ActivityOwner.Com - Getting Things Done with MindManager » MindManager

How to improve MindManager?

ActivityOwner — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 12:43:51 +0000

Mindjet has a new mindjet.uservoice.com site where users can suggest and vote on new features for MindManager. I learned of this after Andrew Wilcox posted a suggestion on the mindmanager yahoo group for adding an option to disable new multiple hyperlink feature.

I added a suggestion for adding a "Left Map" map layout option.

This venue to add suggestions in an organized and prioritized way is a nice offering. In general it feels like MindJet has improved its customer strategy with the release of MindManager 2012. Several former add-ins are built into the product (Sharepoint, PowerMarkers, JCV-Gantt). This enhances the product and simplifies purchasing/licensing for organizations. The introduction of free online MindJet Connect should aid in increasing personal use that will increase their user base. I have not tested it yet, but I understand the new free IPad App is much improved. The previous $7.95 version was vastly inferior to IThoughtsHD and not serving them well.

MindManager 2012

ActivityOwner — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 03:32:36 +0000

Updated add-ins for MindManager 2012 have been posted for Map2Excel, MindReader, MarkTaskComplete, MyMapMacros, and Omni2Map.

Omni2Map: Export OmniFocus to MindManager

ActivityOwner — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 03:28:27 +0000

As I mentioned in my earlier OmniFocus for IPad Review, I recently adopted OmniFocus as my home project management system for Getting Things Done (GTD)

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.

OmniFocus for IPad Review

ActivityOwner — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 14:32:20 +0000

As I mentioned in my last post on Declaring GTD Bankruptcy, I recently decided to switch my personal GTD system to make better use of my new Ipad 2.

Why Switch?
Besides the value of having to reconsider all my priorities in the migration process, the main driver was to get away from my home desk a bit more. I spend a lot of time at my office keyboard and was spending a correspondingly high amount at my home desk for a variety of things. The Ipad can get you away from your desk for many activities where you are just consuming information (reading/deleting mail, news, searching) and reduce desk time to more focus on creating things and keyboard-intensive activities.

Using the information and tools on the ActivityOwner.com site you can do quite a bit to synchronize information back and forth between your MindManager maps and mobile-accessible formats (e.g. dropbox), but that can be a bit clunky and it introduces a delay between when you add or complete something and when you next refresh your dashboards. I continue to use ResultsManager at work, although to be honest I spend most of my time just taming my inbox with OutLinker.

Why OmniFocus
I tried a few web-based tools including Remember the Milk and Nozbe but they didn't resonate for some reason. Nozbe's reoccuring cost is reasonable but a bit of a deterrent. I initially stayed away from OmniFocus for Ipad since its is an Apple application and has no Windows counterpart, but the reviews and functionality looked good. At $39.95 it is not cheap for an Ipad App, but I figure you get what you pay for so I took the plunge.

The Pros
OmniFocus for Ipad has been on the market for awhile and there are many reviews of it available, so I'll just enumerate the things that jumped out at me as a long-time ResultsManager user and GTD add-in developer:

It is great to be able to capture/process/plan/review/do on the move away from my PC as time permits. The quiet Sunday morning "Weekly Review" is a nice concept, but doesn't always materialize.
OmniFocus organizes itself in realtime. There is no dashboard refresh step between when you change something and when it shows up in your lists.
OmniFocus tracks your "Weekly Review" on a project by project basis. By default, each project puts itself up on the "Review" list on weekly basis, but you can change this default to any frequency you wish. This is a nice way to ensure your "Someday" items get a once over at some frequency and that you continue to have the right next steps for your active projects. This means you can do a partial review of your projects and pick up where you left off when you next have time. This concept could be a nice addition to the Next Action Analysis framework and would just require a standard way of leaving another type of date stamp on a project (perhaps as a tag).
OmniFocus lets you organize your projects in a folder structure and also allows for sub-contexts. You can choose to limit your "focus" on a folder or sub-folder of activity or on a context.
OmniFocus has a very rapid "Search" feature that gets you to tasks and projects quickly.
You can easily convert tasks to projects or move tasks to a new project. Reorganizing contexts and folders is also easy.
Its repeating task capabilities are fairly good. Its not quite as advances as Mark Task Complete, but is more than adequate.
The program and data are native to the IPad. It doesn't suffer from web delays and does not require an internet connection.
As a stand-alone fully capable GTD application, $39.95 is not a bad deal.
The functionality seems "just right" for the task. I am not familiar with the desktop version of OmniFocus, but I get the sense that the developers have slimmed down from its (perhaps bloating and complex?) function set down to the key features.

