Related posts:

1. New Blogs
2. What is the Next Action for ActivityOwner.Com?
3. Here's how I use MindReader in Practice

To download the free add-in, visit http://map2excel.com.

Note that the ActivityOwner Tools Add-in is also fairly functional now and ready for testing and feedback.

SAMPLE INPUT:

SAMPLE OUTPUT:

Related posts:

1. New version of Map2Excel uploaded
2. Export a MindManager Map to Microsoft Excel
3. Map2Excel exports topic notes as Excel comments

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 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

There is a new macro installed by the MindReader installer and also available on the wiki MindManager Macro Library that will do a basic syncronization of tasks between your ResultsManager Daily Action Dashboard in MindManager and your Microsoft Outlook task list.

The macro (ao_nextactions_to_outlook.mmbas) does the following:

1. Delete previosly transferred or exported items from oulook unless marked complete
2. If marked complete in outlook, run mark task complete on them in the daily action dashboard.
3. Transfer new items from Outlook into MindManager via MindReader.
4. Leave them behind as well but add "ao_transferred" into note to mark them as transferred
5. Export next actions from daily action dashboard to Outlook task list. Set basic attributes like context, due date, and priority.

Note that this is designed specifically for use with a ResultsManager Daily Action Dashboard.

This basic macro isn't smarter than described above, and will not detect changes in attributes (beyond completion) to sync back to MindManager. Attempting to do anything fancier than this is is buried deep on my GTD someday/maybe list.

I've never had much success in attempting to do this type of synchronization with other "built-in" methods. This provides some basic functionality that might be of use to those who need it.

If you want to have ready access to your next actions from outlook or your smart phone, this can be a good strategy. This also allows you to capture new actions in Outlook and feed them in. For 1-way transfers into MindManager from OutLook, OutLinker provides a more robust approach.

You can run the macro manually or incorporate into the "Put it in front of the door script" for overnight processing.

Next Action: "Waiting for reader feedback on Outlook Task Syncronization".

NAA score +0.1 :-).

Related posts:

1. Synchronizing MindManager and OutLook
2. OutLink to your OutLook Task List and other new options
3. Next Actions to Go

One thing I have found difficult is figuring out how what I have already "read" in the stream of twitters coming in. Some folks just post occassional nuggets that get lost in the stream. I'm sure the twitter clients allow you to mark things read, but its not obvious to me how.

So, just in time, Andrew Wilcox this evening twittered a link to an experiment he did with using the News Smart Map Part to import and organize twitters from his friends. This reminded me of the MindManager RSS News Reader posted back in March 2007.

The macro in that tool takes the RSS feed and logs it in a "database" as well as feeding it into an in-tray. That allows you to copy/paste/mark-done/delete the topics and not have them reappear when you refresh the feed. I mainly use the tool to process tasks coming in from Jott and to process blog comments via RSS to make sure I have closed out the action items associated with them.

To try this out, I first went to twitter.com to get therss feed for my account, which is .

I next used this to "Add new news feed to library" in the map part tab in MindManager. In order to do this using MindManager 8, I found I had to first manually add a "News Feeds" folder to the tab, otherwise the add-news-feed command didn't do anything.

Once the news map part is created, you drag it into the MindManager map:

Once you have create a map with the feeds you want processed, you next run the rss_to_intray.mmbas macro to processed the current feed content into a "rssdb" topic and an in-tray.

The macro is available in the MindManager macro library or you can automatically install it using along with other AO tools using the Setup program. If you use the setup program, the macro will be located in the My Maps\AO directory and can be run manually or with the rssi GyroQ tag.

Once you have the entries into MindManager, you can process them manually or using a tool like ResultsManager to feed them up to a dashboard (perhaps with a someday/maybe or list filter).

Related posts:

1. A MindManager-based RSS News Reader
2. RSS Feeds added for Yahoo MindManager and GTD_MindManager Groups
3. Four ways to add tasks to your maps from your phone

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

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.

Related posts:

1. Outlinker Update
2. OutLinker Installer Now Available
3. GyroQ Tag Usage Survey

Here are four options for getting items into your maps from a mobile device.

1. Use bitbucket.org to mail yourself task from the PDA and then pull
   the tasks in via an RSS map part (see A MindManager-Based RSS News Reader.

2. Take that approach one step farther, and call in your tasks verbally
   to Jott with the phone rather than typing them in. This is handy for
   use when driving (see GTD Phone Home. ActivityDaughter also uses it to remind Dad of things like the need to get started on her upcoming Volcano project.

3. If the phone's task list is Outlook synced, you can pull the Outlook tasks into MindManager using OutLinker.
4. If you capture the tasks in a note, you can paste the list into the
   MindReader GyroQ "q" tag, and it will process and parse each line separately into
   separate tasks. You don't need to paste them 1 by 1. See Feed your todo list into MindReader.

   I personally tend to just carry two thin Moleskine notebooks (one work/one personal) in my pocket and log things there for later manual transfer with GyroQ.

