ActivityOwner.Com - Getting Things Done with MindManager » OutLinker

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

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

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

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

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.

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:

OutLinker for Microsoft Outlook 2010

admin — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 02:31:57 +0000

See the activityowner wiki for some quick screen shots of steps needed to get OutLinker working with OutLook 2010. If you get stuck post a comment below and I'll help you out as soon as possible.

If you have gotten this working, feel free to contribute by editing the wiki to add some further narrative to the limited instructions.

MindManager 9

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

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

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

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

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.

OutLinker 2010

ActivityOwner — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 15:35:58 +0000

OutLinker received a major overhaul this weekend with several new features added and its interface cleaned up.

Option to pick from 5 archive folders
Fields for up to 9 contexts and 20 tags (use for context, area, category, destination keyword, etc)
Ability to process OutLook 2007 RSS folders
Ability to create appointments with message as attachment
Greatly improved ability to correctly delete Gmail IMAP messages from multiple accounts
Macro scripts to delete, archive, mindread sets of selected messages
Streamlined user interface

Give it a try (download).

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.

ThreadZoom

ActivityOwner — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 14:06:05 +0000

When you are faced with 100 messages in Microsoft OutLook, it will often be due to the presence of several conversations spread across the Inbox with various entries containing different replies and different attachments. Your first step in processing may be to thin the the list down to only the most recent messages in each branch and those containing key attachments.

OutLinker and OutLinker Lite now automatically detect conversation threads and allow you to navigate across them using the "nt" (next in thread) and "pt" (previous in thread) buttons. You can now also ThreadZoom(TM) your selection to focus on just the messages in the thread. You can "UnZoom" back to the full list as needed or wait for OutLinker to automatically "UnZoom" once you have whittled the thread down to one message.

OutLinker for MindManager 7

ActivityOwner — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 13:43:39 +0000

OutLinker has always worked with MindManager 7, but the recently implemented installer defaulted to using the MindManager 8 type library, so users would need to go in and set this reference in the visual basic editor themselves. There is now a dedicated installation program (download) for MindManager 7 users that eliminates that step.

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).

OutLinker

ActivityOwner — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 03:05:47 +0000

A picture is worth a thousand words. If you have been on the sidelines, give OutLinker a try. Make sure you grab the latest version of MindReader to take full advantage of it.

A big thanks to all the ~~victims~~ beta testers of the new form-based version developed over the last few months.

OutLinker Lite (OutLinker for "list" people)

ActivityOwner — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 13:42:16 +0000

OutLinker came into being as a means for creating MindManager hyperlinks to archived Microsoft Outlook messages. It faccilitates the Getting Things Done (GTD) process of empyting your inbox and can be optionally enhanced by GyroQ and MindReader.

The program was recently enhanced with the option to create Outlook tasks with message attachments and/or links. It occurred to me that this tool might be useful to non-MindManager users. OutLinker Lite is a new version of OutLinker that removes dependencies and options related to MindManager and focuses on creating OutLook tasks. As time goes on, more "MindReader" functionality can be added to mark up those tasks in a manner similar to what is done in MindReader.

If you are an OutLinker power user, you might have a friend give "OutLinker Lite" a try. If you are not a MindManager user, but are suffering from a full inbox and struggling to avoid exceeding your Exchange quota, this could be a useful tool for you.

20 ways to detect a bulk mail message

ActivityOwner — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 15:41:14 +0000

Before the days of OutLinker, I optimized my inbox by diverting "bulk mail" to a separate OutLook folder for reading "in bulk" at a later time rather than having them provide mid-day distraction or swelling an otherwise full inbox. In this case I'm referring to legitimate bulk mail from vendors I'm largely interested in hearing from, as well as those who have obtained my address.

In order to achieve this, I set up an OutLook rule which looked for key phrases in the body of the message. Legitimate businesses will almost always provide "opt out" links or instructions a condition of successfully making it past spam filters. The text associated with this opt-out option is diverse and continues to evolve. I suspect this is somewhat intentional as means of avoid crude spam filters or rule-based systems such as mine.

