ActivityOwner.Com - Getting Things Done with MindManager, ResultsManager, and GyroQ » Uncategorized

forum.activityowner.com returns

ActivityOwner — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 01:38:33 +0000

Back in 2007 I briefly experimented with setting up a set of discussion forums to work along side the wiki and the blog. At the time it seemed like spam was going to get out of hand, and there were better alternatives, so I turned it off. Since that time the activity levels on the GTD-MindManager Yahoo group and the Gyronix forum has diminished and I've often see readers unsure of where to ask a question and/or wanting to start a discussion, so I thought I'd make a forum available.

Have a question/suggestion/problem — give it a try: http://forum.activityowner.com

Auto OutLinker

ActivityOwner — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 02:24:31 +0000

Sometimes when faced with an inbox full of somewhat related Microsoft Outlook messages, the easiest way to proceed is to just process them all into MindManager with OutLinker and then sort them out. Steping through the messages 1 by 1 to accomplish this can be time consuming.

The latest version of OutLinker has a new routine (AutoOutLinker) that you can place on your toolbar. If you select a set of messages and process them with this command, they will be sent to the selected topic in the active map.

You can install the latest version by visiting the download page. Once you have installed the program, you can add the command to your toolbar by first running the Outlinker program (to enable macros) and then selecting "Tools, Customize, Macros" and dragging the command up to your toolbar. There are also commands for directly deleting or archiving a large set of messages.

Updated "New Project Map" (NM) tag posted

ActivityOwner — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 21:19:34 +0000

A MindReader power user suggested by email…

Is it possible to add an extension to the nm tag to prompt to automatically run the k tag i.e. do you want to create a new link to a destination map – y/n?

I use nm quite a lot but often forget to go and create a new keyword as the next step and so waste my time always having to check to see if I have create a keyword before I can use it….

This is a great suggestion and has been implemented. The new version is implemented as a macro that can be run directly or using the nm GyroQ tag.

The nm tag sets up a basic ResultsManager project map in MindManager with an in-tray, reference branch, and plan branch. Destination keywords are very useful for maps you plan to utilize frequently. Once set, you can use the "o" tag to quickly open the map based on a keyword, the "s" tag to send topics from from one map to its intray, or the "q" tag to queue items in GyroQ to be sent to its in-tray.

The easiest way to install the new tag is to download and run the latest version of the . Make sure you have it overwrite your GyroQ.ini file so you get both the macro and the new tag.

You can also download the ao_new_project_map.mmbas macro from the MindManager macro library into your "My Maps\AO" directory and paste the packed text for the nm tag into GyroQ.

Simplify your ResultsManager Map Central Strategy for 2010

admin — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 20:34:08 +0000

The typical approach to utilizing ResultsManager to harvest project and next action information from MindManager maps is to set up a central map that links out to each map of interest or to a set of "area" map centrals which links to project maps.

While this approach does allow you to navigate down to particular maps from the map central, it adds a fair amount of activation energy for adding a project map and often will lead you to just clutter central maps with several projects. In my experience, giving a project "elbow room" of its own map will often catalyze the process of Getting Things Done (GTD).

Did you know that instead of linking out to individual maps from your map central, you can also organize your maps by just link to a folder (e.g. "My Maps\2010") and ResultsManager will automatically process all the maps in that folder? Using the approach you can add one folder and one link for 2010 today, and then just use the GyroQ "nm" tag to quickly create new project maps as projects arise. I used this approach in 2009 and found it much easier than detailed map by map links.

ResultsManager In-trays

ActivityOwner — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 02:35:55 +0000

Stefan asked a question on the Yahoo GTD MindManager group:

Hi all,

I am using the In-tray dashboard from Gyronix' ResultManager and AOs
"In-Tray.mmbas" macro to create a map that shows a) the actions in the in trays
and b) the links to the In-Trays. This way it is easy to have direct access to
the relevant in-trays / maps and work on it during weekly review.

I now found out, that the tasks in the in-tray are not selected by this dasboard
if the already have a category assigned. The result is that topics in the in
tray and the in-tray topic itself are not shown if all the topics in the in-tray
have a category (which can easily happen when you use OutLinker and have the
possibility to easily define categories when emptying your Outlook inbox).

