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

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

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

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

Related posts:

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

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:

1. 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.
2. OmniFocus organizes itself in realtime. There is no dashboard refresh step between when you change something and when it shows up in your lists.
3. 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).
4. 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.
5. OmniFocus has a very rapid "Search" feature that gets you to tasks and projects quickly.
6. You can easily convert tasks to projects or move tasks to a new project. Reorganizing contexts and folders is also easy.
7. Its repeating task capabilities are fairly good. Its not quite as advances as Mark Task Complete, but is more than adequate.
8. The program and data are native to the IPad. It doesn't suffer from web delays and does not require an internet connection.
9. As a stand-alone fully capable GTD application, $39.95 is not a bad deal.
10. 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.

1. 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?
2. It doesn't highlight "Projects needing next steps" like ResultsManager does, although timed periodic project review helps catch those.
3. It doesn't highlight "aging" tasks like Next Action Analysis.
4. While you can email individual tasks, you can't export or print a full to do list.
5. It doesn't provide the month-based archiving of completed tasks that Mark Task Complete provides.
6. Its not a team-oriented tool.
7. Typing speed is slow and there is no MindReader to facilitate mark up.
8. Its ability to prioritize is limited to whether something is flagged or not.
9. It doesn't include a time-required field
10. Attaching information to a task or project isn't that easy. You can send web links from Safari to OminFocus.
11. 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.

Related posts:

1. Omni2Map: Export OmniFocus to MindManager
2. Import BaseCamp project information into MindManager
3. RSS Feeds added for Yahoo MindManager and GTD_MindManager Groups

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

But here is the problem.

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

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

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

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

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

I declared GTD bankruptcy.

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

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

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

Related posts:

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

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.

Related posts:

1. ButtonReader: 40 configurable buttons for MindReader
2. Choosing the GyroQ Destination Map on the Fly
3. OutLinker Setup Gets Easier and New Attachment Feature

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

• http://mindreader2.com,
• http://marktaskcomplete.com
• http://map2excel.com,

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:

Related posts:

1. Any Interest in an ActivityOwner Tools Add-in for the Ribbon Toolbar?
2. Outlinker GUI
3. OutLinker Contexts

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.

Related posts:

1. Update on the ActivityOwner.Com MindManager Add-ins
2. Thank you
3. How to create a MindManager add-in with Microsoft Visual Studio in 7 easy steps

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best wishes for a successful 2011!

Related posts:

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

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

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

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

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

Related posts:

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

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.

Related posts:

1. ActivityOwner.Com turns 1.0
2. GyroQ Tag Usage Survey
3. Update on the ActivityOwner.Com MindManager Add-ins

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

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

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

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

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

Please comment below with questions/suggestions/problems.

Happy New Year,

AO

Related posts:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related posts:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All the best,

AO

Related posts:

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

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

Related posts:

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

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

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

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

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

And the winners of the 2008 GTD challenge….

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related posts:

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

Here is a summary of the changes:

1. Added more targeted recommendations for the specific metrics with the most room for improvement along with wiki links that provide GTD advice and ways to use MindReader to address problem. Please add your advice.
2. Metric subtopics now list the projects or actions that need to be addressed (e.g. activities needing context, projects needing actions, etc). I particularly like the "You have the most work to do in the X context". On those days where you have your choice of "contexts", this can tell you where to go. Having these lists close at hand can be a catalyst for review and action.
3. The scoring was changed so that absolute metrics (e.g. #tasks, #overdue, etc) are scored on an exponentially declining scale rather than with a minimum cutoff. For example, you get 10.0 if you have no overdue tasks, 5.0 if you have 2, 2.5 if you have 4, 1.25 if you have 6, etc. That means if you have 300 next actions and pair that down to 200, you will see your score improve a bit rather than stay flat at 0.0.
4. The 5F's reported is now sorted so the worst dimension is listed first.
5. A new metric measuring the percentage of the projects that have had prioritized was added.
6. You can exclude "map central"-like central topics from the projects list by assigning a category of "mc*" to them (deactivate after adding the category). Use cautiously as you don't want stray action items living under one of these excluded projects. This category is intended for the central topic of a map where the project(s) are not in the central topic.
7. A status summary is shown during report generation so you know the macro is moving along.
8. Three random "activities of the day" are now included at the bottom of the report. For those days where you just don't know where to start.

Here is a sample output of the macro:

You can compare this to the old version.