The Cons
If veteran OmniFocus users find any of these observations off-track, let me know, I may not fully understand the capabilities at this stage.

If you are not a Mac user, your data is relatively stranded and not backed up. It it synced to itunes when you sync your Ipad, but you don't necessarily do that very often, and doesn't provide that much peace of mind when you do. If you misplace your Ipad you need to buy a new one to get at your lists?
It doesn't highlight "Projects needing next steps" like ResultsManager does, although timed periodic project review helps catch those.
It doesn't highlight "aging" tasks like Next Action Analysis.
While you can email individual tasks, you can't export or print a full to do list.
It doesn't provide the month-based archiving of completed tasks that Mark Task Complete provides.
Its not a team-oriented tool.
Typing speed is slow and there is no MindReader to facilitate mark up.
Its ability to prioritize is limited to whether something is flagged or not.
It doesn't include a time-required field
Attaching information to a task or project isn't that easy. You can send web links from Safari to OminFocus.
Its not web-based, so you have to keep your ipad handy (e.g. carry it to work rather than pull up web app at lunch).

The first four items were somewhat concerning to me, particularly the stranding of data and potential disaster recovery issues (I don't need involuntary GTD bankruptcy at this point). After a bit of googling, I discovered that OmniFocus uses xml as its native data storage format, which liberates the data in an albeit cryptic organization. MindManager can actually open xml files, which allows the content to be processed with macros. I used this approach several years ago to develop import routines for BaseCamp and (non defunct?) nactionr.

I found I was able to take a similar approach with the main contents.xml file that stores the OmniFocus information. Getting access to the data is a little involved if you are a PC user. I needed to set up a webdav folder with DreamHost to sync the data with. This wasn't a big deal since I'm already set up with them for the blog. Disclamer — referral fee goes to AO charity if you sign up via that link. Setting up the extra sync destination made sense in any case as a secondary backup/restore strategy. If you are a mac user of the desktop application, you can probably get the contents.xml file directly.

The first version of the Omni2Map addin is now available for download (version 9 only). It will export your OmniFocus data into a MindManager map and mark up your projects and tasks with due dates, contexts, etc. It uses ResultsManager conventions, which enables the exported information to be processed with ResultsManager and Next Action Analysis on a periodic basis. I've only used it a few times, but it addresses concerns 1-4 for me now (and likely #5 as well once I unfilter completed tasks).

This is an early version that is sure to have bugs and usability issues and needs a blog post of its own, but I figured I'd share it now for those that are interested in giving it a try.

New OutLinker feature — create set of topics with links contacts, notes, tasks, or messages

ActivityOwner — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 03:58:35 +0000

The OutLinker package has a new feature. If you select a set of any type of item and run the SendLink2MindManager macro, it will add topics below the selected topic in a map with the text of the item in topic/note and with a link back to the item. You could use this, for example, to create a map with topics for all the appointments you have for the week or for a set of contacts. As I understand it, this might fill a gap for some left by removal of OutLook Linker by MindJet.

The main OutLinker package is geared toward processing mailbox items into map or task list items and archiving the messages to a folder. This feature leaves the items into place.

Buttons to send topics to other maps

ActivityOwner — Sun, 15 May 2011 23:00:05 +0000

The MindReader add-in already has a button to bring up a dialog box for you to enter a destination keyword to send a topic to another map but, faced with a very full daily capture map, I thought it might be handy to have a set of buttons configured to send topics to some of my most frequently used maps. I found this quickly let me distribute my inbox items to the dedicated maps I have for key focus areas.

The lastest version adds nine buttons you can configure with keywords under the options button. It also modifies the "Next Action Analysis" button so that it automatically refreshes the dashboard before running the analysis.

