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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Per Ron's suggestion, the latest version of MindReader incorporates the ability to substitute a string of text for an "Alias". For example, if you frequently add someday maybe projects to your home repair map, you can define a "sdhr" alias which substitutes [isproject home repair someday] into your task so that it is [...]
One of MindReader's handy features is that it allows you to send tasks to specific maps based on a keyword. This allows you to avoid having to deal with a huge "Daily Capture Map" backlog when you want to sort out things related to specific project or area of responsibility.
Previously you needed to [...]
MindReader has always had the option of capturing a link or note along with a task. It did this by always taking a copy of the clipboard at the time of use and then adding it to the task as a note or link if the "note" or "link" keyword was in the string. [...]
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 [...]
I've used OutLinker to process a couple thousand email messages, and generally it is working well, but I recently noticed a couple capture maps that it had sent tasks to would crash MindManager if I brought certain topics into view. I discovered today that the problem is that these tasks happen to have [...]
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 [...]
MindReader turns one year old Sunday. The initial version ("Let GyroQ read your mind") only recognized 13 keywords. Its vocabulary has grown quite a bit over time. As MindReader grows up, there are a few keywords that need to be revised or added.
Projects and Sub-Projects
Earlier versions [...]
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. [...]
The latest version of OutLinker will let you select a set of upcoming Microsoft Outlook appointments and process them into MindManager so that ResultsManager can remind you to get prepared for them. The default next action is set to "Prepare for /meeting subject/" but can be modified. The deadline for the [...]
I noticed I began experiencing frequent "The application has been requested to terminate"-type crashes since upgrading to the SP1 release for MindManager 7 where as the original release was pretty stable. I was a bit worried this was due to MindReader or OutLinker, but realized this evening it is likely due [...]
I made a few big improvements to the OutLinker macro today.
It now stores its configuration settings in a notes folder so it is easier to upgrade/configure without editing code. It will also prompt user for the archive store/folder if it doesn’t find them.
For fun it counts the number of messages you have processed [...]
Outlinker is evolving quickly as it gets some use and the suggestions trickle in. I used it to successfully drain my Gmail inbox to zero for the first time using Microsoft Outlook this morning and made several edits along the way.
The macro now lets you select the messages you want to process [...]
Getting In to Empty: Getting "IN" to empty doesn't mean actually doing all the actions and projects you'v collected. It just means identifying each item and deciding what it is, what it means, and what you're going to do with it". (David Allen, Getting Things Done, Page 119).
David Allen stresses that [...]
When was the last time your inbox looked like this?
The holy grail of Getting Things Done (GTD) is routinely emptying your various Inboxes to zero and processing the context into projects and next actions. Tools like GyroQ can help you capture ideas and process your paper in-trays, but if you are working in the [...]
If you or your company use McAfee for virus scanning, then your GyroQ executable was likely automatically deleted yesterday afternoon due to a false-positive in their virus signatures for 32/YahLover.worm. The McAfee signature file was fixed by midnight, but you'll now have to reinstall GyroQ. See Gyronix Forum for [...]
I've noticed several other incompatibilities between the MindReader tags and GyroQ 1.9.4.9 in addition to the q issue described earlier. Gyronix will likely have this address shortly, but in the meantime you'll want to stay with 1.9.4.7 or below if you want to use MindReader. If you have already upgraded, you should [...]
One of my long-time "Someday/Maybe" tasks has been to draft a blog post on the MindReader Configuration Map. I figured I'd push this off my aging task list with a quick post this evening and follow up as needed.
Although MindReader is designed to work "out of the box", the mindreader.mmap file provides [...]
The latest version of GyroQ (1.9.4.9) leads to a glitch with the older version of the MindReader "q" tag that causes MindReader to mark up the centraltopic of the destination map instead of the new topic. To address this, just paste the packed text of the new q tag into the GyroQ dialog [...]
The latest version of MindReader will automatically add two new branches to your MindReader.mmap configuration file. The "delay" and "extend" branches add keyword phrases that will allow you to "delay" the start date and end date of a task or just "extend" the due date using the GyroQ "m" tag.
For example, if you [...]
In my ongoing quest to stake claims on as many single letter GyroQ tag names as possible, I've added the following three new tags to MindReader:
"a" inserts a task "after" the selected task (inserts a parent task)
"b" inserts a task "before" the selected task (adds a child task)
"p" inserts a task in "parallel" with [...]
One of the central themes of GTD is learning to recognize when a task on your to-do list is not really the "next action". David Allen typically points out that "Get New tires" needs to be preceded by "make appointment for tire replacement" and that preceded by "find phone number for garage".
Mal [...]
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