After several months of experimenting, I had come up with the list below as the phrases typically associated with bulk mail:

"unsubscribe"
"opt out"
"outopt"
"register now and save"
"register now & save"
"further emails"
"in the subject line"
"adjust your preferences"
"to stop receiving such messages from"
"to be removed from"
"address-book"
"email communication preferences"
"from out mailing list"
"prefer not to receive"
"if you no longer wish to receive"
"if you do not wish to receive"
"if you do not want to receive"
"excluded from this list"
"subscription"
"receive these messages"

If you have suggestions to improve the list above, please comment below…

The latest version of OutLinker now incorporates these rules and will automatically flag bulk messages as you read them and recommend you consider un-subscribing. Down the road perhaps other actions could be taken (sort to bottom of list, button to move to a "bulk" folder, etc.).

It is an open question whether you should risk exposing your address as active by un-subscribing. If you trust the messages is from a reputable vendor who doesn't want to deal with the wrath of unhappy customers, it is probably safe to unsubscribe.

If you take the approach of using OutLook rules to implement the strategy above, you want to be careful in setting up such a rule to exclude messages forwarded from "helpful" collegues (look for "fw:" in subject line) or that originate from your organization (look for domain name of sender). You will have occasional false positives, so you want to scan your bulk folder frequently.

Side note: This version of OutLinker also includes a version check button you can use to see if updates have been made since you last downloaded the program.

How long is a typical email message?

ActivityOwner — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 15:07:04 +0000

Awhile back an OutLinker user ran into trouble transferring a large Microsoft OutLook message into MindManager via GyroQ. We determined the shear size of the transfer was the problem. We don't know precisely how big is too big, but in order to minimize the risk of that happening, OutLinker now has an upper limit on the quantity of text transfered in that manner. Picking a reasonable value for that required some statistical analysis.

In order to come up with an answer, I found a large email archive and wrote a short macro that looped over its 15295 messages. The macro spit out the length of each message yielded the chart below:

This may not be a representative distribution of "typical" email messages and threads, but it was roughly consistent with a second work-based archive I analyzed. The average length of an email message was 3150 characters and with a median of 1304 characters. There were six over 100,000 characters and one over 200,000.

In both data sets, 98-99% of tof the messages were less than 20,000 characters, so that seemed like a reasonable upper limit to implement for transfers from OutLook to MindManager via GyroQ for now. If you try to transfer the body of a message larger than that limit, OutLinker will warn you and trunicate it down to 20K. You can avoid this limit by doing a direct transfer using "Send to Active Map" or "MindRead"

With the younger generation moving to txt messages and 140 character twitters, some day our kids will marvel that we used to write short novels in our email exchanges.

OutLinker Setup Gets Easier and New Attachment Feature

ActivityOwner — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 22:18:17 +0000

Outlinker has evolved quite a bit as I've gotten more familiar with the capabilities of VBA in Microsoft OutLook and gained the advantages that the installation program provides in making forms easier to deliver.

The latest release of OutLinker uses a form to set configuration options rather than the OutLook notes folder. The configuration information is now stored in the registry, which speeds up startup significantly and allows settings to be changed on the fly during the session (e.g. change archive folder for a set of messages).

You access this by hitting the "Options" button on the main form:

The archive folder can now be chosen by browsing to it by clicking on the button.
.

This change has enable the restriction on archive folders being at the root level to be removed. Now any folder in any location can be used. Usage statistics can now be viewed by clicking on the "Stats" button on the interface:

The other big change is that OutLinker can now attach a .msg file with the full outlook message (and its attachments) to a topic in a map in addition to providing a link to the archived message. This is a key feature if you want to use it on collaborative maps where links to your pst file are meaningless or confusing to your collegues. It also reduces the risk that your will misplace information if the link between your map and pst gets broken at some point. You need the latest release of MindReader for this feature to work for queued items. The "Send to Active Map" command will work out of the box.

The one other new feature is the addition of a "Relationship Map" button. I often direct items that are not associated with a specific project to a dedicated map for the individual I'm communicating with. I do that in MindReader by setting up a destination keyword for that map in the form of "namemap". I found I was doing this manually quite a bit with the form version of OutLinker. Now if you check the "m" checkbox in the "relation" section, a keyword will automatically be composed using the other person's email address name.

I'm hoping this is the last of the major OutLinker updates for awhile. If you have found installation to intimidating in the past, I think this may be the version for you. The setup form simplifies things quite a bit.