MMDevX Launches and MindMappers.ning.com Re-Launches

ActivityOwner — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 00:18:52 +0000

Nigel Goult, the generous developer who provided the 7 steps to create a MindManager Add-In guide continues to do great things to support the MindManager community.

As you may recall, Nigel's guide and template enabled me to convert MindReader, MarkTaskComplete, and Map2Excel into installable add-ins and to add MyMapMacros to the mix.

He recently cleaned up and relaunched mindmappers.ning.com, a community/social-networking site focused on visual information management.

The content and activity there is rich and growing. If you are finding your way to this site, I imagine you will enjoy the mindmappers site as well.

Today Nigel launched MMDevX.com, a showcase of add-ins for MindManager, including those from this site.

This promises to provide a convenient way for MindManager users to quickly identify add-ins to meet their needs.

ButtonReader: 40 configurable buttons for MindReader

ActivityOwner — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 23:54:04 +0000

Several people had asked for customizable context buttons in MindReader. In part because Stefan has teh biggest donation to date, I jumped right on the task. As of yesterday the ribbon has had an options button that lets you not only change the contexts but allows you to re-purpose the context, due, and time tabs to any keywords of your liking.

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!

Example of Map2Excel in use

ActivityOwner — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 10:10:16 +0000

Wojciech posted a nice example of how one might use Map2Excel on his blog.

MyMapMacros: Launch your MindManager Macros from the Ribbon Toolbar

ActivityOwner — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 23:38:28 +0000

While MindManager macros can be very useful for automating repetitive operations in MindManager, it can be a little tedious to launch them. You either need to enable the developer tab and then click on "developer, macros, macro editor, run" or assign the macro to the topic context menu (which can get crowded and requires a few clicks).

In the past I've used the strategy of using GyroQ tags to launch macros. This has worked well, but I've always wanted to be able to put macros onto the ribbon tool bar. I've recently been able to do that by creating add-ins for MindReader, Mark Task Complete, and Map2Excel.

I used what I learned in those exercises to create a generic add-in (MyMapMacros) that will enable anyone to put their macros on the MindManager tool bar. All you need to do is create a "mymapmacros" directory in your "My Maps" folder and place your macros in it.

The add-in will recognize them and place them on the toolbar and give you the option of adding them to the quick-access toolbar as well. Up to 10 macros can be added in this manner. You also have the option of adding a image file in jpg or ico format to associate with the command. This can make it easier to recognize on the quick-access toolbar.

You can download the add-in from the MyMapMacros page on the wiki.

Update on the ActivityOwner.Com MindManager Add-ins

ActivityOwner — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 04:29:51 +0000

I wanted to provide an update on my project of converting tools on the activityowner.com site to MindManager Add-ins.

The wiki.activityowner.com now has three independent stand-alone add-ins installs with domains that point to them:

and of course http://outlinker.com.

Each add-in is really stand-alone now and will be less intimidating for new users to understand and install separately. The buttons on the toolbars can be added to the quick-access toolbar as well. The add-ins only act when their command buttons are pressed, so one should expect any impact on performance or other incompatibilities by installing them.

Map2Excel interface:

It has been an interesting puzzle to convert legacy MindManager macros to more modern (and faster executing) VB.Net code. Thank you to the folks who have tested early version of these. I think the major bugs have been worked out, but there will be a few more for sure. Please kick the tires and comment below as you encounter them.

The new add-ins are no longer depend on GyroQ or the legacy setup/installation, but they backward compatible and share the "legacy" MindReader for GyroQ configuration files, so old and new can be used in parallel. OutLinker still needs to be ribbon-ized in OutLook to simplify its installation.

MarkTaskComplete interface:

The wiki has been overhauled to point to the new add-ins. All four should have some appeal to regular MindManager users. You don’t need to be ResultsManager user to make good use of them. With some menu elbow room they should grow a bit in functionality over time (e.g. new button to open last months completion map, analyze it, etc).

Note that Mindreader install brings along dashboard buttons, NAA, and Outlook dashboard syncing, but hides them unless user has RM installed.

The site is up to about $85 in donations (thank you), so we will need to see if this can be sustained once my Visual Studio trial expires.

