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

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

The main residual annoyance with v9 at this point is that once you add a start and due date to a task, you need to manually remove the date information if you want to go back to the point of not having a due date. The "ndd" mindreader keyword will not do it nor will the ResultsManager "edit activity" dialog. So I guess this means you need to finish your task instead of removing the due dates :-).

For my purposes I'm going to mark my project map done and archive it and close the 6 part series. The remaining issues are still summarized on the wiki. I have seen occasional "untagged items in your queue" messages associated with the latest version of GyroQ released with version 9 that I still need to track down in terms of root cause. Let me know if you are running into this.

Related posts:

1. MindManager 9 Task Date Issue Update (Part 5)
2. MindManager 9 Task Date Issue
3. Delay or Extend an Activity with MindReader

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

The goal of this series of posts is to both work through the MindManager 9 task date issue and to attempt to provide a working case study in how I use the tools on the side.

I decided to use a MindManager 9 Issues page on wiki.activityowner.com to enumerate current issues and status. Visit this page to see current status. I also decided to download a trial of MindManager 9 SP1 to better understand the issues. The primary issue I saw in testing MindReader was that its start date related activites using the q, m, or c tags had unpredictable results. As I worked through open tasks and completed them, Mark Task Complete logged them in a monthly "completed log" as well as in the reference branch of the project map:

While one may get the impression that MindJet may see the task date issue as a bit obscure and impacting a narrow portion of their user base, there do seem to be some general problems. Having looked into this a little further, it seems the regular MindManager user interface for setting task dates behaves in a non-ideal way. For example, if you have a task and want to set a start and due date, you might typically set the due date first. Lets say you add a task to "Complete 2010 Taxes", you would probably start by adding a due date of April 15th.

Then you would consider when you can start on this task and conclude the earliest you want to start is January 1st:

You would expect that you could leave the task info tab and be all set, but you discover you are left with:

This is due to MindManager 9 inserting and enforcing a default duration of 0 work days when you add date information. In order to fix this you need to go back and set the due date again. Now suppose you later decide that you want to defer starting on the task until all your paper work comes during January so you now set your start date to January 30th. Now the due date is pushed out to May 15th due to the assumption of a fixed duration of the task. This is an issue that potentially impacts all users.

MindReader Update
MindReader has been revised so that keywords that change start dates do not disturb due dates. I did this by changes all the code that set the start date to instead run a routine that memorizes the original due date, changes the start date, and then fixes the due date. Next Action Analysis has been updated to ignore tasks and projects with (start date=due date) when enumerating overdue tasks. There are some risks to this, but generally speaking hard deadline issues will show up on the left side of the map in any case. See the MindReader set up page to download and install both of these updates. You also need to set the MindManager calendar to include Saturdays and Sundays. This has been added to an updated MindManager Setup Tips page on the wiki.

The main unresolved item is that now the "nsd" and "ndd" keywords don't work for removing start dates and due dates. Once MindManager has a start date and a due date, you can't get rid of one individually. I imagine these keywords are sparsely used in any case so this is probably not a major issue. The trick to get them working would be to somehow figure out how to remove both the start and due date programatically and then add back the required information. Any programming insight would be appreciated on that strategy. I may just set this as a "Someday/Maybe" along with the MindManager 9 purchase.

In terms of next steps, I'll be waiting for your feedback:

I revised my "plan" for project to remove the "list" code in the parent topic and to mainly have "waiting fors" and "somedays" for next steps:

Related posts:

1. MindManager 9 Task Date Issue accommodated in ResultsManager 2.9.2/1 (Part 6)
2. MindManager 9 Task Date Issue
3. Mark Task Complete updated for MindManager 9

Related posts:

1. Refresh your ResultsManager Dashboard 60% Faster
2. Building a Custom ResultsManager Dashboard
3. Speed Reader

I left off at that point with a "Translate brainstorm into action plan @maps", which pops up in my daily action dashboard as a reminder to return to the project.

When I returned to the project the next evening, I sorted the tasks into a ResultsManager "Funnel Timeline":

The funnel timeline sets up a visual sequence of tasks. In contrast to typical mapping approaches which require a relationship link to set dependencies for tasks, ResultsManager also recognizes child tasks as precedent task as well as leveraging the "(list)" keyword that sets the task's precedent as the task above it.

