Juan has been collecting on his 2008 Next Action Analysis Contest prize with some macro requests. This weekend he asked for a MindManager macro that could take a ResultsManager dashboard with tasks that had been manually set to 100% complete (not processed with the "d" tag or "mark task complete" macro) and process them [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
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. [...]
…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 [...]
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 : [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
While I haven't been at 10.0 level for awhile, I've been happily Getting Things Done (GTD) using MindManager, ResultsManager, GyroQ along with the Outlinker, MindReader, Next Action Analysis, and Mark Task Complete macros. In general I've found running the NAA script on the daily action dashboard points me at the right widgets to be crank [...]
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 [...]
The Next Action Analysis macro has been updated to log your scores into comma delimited notes on a mindmanager log map each time you run it on your ResultsManager daily action dashboard. The central topic note contains the date/time stamp, the overall score, and each dimension's score. The branches contain tables with the [...]
Chuck Brown posted some questions on GTD and MindReader as a comment on AO-Pack blog entry. I thought answering via a post would make sense as it provides some elbow room and an opportunity for others to chime in.
… I understand that GTD is not a set of absolute rules, but tools to [...]
Back on New Year's day I proposed Five Metrics for assessing the state of your GTD system. The idea was to assess the Freshness, Focus, Feasibility, Foresight, and Finishing (5F's) of your current next actions and combine these into an overall score.
The Next Action Analysis macro calculates and sorts these metrics [...]
If you are using OutLinker you may have achieved Inbox Zero for the first time in awhile. Don't stop there.
While your inbox contains a mixture of spam, bulk mail, info-only cc's, and perhaps 10% actionable information, your "Sent Items" will tend to have a much more concentrated set of …
commitments [...]
The Next Action Analysis tool's report has evolved quite a bit over the last two weeks (see picture below) since the initial post (5 metrics for assessing your GTD System).
Here is a summary of the changes:
Added more targeted recommendations for the specific metrics with the most room for improvement [...]
[Editor's Note: Jose Miguel is a the MindReader power user and has driven the development of many of its features. In this guest post, he describes how he came to use the tool and how he uses it day to day. A Spanish version of his post is also available. ]
Until [...]
[Nota del editor: José Miguel es el poder MindReader usuario y ha impulsado el desarrollo de muchas de sus características. En este puesto de invitado, él describe cómo llegó a utilizar la herramienta y la forma en que lo usa día a día.
Una versión en Inglés está también disponible]
Hasta que descubrí
2007 was a year we largely focused on improved capturing and staging of tasks with tools like MindReader, Mark Task Complete, and OutlLinker. Perhaps 2008 can focus on improved weekly review and action? To kick it off and to provide some group moral support for getting things done, I'd like to propose [...]
I stood by the side of the road a few weeks ago waiting for AAA to show up to change my flat tire. In my PDA I had "Identify day I can get to dealer to replace balding tires" on to do list, where it had sat for several weeks. Here I am [...]
The latest version of OutLinker will let you select a set of upcoming Microsoft Outlook appointments and process them into MindManager so that ResultsManager can remind you to get prepared for them. The default next action is set to "Prepare for /meeting subject/" but can be modified. The deadline for the [...]
I noticed I began experiencing frequent "The application has been requested to terminate"-type crashes since upgrading to the SP1 release for MindManager 7 where as the original release was pretty stable. I was a bit worried this was due to MindReader or OutLinker, but realized this evening it is likely due [...]
I made a few big improvements to the OutLinker macro today.
It now stores its configuration settings in a notes folder so it is easier to upgrade/configure without editing code. It will also prompt user for the archive store/folder if it doesn’t find them.
For fun it counts the number of messages you have processed [...]
Outlinker is evolving quickly as it gets some use and the suggestions trickle in. I used it to successfully drain my Gmail inbox to zero for the first time using Microsoft Outlook this morning and made several edits along the way.
The macro now lets you select the messages you want to process [...]
Getting In to Empty: Getting "IN" to empty doesn't mean actually doing all the actions and projects you'v collected. It just means identifying each item and deciding what it is, what it means, and what you're going to do with it". (David Allen, Getting Things Done, Page 119).
David Allen stresses that [...]
When was the last time your inbox looked like this?
The holy grail of Getting Things Done (GTD) is routinely emptying your various Inboxes to zero and processing the context into projects and next actions. Tools like GyroQ can help you capture ideas and process your paper in-trays, but if you are working in the [...]
One of my long-time "Someday/Maybe" tasks has been to draft a blog post on the MindReader Configuration Map. I figured I'd push this off my aging task list with a quick post this evening and follow up as needed.
Although MindReader is designed to work "out of the box", the mindreader.mmap file provides [...]
My ResultsManager Daily Action dashboard has gotten a bit bloated over the past year with a subset of tasks and projects that are lingering. In theory a good GTD Weekly Review would help address these, but I've been playing with some alternative strategies to break the log jam.
I now use the GyroQ [...]
If you are using the "Mark and Log Task Done" macro (a.ka. "mtc" tag or mark-task-complete.mmbas), please download the updated version the macro from the wiki Macro Library.
The previous version of the macro acted on the currently selected tasks and got confused if you changed the selected task while it was running. [...]
The latest version of MindReader will automatically add two new branches to your MindReader.mmap configuration file. The "delay" and "extend" branches add keyword phrases that will allow you to "delay" the start date and end date of a task or just "extend" the due date using the GyroQ "m" tag.
For example, if you [...]
This week I got an inquiry from Sigurdur on whether there was a "Hot Action" ResultsManager dashboard available. I thought it would be useful to capture the process of creating one in a blog post to review the seven steps to creating a custom ResultsManager dashboard using MindManager 7.
Sigurdur's request was [...]
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