foresight, and Finishing (5F's) of your current next actions and combine these into an overall score.
The Next Action Analysis macro calculates and sorts these metrics [...]
If you are using Mark Task Complete, note that it has been updated so that it now logs repeating task completions in the floating "completed" topic and also moves completed topics from the plan, even when updated from the dashboard.
In a message on the GTD-MindManager Yahoo group, Juan asked about ways of getting tasks into MindManager from his new PDA. I thought it might be useful to cross-post a reply here for posterity:
Here are four options for getting items into your maps from a mobile device.
Use bitbucket.org to mail yourself task [...]
MindManager provides a great environment for group brainstorming on issues and ideas and for organizing information. While you may start out in an unstructured way, you will often find your final product has a 3-level deep structure such as in the Pro/Con analysis shown below.
In these cases it can be [...]
Although the first prototype emerged earlier, the first production version of MindReader made its debut 1 year ago last Sunday. I'd like to thanks to all who have helped take it from its early 14-word vocabulary to the large collection of keywords it recognizes today.
Recently we've been debating how to best read [...]
One handy feature of MindReader is its ability to set the current contents of the clipboard as a task's hyperlink or note if you include a keyword (isnote, see note, islink, see link). As currently configured it always grabs the contents of the clipboard and puts it in the queue file because it [...]
If you are using OutLinker you may have achieved Inbox Zero for the first time in awhile. Don't stop there.
While your inbox contains a mixture of spam, bulk mail, info-only cc's, and perhaps 10% actionable information, your "Sent Items" will tend to have a much more concentrated set of …
commitments [...]
The Next Action Analysis tool's report has evolved quite a bit over the last two weeks (see picture below) since the initial post (5 metrics for assessing your GTD System).
Here is a summary of the changes:
Added more targeted recommendations for the specific metrics with the most room for improvement [...]
[Editor's Note: Jose Miguel is a the MindReader power user and has driven the development of many of its features. In this guest post, he describes how he came to use the tool and how he uses it day to day. A Spanish version of his post is also available. ]
Until [...]
[Nota del editor: José Miguel es el poder MindReader usuario y ha impulsado el desarrollo de muchas de sus características. En este puesto de invitado, él describe cómo llegó a utilizar la herramienta y la forma en que lo usa día a día.
Una versión en Inglés está también disponible]
Hasta que descubrí
OutLinker is a Microsoft Outlook Macro for rapidly processing as set of Microsoft Outlook Tasks, Appointments, and Messages and transferring the content/links for the items you choose into MindManager for organization and tracking.
The initial version required MindReader and GyroQ, which narrowed the potential user base quite to a small niche of power users. [...]
2007 was a year we largely focused on improved capturing and staging of tasks with tools like MindReader, Mark Task Complete, and OutlLinker. Perhaps 2008 can focus on improved weekly review and action? To kick it off and to provide some group moral support for getting things done, I'd like to propose [...]
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