OutLink to your OutLook Task List and other new options

ActivityOwner — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 16:00:43 +0000

Several new options have trickled into the OutLinker GUI interface as it has gotten some use. These are available in the latest Beta download from the OutLinker Installation page.

If you review the screen shot above most are self explanatory, but here is some background:

There are four ways you can "send" the item you are processing:

TaskList: Lets be honest. You've got 300 items in your ResultsManager daily action list and you are afraid to send urgent/important items into the abyss. The "TaskList" button will let you move the selected email message to the archive and create a new task list item with an OutLook hyperlink to it. This allows you to use the OutLook task list as a near term action list. If you later run OutLinker on a task created in this way, it and send it to MindManager, it will create a link to the message (rather than the task).
The ability to create OutLook tasks with links to messages has general use as well. In particular this opens up the opportunity for people to use OutLinker even if they don't have MindManager. Note that OutLinker already had the ability to function without ResultsManager or GyroQ as well. A version will need to be created that doesn't complain about lack of MindManager Type Library references. As time goes on, more "MindReader" like parsing can be added that mark up the OutLook task. Note that the Input box keyword for using this feature is s2tl.
This is a new feature so tread carefully.
MindRead: Send to MindManager immediately with destination determined by MindReader
Send to Actve Map: Sends immediately to the subtopic of the currently selected topic. T~~his button won't be shown if MindManager is not open.~~ . Outlinker will open MindManager and send to a new map if it is not currently open.
Queue: Add to GyroQ queue to be sent to MindManager later. This will be shown as "Send" if you don't have usegyroq option set.

New Features on Interface

Average Processing Time: Are you moving along at "2 minute action" pace? The form now keeps a running average time on task. It resets when you "Exit" from the form. This will need some tweaking to figure out when it should be running and reset.
Delegate: You can now delegate to addressee or sender. The "addressee" check box automatically get set if you are processing a message you have sent rather than received. The other persons name is now shown in the form rather than cryptic olwf, olio, etc keywords.
Done: If a task is complete but you want to log it in MindManager, you can check the "done" box.

Misc. Notes
Below is a summary of some items from discussion of previous release as well as a few lurking "Mention this on the blog" items I wanted to check off:

Note that OutLinker assumes you have MindManager 8. If you are using 6 or 7, you will have to go into the OutLook macro editor and check off the appropriate type library when it complains.
If you use other custom OutLook macros, manually install the macro and forms from the wiki rather than using the setup program.
If you prefer the old "Input Box" interface, which retains focus and is better for keyboard processing, you can toggle back and forth using the "oltf" command (entered by itself).
Note that if you put in the keyword "aey" in MindReader or OutLinker, it will pop up the ResultsManager edit dialog after MindReader finishes so you can add additional mark up.
OutLinker will transfer OutLook Categories into MindManager
You might want to turn off the "putmsginnote" option if you frequently process messages with a large body of text as this will sometimes cause GyroQ to fail during the transfer. It will also bulk up the size of your frequently used maps.
If GyroQ does ever fail during transfer, edit the "My Maps\GyroQ\GyroActivator-Queue.txt file with a text editor and edit out the offending "{Queue:…" block in order to resend the queue and get at the items that went into queue after it.

Anyone care to volunteer to take the action item of editing all the above into the wiki documentation?

Outlinker GUI

ActivityOwner — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 03:38:09 +0000

The OutLinker script for processing your Microsoft Outlook inbox into GTD next actions and MindManager links now has the default option of using a form instead of an input box as a user interface:

The installation program for the software is on the wiki.

This means you can now:

Interact with messages directly while program is running (e.g. scroll)
Use mouse to navigate and choose options in addition to using command line (a,s,p, etc still work)
Use additional check boxes and option buttons to set target date, etc (see image)
Send messages to the currently open map/selected topic using the "send now" check box (s2am command).
Open attachments — either directly or using the "open attachment" button (o command)

In particular this now makes it easy to set the transferred task as being owed to or form the sender or to be put on a "contact about" list for them (previously using olwf, olio, olca keywords at beginning of task).

The send now command can be handy if you want to keep your short-term items on a current map to work on during the day rather than send into your longer term GyroQ queue.

