ActivityOwner.Com - Getting Things Done with MindManager » MindReader

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.

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.

José Miguel Bolívar on using ResultsManager and MindReader

ActivityOwner — Thu, 26 May 2011 00:16:25 +0000

José Miguel Bolívar, an early adopter of the Mindreader add-in, has a couple of recent blog entries on how he uses the tools for GTD at his optimoinfinito.com site. See MindReader: The brain of my GTD tool and ResultsManager: The body of my GTD tool along with a post tying things together on How to use GTD in practice.

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.

Comments open on MMDevX

ActivityOwner — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 13:02:17 +0000

You can now comment on add-ins on the MMDevX add-in site.

The site has entries for MindReader, Mark Task Complete, MyMapMacros, Map2Excel, and Outlinker.

New users might be encouraged if they see comments from other users on how these are working for other users.

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!

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:

Any Interest in an ActivityOwner Tools Add-in for the Ribbon Toolbar?

ActivityOwner — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 01:24:16 +0000

The blog has been relatively quiet for past several months so I'm not sure how many regular readers and tool users are swinging by the site or following by email, RSS, or twitter, but here is a question:

How much interest do you have in an add-in that adds an "ActivityOwner Tools" menu to the MindManager Ribbon Toolbar?

Based on some tips and a template provided on the MindManagerDev Yahoo Group by Nigel Goult of Olympic Limited on how to build a mindmanager add-in, I've been able to figure out how to create a prototype ActivityOwner Tools Add-in. Here is a screenshot of the menu:

You can install the current prototype to see how it works. The add-in assumes you have already installed the latest version of the existing setup program for the site's tools such as Map2Excel, MindReader, Mark Task Complete, and Next Action Analysis. Although several of these tools are oriented towards ResultsManager users, several have general use as well. The Ribbon provides a more convenient and expandable interface than the current method of using GyroQ or manually assigning macros to the topic context menu. As one example, there was discussion recently about how inaccessible the "save all maps" option is under the file menu. This was easy to add as a button here. It may also be less intimidating to new users in terms of the startup and learning curve.

Pursuing this beyond the 30-day trial I'm evaluating for Microsoft Visual Studio, will require an investment on my part, so I'd like to gauge interest first.

I've pursued this blog on a strictly non-for-profit basis over the years. I plan to keep it that way, but have always thought that perhaps at some point I might use the platform to raise some money for a charity. Unfortunately a cause has come along, in the form of a rare disease that is impacting a close family member. I'd like to raise some money to send to a university research center that is focused on this disease and that has been supportive of the family. To that end I've added a DONATE page to the site.

If enough interest shows up in the comments below, and particularly if it interest turns up in small paypal donations, I'll spring for the cost of Visual Studio and continue developing the ribbon add-in based on your needs and feedback.

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.

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.

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 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.

What is the Next Action for ActivityOwner.Com?

ActivityOwner — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 15:27:03 +0000

Reviewing my ResultsManager review dashboard this morning I found just a couple of projects related to my "blog" area and a long list of someday/maybes. I thought it might be useful to solicit reader guidance on where it would be most valuable for you to focus. Basically I'm wondering whether to focus on discussing, enhancing, or documenting MindReader, OutLinker, Mark Task Complete, Next Action Analysis, or Map2Excel or to focus on discussing my GTD workflow using these tools.

I would appreciate it if you could please click here to take a brief Survey Monkey survey or comment below.

I've recently cleaned up the layout of the site with a new site overview map and new "related post" links added to the entries. I hope it will help folks navigate around the posts on their topic of interest.

Send an OutLook Message to a New Project Map

ActivityOwner — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 04:32:49 +0000

Often times the first step in processing an email request is to define a dedicated project map to attack it. The latest version of OutLinker has a new send to "New Project" map option. This will create a new MindManager project map, attach the message, message text, and/or link, mark it up based on your outlinker settings and MindReader keywords, and prompt you for the next action.

This version also improves the display of the archive folder name and store. See screen shot of outlinker interface.

This function mimics the mindreader "nm" tag.

How to add a "next quarter" keyword to MindReader

ActivityOwner — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 13:38:53 +0000

I noticed this morning that MindReader didn't have a default keyword for setting the due date of a tast to be "next quarter". I thought it would be useful to put up a quick post on how to do this.

1. Open ao\mindreaderconfig.mmap (or just type "o mapmap").
2. Navigate to the "dates" main topic.
3. Add a topic with text "next quarter"
4. In the the notes add – dateadd("m",3,date)

Synchronize Outlook Task Lists with MindManager

ActivityOwner — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 02:03:52 +0000

I'm working on improving my Next Action Analysis (NAA) score this week and am faced with a "Project Needing Next Action" penalty for my "Create Macro to Sync up Dashboard to OutLook Task List" project. This was a reader requested script I finished up a few days ago. It looks like the next action it to mention it here, so here goes…

There is a new macro installed by the MindReader installer and also available on the wiki MindManager Macro Library that will do a basic syncronization of tasks between your ResultsManager Daily Action Dashboard in MindManager and your Microsoft Outlook task list.

The macro (ao_nextactions_to_outlook.mmbas) does the following:

Delete previosly transferred or exported items from oulook unless marked complete
If marked complete in outlook, run mark task complete on them in the daily action dashboard.
Transfer new items from Outlook into MindManager via MindReader.
Leave them behind as well but add "ao_transferred" into note to mark them as transferred
Export next actions from daily action dashboard to Outlook task list. Set basic attributes like context, due date, and priority.