I have no idea on how to change the in-tray categories (in-tray* and process) or
the dashboard filter to get all topics of the in-tray in the dashboard.

Any ideas?

Many thanks and best regards

Stefan

I got some clarifications from Stefan by email to better answer this question. He is running the "ao_full_intray_projects" macro from the activityowner macro library on a modified version of the Gyronix "Sweep and Review" dashboard. The Sweep and Review dashboard looks for activities with the category "process" as an indication of them being children of an in-tray topic.

The problem is that a topic only inherits the "process" category if it doesn't have its own category assignments. In-tray items (pre-mindreader) would typically not have markup so it normally wouldn't be an issue.

Nick Dufill has a good summary of inheritance properties on his beyond mindmapping website.

I don't think there is a way to "fix" the sweep and review dashboard to get around this. Here is how I would approach getting this type of information:

First, I highly recommend making your in-trays "sub-projects" rather than activities. The main reason for this is that it allows any project lacking a next action (but having an in-tray) to show up on dashboards as a project needs a next step. The filter that looks for projects lacking next actions isn't smart enough to realize the in-tray is not actually a next action.

If you have all your in-trays as sub-projects, then it would be possible to write a macro on the daily action dashboard that looks for call-out topics attached to next actions that are in-trays. The Next Action Analysis macro does in order to penalize for letting in-trays get too full or old.

Move MindManager map attachments to disk and replace with hyperlinks

ActivityOwner — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 01:21:22 +0000

I got a request to add a feature to OutLinker to archive OutLook messages to disk rather than to a pst file. Rather than add that complexity to OutLinker, I found it easier and potentially more generally useful to create a macro that moves the 1st attachment present in selected MindManager topics to disk and replaces with hyperlinks. The default location is an "attachments" subfolder in the directory the map resides in.

This is not part of the setup program yet, so in order to try it you need to copy the macro code from the wiki and paste it into "My Maps\AO\ao_attachment2link.mmbas". You can run this macro directly after selecting topics or launch it with GyroQ using the new "a2l" tag (packed text).

Users can now send outlook messages to maps by checking the "attachment" option in OutLinker and then thin out maps later using the code above. This is hot off the press so proceed with caution and report any bugs.

Elizabeth Gilbert on Creativity

ActivityOwner — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 01:04:07 +0000

Elizabeth Gilbert recently gave a talk at TED on "A Different Way to Think about Creative Genius". The subject of her talk is the stress and fear creative people experience in trying to meet the high expectations they set for themselves. While she jokes about these issues not impacting people in "non-creative" fields like engineering, her introduction reminds me of the section in Getting Things Done alluding to people's tendency to procrastinate being proportional to their ability to envision negative outcomes.

Ironically, in developing and sharing a framework on how she might deal the fact that her greatest success may be behind her in the form of previous book "Eat, Pray, Love", she perhaps achieves a greater one. Procrastinate a bit and hear what she has to say…

My favorite quote – "I would please like the record to show today that I showed up today for my part of the job"

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 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.

Communication Skills

ActivityOwner — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 02:00:40 +0000

I couldn't resist this edit to the daily Dilbert:

How to Synchronize MindManager Maps Across Multiple Computers

GyroQ Tag Usage Survey Results

ActivityOwner — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 04:36:00 +0000

Thanks to all who responded to the GyroQ Tag Usage Survey. We had 29 respondents and the results were very useful. The results are included below as screen shots.

The m tag was the clear winner with more than 60% using it often or all the time, followed by the c and q tags. The a, b, and p scored higher than I expected given how recently they were added. "d" won as the consensus name for the "mark task complete" tag.

Very few people were using their own custom tags and the default Gyronix tags were less frequently used by the power users responding to the survey.

I was a bit suprised how low "k" ranked. That is an important tag for setting up destination link keywords. I also am a big fan of the "clo" tag (perhaps because I open so many maps with k tag created keywords).