With the map arranged in the manner above, my only next action is "translate brainstorm into project plan". Once that is marked complete, a new next action will activate being "Identify where to enumerate issues".

I also sorted some incomplete ideas to the "In-tray" for later processing:

This also included items added later as described in Part 3 (GyroQ Capture). At that time I decided that rather than dive into this project, the most efficient course of action was to "Wait for Mindjet to release SP1", so I placed that as the first item in the "List" of tasks.

Selecting this topic and processing it with the MindReader c tag, automatically marks it up appropriately:
.

Next I come back a month later when the service pack is release (having been reminded of it as it became overdue), and mark the task done with the d tag (mark task complete):

This stores the task completion in a monthly log map as well as in the reference section of the map:
.

"Mark Task Complete" is actually more convenient if you assign it to the topic context menu. In MindManager 8, this is done under "Tools, Macros, Organize Macros":

In MindManager 9, the tools menu and the underlying macro menu have disappeared?? It appears that you now need to add it to the quick launch toolbar manually in order to access it. I'll go down that rabbit hole here (diverting from planning focus) and add some screen shots so other uses are aware how to do it:

Unfortunately, MindManager 9 SP1 did not address the task issue. As I understand it, it did fix some bugs in the API related to task dates that might enable some of the issues to be worked around.

While more could be done in fleshing out a project plan, it seems the key next step is to enumerate issues in order to determine how feasible it is to work around them and how that might be done. In a collaborative corporate environment, a catalyst workspace map would be ideal for gathering information from multiple users. In our low-budget environment, a MindManager 9 Issues page on wiki.activityowner.com will need to suffice.

Feel free to add issues to the wiki page or comment below and I can add them. I have installed a MindManager 9 trial on my machine and will try to use it for day to day work to identify problems. Once the issues are identified, perhaps we can divide and conquer means to overcome them.

Related posts:

1. MindManager Project Management Part 2 – Brainstorming
2. MindManager Project Management Part 3 – GyroQ Capture
3. A different approach to marking tasks complete

I believe that certain creative/semi-ADD personality types are highly drawn to the use of GTD and MindManager for getting organized. The approaches and the tools can take a situation like this and help define a constructive and creative path forward when faced with a daunting problem. I thought it might be use this episode as a case study to share how I use the tools and along the way get reader input and collaboration on solutions.

This issue clearly isn't a "two minute action" and doesn't seem like something I can delegate, defer, or "trash", so it's a "project". If I was very busy at the moment and I was becoming aware on the issue via an OutLook email message, I would just use Outlinker on a email related to it and send the email into my GyroQ queue with an "isproject" keyword so that it would show up later in my dashboards as a project needing a next action to be defined. If the next action were clear I might include the first step as well using the << operator. In this case I know this is going to be a drawn out project that will require a dedicated map, so I'll toggle to the MindReader "nm" tag (new map tag) by hitting Control-Q to bring up GyroQ and then typing "nm" to toggle to the nm tag to set up a project map for it.

The first step is "To begin with the end in mind", and describe an ambitious desired outcome: "GTD tools working well with MindManager 9 next month"

I'll also tack on some quick markup using Mindreader keywords to set this as a priority 3 project I own in the "blog" area of my life:

"GTD tools working well with MindManager 9 next month [R:AO P3 blog]"

When I hit enter, the tag will first prompt me for where to save the map. I'll save it in my 2010\blog folder so that it will be automatically picked up by my map central link to that folder when I run dashboards.

The tag next prompts for what the next action is for the project. In this case I will take a convenient short cut and define the next step as "Brainstorm next steps and subprojects for MM9 compatibility".

Finally, the tag prompts as to whether I want to assign a keyword to the project map. Because this will likely be around for awhile and I anticipate needing to send ideas and email messages into the map, I'll assign a keyword that comes to mind "mm9project".

Now anything I send to MindManager with GyroQ or OutLinker will be directed to the in-tray of this map if I include the text mm9project, and the keyword will automatically be removed once processed.