Note that the form communicates back to the main OutLinker program via the text box codes familiar to earlier users. The start up of the program is also about 2x faster now after some code optimization.

OutLinker Installer Now Available

ActivityOwner — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 22:22:47 +0000

OutLinker now has a user-friendly installation program (outlinker.exe) similar to the one developed for MindReader. This should enable you to get rolling with the software without fiddling with macro code or references as well as to update existing installations with latest code. Visit the OutLinker for download instructions.

An installation program was one of the main requests coming out of the OutLinker Survey. The survey suggested that while OutLinker has a very small user base (perhaps just a couple of dozen users) , those users are seeing large benefits with the typical user processing about 5000 email messages over the past several months with it.

Hopefully this new installation program will enable a broader range of users to give the program a try. Note that although the defaults assume you are using the program with GyroQ and MindReader, you can configure it for use without these and just transfer items directly to MindManager. The simple hyperlinks generated by this program are cleaner and more compact that those created by MindManager's built in tools.

The latest version of the program has a trimmed down interface (above) that is placed in the top right of the screen so that the message you are processing can be more easily read. If you need to interact with the message (e.g. to scroll), just use the "i" command. At the bottom of the interface are statistics about how many messages you have processed today, how many are left in the current selection, and how long it is taking you to move through them. The program now also keeps track of how many times you skip each message.

Ideally you practice good GTD and only handle things once, but if you do find yourself falling off the GTD wagon and skipping over messages, this field can be handy. You can add this field to your inbox column headings by clicking right on the heading, choosing "Field Chooser" and the selecting "user defined fields in inbox". If your inbox is swamped, you can identify the messages you haven't given a 1st pass review to as well as the ones that you are dancing around by sorting on this field. Note that you can bypass the GyroQ queue and move message directly to active maps using the "s2am" keyword. This can be handy when are working with groups of messages on a particular topic that you are trying to sort out.

MindReader 2.0

ActivityOwner — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 02:16:53 +0000

After a few weeks of shakedown and clean-up, it seems the setup.exe program created to install MindReader, Mark Task Complete, and Next Action Analysis and their associated Gyronix GyroQ tags is just about ready for prime time.

If you are a MindManager user and have wanted to give these tools a try in the 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.

OutLinker hits the 1 year mark — take the survey

ActivityOwner — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 02:06:07 +0000

I just noticed that today (December 3rd) is OutLinker's 1 year anniversary, at least by its current name. It evolved from a set of macros that Mike over at nodeglue.com had created.

It has changed my work practices significantly, with an empty inbox at home and work becoming more the norm than the previous rare exception. It has also significantly increased the ease in which I could make ResultsManager a "100% of my stuff" GTD system.

I am at 18880 processed at work and 7796 at work for a total of 26,676 messages processed over the past year. That works out to just over 100 messages per work day, which is probably not as atypical as it sounds for the average knowledge worker.

I have no idea to what extent OutLinker has been adopted by others. It could just be a dozen or so of you for all I know. The prospect of figuring out how to paste the macro text into Outlook and adding references probably intimidates all but the most desperate. It took me quite awhile to venture into trying out Mike's code.

So maybe you can help me out with estimating the user base as well as have some fun seeing how much it is being used. I've been thinking about using SurveyMonkey to get reader feedback and figured this is as good a place to start as any. Whether you are an outlinker user or not, please visit the link below and answer a few quick questions.

Click Here to take survey

It includes questions on messages processed, so we can add up the total number of messages that OutLinker has dispatched. I'll let this run for the next 10 days and then summarize the results.

Six Components of a GTD Review

ActivityOwner — Thu, 01 May 2008 02:46:51 +0000

Things have gotten a bit quiet in "gyrospace" lately. Perhaps this is because folks have given up on their new year's resolutions or moved on to other tools. I'm hoping it is because we are all successfully focusing on Getting Things Done rather than tinkering with our systems and surfing blogs.

After 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,

OutLinker 2.01

ActivityOwner — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:29:24 +0000

The 31Mar08 version of OutLinker I posted about yesterday had a last minute bug introduced. See comments on previous post for instructions to fixing your queue if needed. The latest version (1Apr08) is a roll-back that should work better. My apologies.