While there was interest in several of the less frequently used tags, I was happy to see they were not in broad use and will not inconvenience folks if they are not in the main gyroq.ini file. This has allowed the default "GyroQ.ini" file to be cleaned up and freed up a few empty tags for general use.

What are your reactions to the results? Comment below…

MindReader 2
Hans and I along with several beta testers have been working on creating a "Setup.Exe" installer that automatically installs mindreader, mark task complete, next action analysis and other tools from the site. Hans has done a great job figuring out how to use Inno Setup to create a generic installer script that I can load the "AO Tools" content into.

As part of that project I've rewritten MindReader significantly to enable the configuration map and main macros to be moved out of the root "My Maps" directory. Doing this in a way that successfully migrates legacy users is quite a challenge but its close to ready for prime time. I've been referring to this version as "MindReader 2" for lack of a better name. The macros now also have the capability to check the wiki for new versions on a periodic basis and will eventually direct you back to the installer page.

The new code and tags have been uploaded to the wiki this week. The new tags point to the new macro locations, so you need to upgrade everything together. If you are interested in beta testing the setup.exe installer, visit the setup page. If you system is working well and you don't want it disrupted, hold off on upgrading tags or macros from the wiki for a few weeks until the dust settles.

GyroQ Tag Usage Survey

ActivityOwner — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 16:47:30 +0000

The default GyroQ tag set distributed with AO-Tools.zip is full. There are a few inadvertent duplicates in it that can be removed, but otherwise some choices need to be made as to which to retain in the tag set in future installations so that users have some spare space to add other tags.

It would be very helpful if you could fill out the surveymonkey survey below and indicate which tags you use and how often. We are working on an installation program that should make installation much easier in future and this will factor into that project (more on this soon).

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=ujgtZLy57u_2bo_2ftsU3VXAxQ_3d_3d

The quantity of responses will also help me gauge how many active users are out there so please participate if you want to see tools continue to grow and be maintained. If you haven't done so yet, please also take the Outlinker survey in earlier post. The participation is a bit sparse thus far.

If you have comments, questions, or suggestions, please post a comment below.

Happy New Year,

New Blogs

ActivityOwner — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 02:07:31 +0000

Gyronix Chief Rhino Nik Tipler has joined the blogosphere at www.chiefrhino.com. One of his early posts is offering a special pre-launch deal on GyroQ 2.

Jose Miguel Bolivar, an ActivityOwner.com power user who guest blogged on how he uses MindReader in practice back in January, has established a leading Spanish language blog on GTD called Optima Infinito. There is a handy Google translate widget on the sidebar that will let you read the blog in the language of your choice.

Wiki Authors/Editors Wanted

ActivityOwner — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 22:19:50 +0000

Activity in the MindJet/Gyronix space has been heating up recently with the introduction of MindManager 8 along with impending new releases of GyroQ, ResultsManager, and DecisionMill.

For the past year and a half I have been using wiki.activityowner.com as a convenient way to share MindManager macros, ResultsManager dashboard templates, and GyroQ tags. While I prefer to limit all the macro/tag code on the site to items I've uploaded so that I can keep it consistent and supportable, it would be great if more users/readers could contribute to improving the documentation around installing and using the tools for getting things done (GTD). While several readers routinely contribute to the wiki, I realized I had never posted directly with a request for help.

I encourage you to create an account and start editing. Don't worry if you are not an expert in wiki markup language — just get the updated text in and others can always improve formatting.

Some basic tips:

To create a new page just edit an existing page and add [[newpagename]] into the text. Once you save it, the new page link will appear in red and you can add content to it by clicking on it.
To create a new section, just enclose in ==New Section Name==
To add a bulleted or numbered list, preceed items with *or #

You can learn about markup hitting clicking on the "view source" tab on existing pages when you are not logged in.

Mark Tasks Complete Faster

ActivityOwner — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 19:54:04 +0000

The Mark Task Complete macro evolved incrementally from a short GyroQ tag into a fairly involved macro and got inefficient along the way. The new version is streamlined and should perform quite a bit faster. If you are a regular user of this GTD tool, I'd recommend downloading it. This version also defaults to storing completed tasks underneath each topic instead of in a floating topic. Let me know if you encounter any bugs.