In order to remind myself get back to this soon, I'll use the "m" tag to set the target date for the brainstorming as "next week" and I'm left with map below.

Coming Next: Part 2 — Brainstorming

Ideally we'd brainstorm together on a collaborative map using Catalyst, but I don't have an account set up that I could use, so if you have ideas on how to proceed, what needs to be done, subprojects, solutions, etc., just shout them out in comments below and I'll include in my brainstorming map. Remember 1st rule of brainstorming — don't judge others ideas.

See next entry in series: MindManager Project Management Part 2 — Brainstorming.

Related posts:

1. Import BaseCamp project information into MindManager
2. MindManager Project Management Part 4 — Project Planning
3. Set Relative Due Dates on a Project Map Template

If you are a regular user of ResultsManager, and particularly if you are regular user of MindReader, I would recommend staying with (or moving back to) V8 until this can be addressed by Mindjet or somehow worked around. For example the MindReader "ndd" (no due date) keyword no longer removes due dates. Changing a start or due date with the "m" tage will likely unintentionally shift the other date by a similar amount.

GTD-MindManager post by Nick Duffill:

A brief update for MindManager 7 & 8 users considering moving to MindManager 9,
and for MindManager 9 users who have ResultsManager, or who are using
MindManager for project management.

MindManager 9 has introduced some changes in the way that date information is
handled, which have implications that you should be aware of.

First, it seems that you cannot set a date which is not in the map calendar. So
if the default map calendar only shows Monday to Friday as working days, you
cannot set a date on a topic for a Saturday – it will change to the next working
day by magic. The map calendar must be modified before other days can be used.

"Duration" has changed from being the time that a task will take, to being the
difference in working days between start and end dates. The start date, duration
and due date are now locked to each other. If you change any one, then one of
the others will change to maintain their relationship (subject to the working
calendar rules too). This applies through the software interface as well as
through the user interface, which is proving problematic for ResultsManager use.
The dates that a topic gets might or might not be the ones you entered in the
ResultsManager edit dialogue, for the above reasons. ResultsManager does not
apply the same rules, and at present cannot discover what the rules are through
the API.

It is only possible to have topics with only one date on them under specific
conditions now. Generally, if a topic is assigned one date, then MindManager
will ensure that the other one is defined too. We know that a lot of MindManager
users only use the due date.

Lastly, if you change the duration of a task, the due date may get automatically
moved back to suit the duration. If you use due dates to keep track of stuff,
keep an eye on this behaviour. As mentioned, when you edit one of the dates, the
other might move without you noticing.

MindManager 9 has moved from being a fairly flexible system for keeping track of
dated tasks, to something that is more locked down and mainly designed to
support the built-in task management. ResultsManager depended on a flexible
platform, so some users are experiencing problems with the new regime. In
ResultsManager, the start date has always been the first date on which you
wanted to see an action come up in dashboards. This option has effectively gone,
and "start date" now means "the last day that a task can be started, if it is to
be finished on time".

If you have MindManager 8 and are using ResultsManager at present, and rely on
dated tasks in your maps, then it might be worth hanging on for date handling to
be addressed in a MindManager 9 service pack, unless the benefits of MindManager
9 outweigh this.

Best regards
Nick Duffill

I'm hoping these issues can be worked through as part of blog series on MindManager Project Management. See MindManager Project Management Part 1 — Project Definition.

Related posts:

1. MindManager 9 Task Date Issue accommodated in ResultsManager 2.9.2/1 (Part 6)
2. MindManager 9 Task Date Issue Update (Part 5)
3. Upcoming ResultsManager Webinar

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

You can watch the video of the webinar here.

It has also been added as a link on the wiki ResultsManager Resources page.

Related posts:

1. MindJet GyroQ Webinar
2. GyroQ MindReader Video Clip
3. GyroQ Webinar Replay

The new "ao_select_complete_and_mtc.mmbas" macro on in the mindmanager macro library and added by the new install will do as requested by Juan. You can manually set tasks complete (including repeating tasks) and it will process them in 1 shot. You just need to make sure you run it before you refresh the dashboard. Juan envisions having this macro run as part of the "Put it in front of the door" script.