MindReader interface:

New version of Map2Excel uploaded

ActivityOwner — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 02:01:35 +0000

Some users uncovered a bug in the 1st version of Map2Excel that only showed up if you hadn't previously installed the ActivityOwner Tools Add-in for MindManager. It is fixed now, so if you had trouble installing, please have another go at it and report your results:

http://map2excel.com

Map2Excel Add-in Available

ActivityOwner — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 15:13:37 +0000

The Map2Excel tool has been converted to an easily installable MindManager add-in. More information is available here. The add-in also incorporates Map2Table and Map2Outline.

To download the free add-in, visit http://map2excel.com.

Note that the ActivityOwner Tools Add-in is also fairly functional now and ready for testing and feedback.

SAMPLE INPUT:

SAMPLE OUTPUT:

How to create a MindManager add-in with Microsoft Visual Studio in 7 easy steps

ActivityOwner — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 14:46:10 +0000

There was a discussion over the past few days on the MindManagerDev yahoo group on the relatively limited documentation of the MindManager Object Model and the challenges for new developers to get past the learning curve for creating add-ins for MindManager.

Nigel Goult of Olympic Limited has now generously shared a 7 step tutorial on how to make a simple "Hello World" add-in for MindManager using Visual Studio.

In testing this out I found (with a fresh install of visual studio 2010), I had to change the .net target from 4 to 3.5 to get the add-in to work. On first use MM complained it was going to disable the add-in, but it worked, and did not give errors on subsequent uses. After adding the MM9 type library to the references, it still didn't show up in sidebar after refreshing dependencies. Next step for me is to figure out how to put a button on the toolbar. As it turns out Nigel has also provided a full working example for download that includes the ribbon portion.

There is additional information on add-in development here. Here is some very old information on adding commands to the user interface.

New developers and hobbyists may also find the source code for MindReader in the MindManager Macro Library and the the VBA Code for Outlinker useful for seeing examples of how to interact with the MindManager object model.

Rather than continue to edit in information to this blog entry as I figure things out, I've created a wiki page to capture How to create a MindManager add-in using Visual Studio.

Nigel's contribution here along with the regular assistance provided by him and Nick Duffill to the community is much appreciated. I will try to give this 7-step process a try and report on the results.

MindManager 9 Task Date Issue accommodated in ResultsManager 2.9.2/1 (Part 6)

admin — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 01:42:01 +0000

IN Part 5 of the series we enumerated some of the issues that emerged for ResultsManager users with the new ways that MindManager 9 handles task dates. One of the main issues (which I didn't recognize at that time) was that the way duration is now handled in MindManager was causing ResultsManager to add due dates (= start date) to tasks with a start date but no end date. Gyronix has addressed that with a new version 2.9.2/1 available today. I have tested this version for a few weeks and all seems to be well. MindReader has been modified so that it can successfully change start and due dates without changing the other. You need to download the latest beta version of the MindReader Setup if you are using v9 to get start date keywords to work correctly. You also want to run through the MindManager setup tips to make sure you do things like add weekend days to your calendar.

The main residual annoyance with v9 at this point is that once you add a start and due date to a task, you need to manually remove the date information if you want to go back to the point of not having a due date. The "ndd" mindreader keyword will not do it nor will the ResultsManager "edit activity" dialog. So I guess this means you need to finish your task instead of removing the due dates :-).

For my purposes I'm going to mark my project map done and archive it and close the 6 part series. The remaining issues are still summarized on the wiki. I have seen occasional "untagged items in your queue" messages associated with the latest version of GyroQ released with version 9 that I still need to track down in terms of root cause. Let me know if you are running into this.

Refresh your ResultsManager Dashboard 60% Faster

ActivityOwner — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 15:47:08 +0000

Happy New Year everyone.

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!

MindManager 9 Task Date Issue Update (Part 5)

ActivityOwner — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 20:04:14 +0000

When we left off in Part 4, we were getting started on the initial next actions of a "funnel timeline" project plan for addressing task date issues in MindManager 9:

The goal of this series of posts is to both work through the MindManager 9 task date issue and to attempt to provide a working case study in how I use the tools on the side.