Note that this is designed specifically for use with a ResultsManager Daily Action Dashboard.

This basic macro isn't smarter than described above, and will not detect changes in attributes (beyond completion) to sync back to MindManager. Attempting to do anything fancier than this is is buried deep on my GTD someday/maybe list.

I've never had much success in attempting to do this type of synchronization with other "built-in" methods. This provides some basic functionality that might be of use to those who need it.

If you want to have ready access to your next actions from outlook or your smart phone, this can be a good strategy. This also allows you to capture new actions in Outlook and feed them in. For 1-way transfers into MindManager from OutLook, OutLinker provides a more robust approach.

You can run the macro manually or incorporate into the "Put it in front of the door script" for overnight processing.

Next Action: "Waiting for reader feedback on Outlook Task Syncronization".

NAA score +0.1 :-).

Put it in front of the door in 2010

ActivityOwner — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:50:44 +0000

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 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,

How to Synchronize MindManager Maps Across Multiple Computers

ActivityOwner — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 01:49:26 +0000

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. I think the best way to do that is via the wiki.activityowner page on synchronization. I know several readers have researched this and come up with solutions that work for them.

Please edit in your thoughts and experiences on the wiki or comment below. Editing on the wiki is easy and just requires a quick account creation step that helps the site avoid spam.

Synchronizing MindManager and OutLook

ActivityOwner — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 11:06:10 +0000

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. How could I implement this?

Thank you in advance,

The "Put it in Front of the Door" script is a great way to keep your ResultsManager usage alive and well. I must admit it fell off my windows scheduler with an operating system upgrade awhile back and its time to bring it back.

I've been using MindManager and ResultsManager for over 4 years now and have never heard of anyone successfully using OutLook Task syncronization with both. I tried in my very early days and moved away from it quickly.

If you think about it, it is a quite complex series of operations to ask for. First ResultsManager harvests tasks out of dozens of maps and summarizes on a transient dashboard. Then MindManager needs to syncronize those rolled up task copies with an OutLook task list and figure out what is new/done/deleted in each. Then ResultsManager needs to push some of that completion information back to underlying maps. Too many things can go wrong.

In practice I use the OutLook Task List as as dedicated input flow to MindManager rather than something it populates or syncronizes with.

At work I send and receive about 120 message each day. I drag my sent items into my inbox so conversation threads are in same place. I use OutLinker to process these messages. If something seems like a short term item I push it to the task list using the "OutLinker Lite" functionality. For example if I expect a reply in a week or so or expect conversation to continue. Most items tend to be "waiting for X next week". OutLinker puts the task due date in and associated person in the "company" field. I will also sometimes capture into task list directly on blackberry. Every so often I run OutLinker on the task list and push lingering items to MindManager maps using MindReader. So in practice I work from my daily action dashboard and from my outlook task list. Not ideal but better than no list!

If you wanted to do the reverse and dump your full Next Action list to the OutLook task list, that would be relatively easy to do with a macro. You would just need to empty it each day before hand or perhaps the macro could look for duplicates and delete them. I just wouldn't want to pull back from this list.

At home what I do is use the "mna" (Mail Next Actions) GyroQ tag to send my next action lists to my gmail account as emails by context (see "You've got Mail…from ResultsManager". This gives me ready-access to my lists at work and on the road. I don't worry about checking them off remotely and sync-ing back.

Questions? Suggestions? Experiences?

Comment below.

Begin with the End in Mind

ActivityOwner — Fri, 01 May 2009 01:39:13 +0000

…or begin with the beginning (next action) in mind. It's your choice.

Whether you are following Habit 2 of the Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People or the "Next Action" mindset of Getting things done (GTD), is all about learning to identify and break down the sequence of individual steps 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.

Set Relative Due Dates on a Project Map Template

ActivityOwner — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 12:31:10 +0000

Andrew Wilcox recently posted a entry on his blog asking readers What is the missing link for MindManager? The killer add in you really want!. Johan posted a request for a project template with variable dates using a training engagement as an example:

A : close the list with participant :x – 12
B : make syllaby with names participants x- 10
C : confirm participants and give them iternary x -7
D : workshop : x
E : demand feedback x+2

This need has come up a few times in the context of enhancing Mark Task Complete by allowing it to recycle full projects instead of just tasks. While that is a bit challenging, doing the above from a fresh template is much more do-able as a Saturday morning crossword puzzle problem.

The easiest way to implement this was to use Johan's syntax X-2, X+10 as a task category for the desired topics. The X should be capitalized and there should be no spaces (e.g. use "X+2" not "x + 2"). You can do these markups using the MindReader m tag:

and then either save this map as a template or use "save as" from master map to create particular projects maps.

For a particular project, you would then run the new "ao_set_relative_date.mmbas" macro and enter the reference "X" date:

which yields:

.

The "next action" on this would probably be to have a syntax for setting start dates as well as a way to avoid false positives on categories that happen to have a capital X in them. You need to save the macro into a file from the wiki for now as it hasn't been rolled in to Setup program yet.

OutLinker Contexts

ActivityOwner — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 14:39:45 +0000

I thought it was done, but one last someday/maybe feature creeped into OutLinker last evening. OutLinker now has buttons to allow you to set the context for the task associated with the message quickly.

Note that the contexts assigned with the buttons (or by just putting the @context in the next action) are now 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).