Phase I of the 2008 GTD Next Action Analysis Challenge is complete with seven entrants vying for "Most Improved" over the next two weeks. There is still two weeks left to get your entry in for top score and/or the random drawing. I can think of several ResultsManager Power Users who have yet to submit an entry (that is unless they are one of the anonymous entries :-).

If you are a ResultsManager dashboard user, I recommend you download the macro and give it a try whether you want to enter or not. It includes several snippets of code that were previously shared separately including Next Action Roulette, Fire the oldest 10% of your tasks, Are your Next Actions eligible for Retirement, and "percent complete". No other a software is required. I recommend assigning it to your topic context menu to make it easy to run on your Daily Action Dashboard.

Note that I use the wiki to transfer programs from my home to work PC. This helps me avoid lagging too much in getting updates on the site. The downside is that sometimes undiscovered bugs creep in for a few hours. This particular script has has more than its share and probably a few remain. If you run into a problem let me know or just circle back in a day or so for the corrected version.

READER SURVEY
From a scoring point of view, I've found the "Feasibility: Number of Next Actions" metric to be the most difficult to evaluate. I initially assigned "70" as a 10.0 score but I'm wondering if that is unrealistically low. How many actions should a 10.0 dashboard have? How many is too many as to constitute a red-flag 6.5? Ditto for projects — Please comment below.

The blog will be quiet for the next 2 weeks as I hunker down and vie for the top score prize!

Related posts:

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

1. Run the Next Action Analysis macro on your ResultsManager Daily Action dashboard sometime over the next 11 days.
2. Submit your NAA score in the comments below (anonymously if you choose) or by email to info at activityowner.com. The deadline is midnight your time Sunday January 13th.
3. Work on improving your dashboard's 5Fs as you do you weekly reviews and plan for 2008.
4. Submit a 2nd (hopefully improved) score before the end of the month.

To be eligible your dashboard must have at least 30 tasks in it.

The three contest winners will be the entries …

1. with the highest score
2. with the most improved score
3. chosen at random (only one reported score required)

As "prizes" I am offering to build each winner a (moderately-sized) custom ResultsManager dashboard, GyroQ tag, or MindManager macro to address a problem of their choosing. In the case of ties the winner will be chosen at random. Beware this commitment might linger on my someday/maybe list for a period of time :-).

If you are not a ResultsManager user, you are welcome calculate your submitted score manually based on the status of whatever paper or computer-based GTD system you are using. I will compile a statistical summary of the results. Along the way we can assess the applicability of scoring model.

Let the "transferring to someday/maybe lists" begin….

Related posts:

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

I had my "schedule tire replacement" next action on my list for many weeks and had elevated to priority 1 and given it deadlines during my weekly review, but it hadn't happened. Why? Among other things it was drown out by the 140+ other action items call for attention on any given day. It also probably had to do with lack of a "scheduling" context to focus on things like "find a time to do this".

In any case, it caused me to reflect on how effective my weekly reviews were. One downside of computer-based GTD systems is that they lack the tactile "copy onto a fresh page" review that a paper system provides.

During my reviews I try to get my in-trays emptied and push less urgent/important projects into the future or onto someday/maybe lists. The projects I have on my "committed" list all seem worthwhile and needing to be done at some point. Most have been reduce to a key next step to advance them. The problem is that all those "key next steps" still add up to much more than can be done in a 1-week horizon. The result is a "Hot Daily Action Dashboard" that Nick Duffill describes in his "Migrating from doing to reviewing" essay and as discussed by Mike W. in "Mind on Fire" and "Fighting Fire with Fire"

I decided I needed to review my "trusted system" in a way that get the daily action dashboard de-cluttered and under control. I thought it would be useful to propose a scorecard and some quantitative metrics to assess different attributes of the state of a GTD system. I came up with 5 dimensions to assess (5 F's):

Next Action Analysis Dimensions (5Fs)

In order to assess these dimensions, I identified several metrics such as "average task age", "number of next actions", "number of projects", etc. that could be calculated and combined for each dimension. These five metrics can then be combined to calculate an overall "NAA Score" on a 10.0 scale, with each dimension contributing 20% according to the table below. 100% is given for metrics at the "goal" level and declining amounts down to the "0% level"

Next Action Analysis Scorecard

[NOTE: The scoring metrics have been updated -- see wiki for updated table]

This approach can be used on any automated GTD system. I have implemented a macro (ao_next_action_analysis.mmbas) for analyzing a ResultsManager daily action dashboard. Sample output of the Next Action Analysis macro is shown below:

Note that the macro calculates the "percent complete" for your dashboard. Although not included in the Scorecard, this metric provides some incentive to keep your dashboard in place over the course of the day as you complete items rather than refreshing it constantly. This metric includes repeating items that have been marked complete with a red check icon.