I decided to use a MindManager 9 Issues page on wiki.activityowner.com to enumerate current issues and status. Visit this page to see current status. I also decided to download a trial of MindManager 9 SP1 to better understand the issues. The primary issue I saw in testing MindReader was that its start date related activites using the q, m, or c tags had unpredictable results. As I worked through open tasks and completed them, Mark Task Complete logged them in a monthly "completed log" as well as in the reference branch of the project map:

While one may get the impression that MindJet may see the task date issue as a bit obscure and impacting a narrow portion of their user base, there do seem to be some general problems. Having looked into this a little further, it seems the regular MindManager user interface for setting task dates behaves in a non-ideal way. For example, if you have a task and want to set a start and due date, you might typically set the due date first. Lets say you add a task to "Complete 2010 Taxes", you would probably start by adding a due date of April 15th.

Then you would consider when you can start on this task and conclude the earliest you want to start is January 1st:

You would expect that you could leave the task info tab and be all set, but you discover you are left with:

This is due to MindManager 9 inserting and enforcing a default duration of 0 work days when you add date information. In order to fix this you need to go back and set the due date again. Now suppose you later decide that you want to defer starting on the task until all your paper work comes during January so you now set your start date to January 30th. Now the due date is pushed out to May 15th due to the assumption of a fixed duration of the task. This is an issue that potentially impacts all users.

MindReader Update
MindReader has been revised so that keywords that change start dates do not disturb due dates. I did this by changes all the code that set the start date to instead run a routine that memorizes the original due date, changes the start date, and then fixes the due date. Next Action Analysis has been updated to ignore tasks and projects with (start date=due date) when enumerating overdue tasks. There are some risks to this, but generally speaking hard deadline issues will show up on the left side of the map in any case. See the MindReader set up page to download and install both of these updates. You also need to set the MindManager calendar to include Saturdays and Sundays. This has been added to an updated MindManager Setup Tips page on the wiki.

The main unresolved item is that now the "nsd" and "ndd" keywords don't work for removing start dates and due dates. Once MindManager has a start date and a due date, you can't get rid of one individually. I imagine these keywords are sparsely used in any case so this is probably not a major issue. The trick to get them working would be to somehow figure out how to remove both the start and due date programatically and then add back the required information. Any programming insight would be appreciated on that strategy. I may just set this as a "Someday/Maybe" along with the MindManager 9 purchase.

In terms of next steps, I'll be waiting for your feedback:

I revised my "plan" for project to remove the "list" code in the parent topic and to mainly have "waiting fors" and "somedays" for next steps:

20 MindManager 9 Setup Tips

ActivityOwner — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 19:38:18 +0000

In order to celebrate the recent release of MindManger 9, the MindManager Setup Tips page on wiki.activityowner.com has been updated. There are a few legacy items that may apply more to MindManager 7 and 8. The list of 13 tips for ResultsManager and GyroQ setup has also been updated.

Click here to visit the top 20 tips list on the wiki.

Feel free to create a wiki account and add or modify these tips as well.

Dashboard Refresh Speed Comparison

ActivityOwner — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 01:52:36 +0000

MindManager 9 feels a bit faster and claims to open maps significantly faster, so I timed how fast it took to refresh my daily action dashboard compared with MindManager 8.2. MindManager 9.1 took 3:45 while MIndManager 8.2 took only 3:15. Related posts:Refresh your ResultsManager Dashboard 60% Faster Building a Custom ResultsManager Dashboard Speed Reader Related posts:

MindManager Project Management Part 4 — Project Planning

ActivityOwner — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 16:45:52 +0000

In Part 2, we had generated a rough outline of actions to be taken to address issues with Task dates in MindManager 9:

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.

MindManager Project Management Part 3 – GyroQ Capture

ActivityOwner — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 14:21:45 +0000

Sorry for delay in the next post on this series. I expected it to be "Part 3 – Project Planning" but it became "GyroQ capture" for reasons I'll explain below.

In Part 2 we brainstormed ideas around the MindManager 9 task date issue and sorted the information into a rough outline. The next day after testing MM9 and the tools in practice and came across a few issues and was tempted to dive into creating blog posts, wiki pages, and getting started on coding on a week night.