If you take this approach, you want to avoid using the built-in ResultsManager "send changes" command before running this macro as it will permanently set repeating tasks complete if you set them 100% complete in the dashboard.

I figured I put up a quick post in case others wanted to test it or had ideas on how to best implement approach.

Related posts:

1. Put it in front of the door in 2010
2. Mark Task Complete Updated
3. Repeating Things Done

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?

There are a number of options and I wanted to solicit readers for input. I think the best way to do that is via the wiki.activityowner page on synchronization. I know several readers have researched this and come up with solutions that work for them.

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

Related posts:

1. Put it in front of the door in 2010
2. Synchronizing MindManager and OutLook
3. MindManager Project Management Part 1 – Definition

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.

Related posts:

1. OutLink to your OutLook Task List and other new options
2. Synchronize Outlook Task Lists with MindManager
3. Six Components of a GTD Review

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.

Related posts:

1. New MindReader features: the "m" tag and explicit context
2. OutLinker: A new tool for draining your Microsoft Outlook inbox
3. GTD and MindReader Q&A

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

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

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



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

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

which yields:


.

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

Related posts:

1. Generating a 1:1 meeting dashboard template with GyroQ
2. Creating a ResultsManager Dashboard Template
3. Software Updates

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).

Related posts:

1. OutLinker Lite (OutLinker for "list" people)
2. What are your next action verbs?
3. ButtonReader: 40 configurable buttons for MindReader

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

The system and tools have been pretty stable from a development point of view, but I recently noticed an opportunity to slightly improve the default ResultsManager daily action dashboard template that I thought I would share.

A key concept of GTD is translating your projects into next actions and organizing them by context. Often the value of context assignment is the journey rather than the end. If you think about the specific "how", "where", and "when" of the next action, you will force yourself to translate it into a more "physical" action than it otherwise might be.

One area I am trying to improve is better defining contexts that match my personal situation and style. In practice there have been only a few lists that I proactively seek out from a context point of view:

• "phone" (short for "weekday 9-5")
• "errands" (particularly important in this era of high gas prices)
• "contact X about" (very useful in combination with the the "relationship central" "I owe" and "waiting for"

The problem comes when a "contact about" next action also involves a context. For example…

• Take ActivityDaughter to store to shop for camp supplies (@errands, ActivityDaughter@)
• Call TravelAgent about summer vacation (@phone, TravelAgent@)
• Call mom for mothers day! (@phone, mom@)

The default ResultsManager Daily Action dashboard filters are set up to avoid you getting a long list of "No Context" next actions that are really "Contact X about" items, by filtering out next actions that involve "partners" from the "@" lists and channeling all these to the "contact…" branch. The result is an errand or call that has a partner doesn't show up on the errand or calls list.

This can be addressed by breaking the context-list branch into two such that one captures specific contexts (regardless of partner) and another captures "no partner/no context" items. I thought I would share the procedure for those interested in learning more about customizing dashboards.

Assuming you already have a daily action dashboard generated, you can quickly open the underlying template by clicking on "open template" on the ResultsManager menu:

If you expand the "Next Actions" branch you can see there are parallel "partner" filters, with the first excluding any "contact about" partners from the next action lists and the 2nd to enumerate them:

What we have done here is leverage a lightly documented filter parameter of "_undefined" and "NOT _undefined" to channel defined contexts to the first branch and then "No Context" items to the 2nd, which are further filtered by the original "Partner=N" filter.

Once you have adjusted your dashboard template, you can save it and start using it. If you would prefer to keep the original, you can change the dashboard name (under application/prepare/properties):

and then save it in the "My Dashboards" folder (or elsewhere if you choose):

If you have chosen to save the template as new, you need to "install template" from the ResultsManager menu while it is active to add it to your list of available dashboards:

If you have questions, just comment below. If you want to learn more about how to build a dashboard template from scratch, see the 7 steps on the wiki. If you don't want to go through the "do-it-yourself" exercise above, you can just download the template from the ResultsManager Dashboard Library.

Related posts:

1. Map2Table — Export your map branches to a linked web page table
2. Putting Things in Context
3. Focusing in on One Area of your Life

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