One other way to speed things up if you are a long time user is to clean up your completedlog.mmap file by moving all the branches to a separate mindmanager map. Frequently used maps may also have a lot of tasks accumulated in the floating completed topics, although speed issues associated with that are addressed with the move to project-based storage.

Gyronix has made great progress in their early beta versions getting GyroQ and ResultsManager adapted to MindManager version 8 and I imagine they will be broadly available (at least in beta form) soon.

I've been keeping notes on how to migrate use of tools from this site on the wiki Migrating to MindManager Version 8 page.

Migrating to MindManager 8

ActivityOwner — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 00:55:10 +0000

See the "Migrating to MindManager 8" page on the wiki for information on getting MindReader and other tools from the site running under version 8.

Software Updates

ActivityOwner — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:26:55 +0000

Although the activityowner.com blog has been quiet for a few months (due to the tools working too well for the author :-), several software updates have made their way onto the wiki. I wanted to post a quick note so that long-time users were aware of what has become available.

All these changes have been rolled into AO-Pack, except for the outlinker updates.

MindReader

Make sure you are using GyroQ 1.9.4.7. MindReader does not work with 1.9.4.9.
You can automatically remove markup like "next week" or "isproject" (and avoid need to put in brackets), by toggling to the "m" tag and typing "setoption:autodelete:1"
There is a new "nm" tag in the tag library that generates reads a string to create a new project map with in-tray, reference, and plan branches and markup based on the provided string.
MindJet connect compatibility added

Mark Task Complete

The macro now "chirps" when it completes its work so it is easier to avoid causing problems by moving on to other activities before it is done.
The macro now defaults to the new option of storing completed tasks in a branch under the parent project rather than to a floating "complete" topic.
MindJet connect compatibility added.

Next Action Analysis

Overdue projects are now listed separately and overdue tasks inheriting their status from the project are left off the "past target" list. This aspect still needs some tweaking, but it is generally much easier to adjust the project dates than deal with the potentially long list of tasks that are just inheriting their status.
The macro now automatically brings up an advice page for your weakest score attribute. Please add to the advice on the page if you have insights on how to improve.

Outlinker

Outlinker has new commands to reply to and save messages (rs, ras).
A "s2am" keyword is now recognized in outlinker that lets you send a task with link to current message immediately to the active map instead of to the GyroQ queue. This can be useful if you are working with a set of messages related to a project that you want to organize immediately.
Adding a copy of the message as a topic note is now optional.
The OutLinker dialog box now has a timer that tells you how quickly you are processing your tasks.

How do you manage your tasks?

ActivityOwner — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 23:37:21 +0000

There is a survey on Gottabemobile.com
.

Project Reporting

ActivityOwner — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 02:14:06 +0000

On the GTD-MIndManager Yahoo Group, Rob asked:

One area I have always struggled is in creating an effective report, this is becoming a major issue as due to a change of manager I now have to submit these weekly. I'd like to be able to produce a report showing all active projects and some form of summary \ status. I need to submit this in word or excel as the person I'm reporting into is not a fan of mapping to put it mildly. I appreciate the above is vauge but I would appreciate any suggestions or ideas on how anyone is acheiving anything similair,

Hi Rob — I thought it might make more sense to answer here on the blog as the group can use the comments to brainstorm towards a solution for you.

One trick is to create a status "task" for each project and tag it with a "status" category. This will allow you to select for it in your reporting dashboard. You will also have to exclude these "next actions" from your routine dashboards with Category="NOT Status" filters. The next trick you can use it to make use of the map2table macro to convert a dashboard to an html table. This macro is actually one of the most useful on the site and I find use for it every week or so. The long name for this macro is "Map to List Person" :-). If you can conceptualize how you want the tabular report to look, I'm sure a dashboard can be built to route through map2table.

Finally, if you want to try to include completed activities/projects in a dashboard, you need to toggle the "include already completed activities" to yes temporarily. That is a bit tedious and can't be automated, so I personally haven't gone down that road. It might also take some tweaking to filter for recent completions.