One of the key reasons for using GTD and ResultsManager is to assess and prioritize work. After enumerating issues (1st step in project plan from Part 2) I concluded that I couldn't easily code around the various road blocks presented by MM9 on my own and best course of action given other pressing priorities was to set project with a "waiting for Mindjet" next action and a "someday/maybe" to continue the series as time permits.

But in order to capture the issues I found that day, I used the MindReader q tag in GyroQ to capture the information and send it to the map I had created on the issue. This is done automatically as I've created a destination keyword (mm9project) for the map:

This enabled me to quickly get these two observations out of my head and let me spend that evening on more pressing career-related tasks. Now when I return to the project map, I have these issue listed in the project in-tray to be processed.

Because I used the "isinfo" keyword, these items were not set to tasks that would distract me in my dailyaction dashboard. The phone icons added to the topic by mindreader are due to the string "call" being present in the topic. This make Mindreader think they might be related to phone calls (which would typically be the case).

Next up: MindManager Project Management Part 4 — Project Planning

MindManager Project Management Part 2 – Brainstorming

ActivityOwner — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 22:03:52 +0000

A few months back when I polled readers on "What is the next action for activityowner.com", the two leading responses were "Tutorials on writing macros" and "examples of how I use the tools". I figured coping with the current MindManager Task Date issue provides a good case study to start to address the later.

In Part 1 I set up a placeholder project map and gave myself a next action of brainstorming on a path forward. If this task had lingered it would have showed up in my Daily Action dashboard as an action with "no context". At this point I'd either work on it or add to my "@maps" context using the MindReader m tag (control-Q m @maps [enter]) for future processing when I had some quality time at my desk. If it lingered further it would show up on my "Next Action Analysis" report as not having a time estimate, at which point I'd probably assign it a "15m" duration and wonder why I hadn't gotten to it, particularly if it lingered long enough to make the "aging tasks" list :-).

Given I had some time, I put MindManager into brainstorm mode:

and set a timer of 10 minutes to bang out ideas that came to mind and that had been mentioned in the blog comments:

I could also have just done this in the project's in-tray, but for this I wanted to give myself some elbow room on a temporary map to sort things out. In a group setting 5 or 10 minutes is usually sufficient to get a good amount of ideas on the table. The key is to allow enough time for the extroverts to pour out there ideas and allow a bit of a lull and prodding to get diverse views from the quieter folks in the room.

Charles had a great idea of creating a "what do I do when I…" cheat sheet for the entire MM/RM/GyroQ/MR/Outlinker system. This addresses broader issues than the scope of this effort. Rather than create a project out of it using the "nm tag" right away, I decided it was a roughly a two minute action to put a placeholder wiki page in place and post a blog entry to get the initiative started. A reader has already jumped in and started adding to it.

I typically skip over the next step in MindManager's brainstorm mode "Enter Group Names" and just end the brainstorm at that point. If you have had a healthy session you may have dozens of floating topics accumulated. I usually find it easier to just drag all these topics up to the central topic and then start to sort them out.

The next step is to sort things out as you might in a traditional "Yellow sticky" group exercise. In this process other ideas come to mind and natural "this comes before that" sequencing emerges:

The next step will be to pull this outline back to the project map and start translating it to an actionable plan. Before I wrap up for the evening, I go back to the project map and use "Mark Task Complete" to mark the brainstorm step complete.

This optionally logs it in the reference branch of the map and to an August completed actions map.

Finally I select the empty "plan" topic and use the MindReader "b tag" to add the next step to the project so that I'm reminded to return to it (and avoid having the project show up on my "projects lacking next actions" list):

In this case I remembered to add the @maps context and 15m time required keywords.

See MindManager Project Management Part 3 — GyroQ Capture.

MindManager Project Management Part 1 – Definition

ActivityOwner — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 15:10:03 +0000

As regular readers know, my Saturday morning hobby for the past few years has been to develop and share new ways of using MindManager for implementing David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology. The past several months I have been more focused on quietly using the tools rather than procratinating by tweaking them, but the release of MindManager 9 is pulling me me out of semi-retirement with changes in how Mindjet handles tasks that impact Gyronix ResultsManager and the MindReader add-in available on this site. This Saturday morning my head is swirling a bit in deciding what is the next action? Complain to Mindjet? Dive into coding workarounds? Abandon the tool?, Mow the lawn?