Note that in additional to calculating several metrics, the report also enumerates lists of your oldest and youngest actions along with projects that are dated/undated. It also provides a "Random Activity of the Day" for those times where you just don't know where to start.

As we enter this Olympic year and the season of New year's resolutions and annual goal setting, I'm hoping this can provide some fun and focus to the weekly review process. Treat the NAA score as an Olympic event and go for 10.0.

Let me know what you think of the assessment metrics and give the macro a try if you are a ResultsManager user. More information on the tool is available on the Next Action Analysis page on the wiki.

Related posts:

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

I now use the GyroQ naaa tag each time I review my daily action dashboard to see what the oldest tags are. Note that this script now calculates a grand total age of your tasks (e.g. 120 30 day old tasks = 10 years!).

I try to force myself to address one of the oldest tags in some fashion or another by either…

• Doing it
• Adding a smaller more doable "next-action" to precede it or adding a relationship from an related task that needs to come first.
• Pushing it to the someday/maybe list (if its old, that may be its rightful home)
• Pushing its start date to the future
• Delegating it

To augment the approach above, I added a new "rnd" tag which picks a random next action from the next action list. You can install it by pasting the rnd packed text from the GyroQ tag Library. A random task is also added onto the report generated by naaa.

When you have a block of free time and are struggling to pick an activity to work on, run this and either do what it says or ask yourself why you don't want to do it and then do something to change the situation

Related posts:

1. Fire the oldest 10% of your tasks
2. Next Action Analysis Updated
3. Next Action Analysis 2008 GTD Challenge

Even if you are capturing and completing dozens of tasks each week, a couple of them will invariably be "amorphous blobs" or have something about them that leads you to not complete them quickly. Over time those tasks with a high "cringe factor" can slowly accumulate until several dozen of them are bloating your next-action lists and making your whole system ineffective.

There are several ways to address aging tasks:

1. Do them
2. Realize you've already done them
3. Delegate them (better late than never)
4. Identify a shorter/more concrete "physical" next action to precede them (try using the new MindReader i tag)
5. Move the start date out into the future to a time that makes sense.
6. Banish them to the someday/maybe list for a spell.

If you have a lot of "blob" tasks, it can be difficult to determine which to attack first. In order to help address this there is now a simple GyroQ "naaa" next-action-age-analysis tag, which you can install in one step by pasting the naaa tag packed text into the GyroQ dialog box and then run on your Daily Action Dashboard. This tag uses a subset of the code in the more extensive "next-action-verb-analysis" macro and reports its results right on the dashboard rather than in a separate map. Note that this only works well if a large percentage of your actions have start dates associated with them.

The naaa tag analyzes the the next actions in your Daily Action dashboard that have start dates and calculates their average age. It then looks for the oldest 10% of the task and adds them to a new branch on the dashboard. You can use the goal of lowering your "average age" metric as a way to motivate yourself to address your aging tasks.

Related posts:

1. Next Action Roulette
2. Are your next actions eligible for retirement?
3. Next Actions to Go (farther)

The new version of the macro calculates the average age of your next actions and enumerates those stragglers that are more than twice the average. This provides a way to force yourself to face up to those stagnant items and either…

1. do them
2. realize you've already done them
3. delegate them (better late than never)
4. devise a shorter/more concrete "physical" next action to precede them, or
5. banish them to the someday/maybe list for a spell.

I'm embarrassed to say, but my (in-need-of-weekly-review) list started out with an average age of 35 days. One particular "sharpen the saw" item buried in my list was over 6 months old even though it was in the 15 minute category. My average is dropping now as this tool provides a metric to measure progress. At some point we'll need to reset the start date when someday/maybe or parent tasks hit the next action list for execution, but for now that's probably not what is causing our averages to run high.

Feel free to comment with your "average" as well as your frequent verbs.

Related posts:

1. Fire the oldest 10% of your tasks
2. Next Action Analysis: 5 Metrics for Assessing your GTD System
3. Next Action Roulette