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.

MindManager 9 Task Date Issue

ActivityOwner — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 01:17:27 +0000

Xiahung commented on the blog this week that MindManager 9 was adding task durations as "end date-start date" and causing unexpected date-related behavior in his ResultsManager dashboards. I hadn't noticed issues in the pre-release version I'd done some cursory testing on, but Nick Duffill has now determined that changes were made in the final release of v9 to better support use of new Gantt chart capabilities that explain what is going on. Nick has gone to great lengths to characterize the undocumented changes and summarized them in a message in the GTD-MindManager Yahoo group today. I've reproduced his message below for those who are not currently subscribed.

If you are a regular user of ResultsManager, and particularly if you are regular user of MindReader, I would recommend staying with (or moving back to) V8 until this can be addressed by Mindjet or somehow worked around. For example the MindReader "ndd" (no due date) keyword no longer removes due dates. Changing a start or due date with the "m" tage will likely unintentionally shift the other date by a similar amount.

GTD-MindManager post by Nick Duffill:

A brief update for MindManager 7 & 8 users considering moving to MindManager 9,
and for MindManager 9 users who have ResultsManager, or who are using
MindManager for project management.

MindManager 9 has introduced some changes in the way that date information is
handled, which have implications that you should be aware of.

First, it seems that you cannot set a date which is not in the map calendar. So
if the default map calendar only shows Monday to Friday as working days, you
cannot set a date on a topic for a Saturday – it will change to the next working
day by magic. The map calendar must be modified before other days can be used.

"Duration" has changed from being the time that a task will take, to being the
difference in working days between start and end dates. The start date, duration
and due date are now locked to each other. If you change any one, then one of
the others will change to maintain their relationship (subject to the working
calendar rules too). This applies through the software interface as well as
through the user interface, which is proving problematic for ResultsManager use.
The dates that a topic gets might or might not be the ones you entered in the
ResultsManager edit dialogue, for the above reasons. ResultsManager does not
apply the same rules, and at present cannot discover what the rules are through
the API.

It is only possible to have topics with only one date on them under specific
conditions now. Generally, if a topic is assigned one date, then MindManager
will ensure that the other one is defined too. We know that a lot of MindManager
users only use the due date.

Lastly, if you change the duration of a task, the due date may get automatically
moved back to suit the duration. If you use due dates to keep track of stuff,
keep an eye on this behaviour. As mentioned, when you edit one of the dates, the
other might move without you noticing.

MindManager 9 has moved from being a fairly flexible system for keeping track of
dated tasks, to something that is more locked down and mainly designed to
support the built-in task management. ResultsManager depended on a flexible
platform, so some users are experiencing problems with the new regime. In
ResultsManager, the start date has always been the first date on which you
wanted to see an action come up in dashboards. This option has effectively gone,
and "start date" now means "the last day that a task can be started, if it is to
be finished on time".

If you have MindManager 8 and are using ResultsManager at present, and rely on
dated tasks in your maps, then it might be worth hanging on for date handling to
be addressed in a MindManager 9 service pack, unless the benefits of MindManager
9 outweigh this.

Best regards
Nick Duffill

I'm hoping these issues can be worked through as part of blog series on MindManager Project Management. See MindManager Project Management Part 1 — Project Definition.

MindManager 9

ActivityOwner — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 01:09:50 +0000

Mindjet will be launching MindManager 9 on August 9th. I've played a bit with a pre-release copy along with beta upgrades to ResultsManager and GyroQ and the tools from this site (MindReader, Mark Task Complete, etc) seem to be working fine with it. Production releases of the Gyronix tools typically lag the release by a few days as they have to finalize their testing. Contact Nick if you want to test the betas.

OutLinker needs to point to the new type library, which you can do manually or just run the new installer for v9.

I'll be away from my computer until later in August, so if your system is working for you, you might want to hold off on the upgrade for a few weeks.