   Related posts:

   1. GTD Phone Home
   2. Feed your to-do list into MindReader
   3. Synchronizing MindManager and OutLook
   ]]> http://www.activityowner.com/2008/02/15/four-ways-to-add-tasks-to-your-maps-from-your-phone/feed/ 1 http://www.activityowner.com/2008/01/05/outlinker-unlinked/ http://www.activityowner.com/2008/01/05/outlinker-unlinked/#comments Sat, 05 Jan 2008 14:21:04 +0000 ActivityOwner http://www.activityowner.com/2008/01/05/outlinker-unlinked/
5. Outbox Zero
6. Getting to Zero
7. OutLinker Lite (OutLinker for "list" people)

I had come across Marc Orchant’s MindManager vingnette after reading about it on Pascal Venier's Productive Workflows blog. I was struck by how his simple "Getting Things Done" map touched on many important concepts and is worthwhile for anyone trying to improve their GTD approach. This is clearly something he practiced and studied and didn't just write about. I added a viewer link to the map in the wiki Map Library.

I had initially learned about Marc's work in his review of ResultsManager and subsequently followed his posts on zdnet.com on things like Windows Vista and the Lenovo X60 tablet that led me to buy one for Ms. Activity. He was also an early proponent of GyroQ.

Marc passed away earlier this month of a Sunday morning heart attack at age 50. Over time my RSS feed list has grown with many of the sites being ones that I probably learned of through Marc's columns. I was struck how connected he was with so many of those writers. Their moving tributes to him provide a dimension you wouldn't necessarily get as a reader. He clearly lived his lived his life in a way many of us aspire to. As a free lance writer, he leaves behind a wife and two children. One of his close friends has set up a fund to help them through this difficult time.

Related posts:

1. Fire the oldest 10% of your tasks
2. GTD Phone Home
3. Six Components of a GTD Review

I've really enjoyed the interaction with readers and the ability to quickly share ideas, custom dashboards, and code snippets via the blog and wiki; often in less than an hour from when they were conceptualized. It has been surprising how "time-neutral" this hobby has generally been, in that it invariably comes at the expense of less structured web surfing. It has also been surprising how doing a little extra work to make a tool "customizable" for others actually translates back into something much more useful personally. For more background, see the "about activityowner.com" page.

The site's focus is driven by reader comments and questions here and on the Yahoo GTD_MindManager group by power users like Mal E. and encouragement by folks like Kyle M. The focus has shifted over time as we've tried to understand and lower the barriers in the GTD workflow. Initially this meant understanding how to build custom ResultsManager dashboards, for things like a Meeting Next Actions, 1:1 employee meeting, and how to get them refreshed automatically overnight. Along the way we discussed some philosophy behind GTD such as "are your projects projects" and are you contexts contexts?

As GyroQ came on the scene, the focus shifted more towards lowering the barriers to "capture" by leveraging and customizing GyroQ for various purposes like phoning in tasks via Jott and closing the loop by having them sent back out by email in processed form. Along the way we had fun solving the Sunday crossword puzzles of interfacing in and out of other formats like wikis, RSS, mail-bucket, basecamp, nactionr, and html. In the meantime, the wiki site itself turned up on the net as a map!

As we tried to develop custom tags for to capture and mark up with the infinite possible permutations of context, owner, category, area, home-map, priority, etc, we realized it wasn't feasible in the standard GyroQ paradigm. The initial concept of what became MindReader was introduced in September 2006, but a workable implementation remained on the "someday/maybe" list until January, when the strategy of using macros and a configuration map to drive the program came into being.

After several rapid improvements catalyzed by readers including Curtis B., James H. and others, the tools quickly stabilized to something that we just used, rather than tweaked, and that significantly reduced the need for multiple GyroQ "capture" tags.

After a quiet summer, there was a recent flurry of improvements suggested by Jose Miguel and refined through off-line discussion that you should check out. These include the ability to automatically recognize previously unspecified resources as well as a Spanish version of MindReader.mmap! One quick way to bring your system up to date is to use the AO-Pack zip file.

In addition to MindReader, the other tool that I've found very useful personally is "Mark and Log Tasks Done". Although the completion-logging aspect is satisfying, its real utility is in managing repeating tasks. This functionality was improved this week based on a suggestion from Bill S. to handle fixed date deadlines. If you are already a user, check out the latest version in the macro library.

Ironically, one of my favorite tags is actually "clo", which closes all the unmodified maps you have open and lets you focus on the ones you are actually editing.

So what's the next action on GTD barrier removal?
My feeling is that we all need tools and tricks to overcome the "cringe-factor" of dealing with a red-hot dashboard. I'm finding the "Are your next actions eligible for retirement?" macro provides a useful reality check and its metrics provide some incentives to address stale tasks. I'd like to build more metrics into this type of analysis to help catalyze more frequent and effective weekly reviews.

In general the wiki has become very useful way to improve the tools and documentation in small steps rather than through multiple blog posts. It has also enabled several users to contribute and improve things (Thanks!). If you are a MindReader user and can contribute something about how you use it, I would bet others would benefit. Just create an account and jump in.

If you like to follow the site, but have become too focused and productive with its tools to waste time browsing the internet or RSS feeds, feel free to utilize the subscribe function to be notified of new developments.

Thanks for a fun year,

AO

Related posts:

1. What is the Next Action for ActivityOwner.Com?
2. GyroQ: Top 20 Uses Revisited
3. 2008 GTD Challenge Results

In order to address this need, the MindReader "q" command has been modified so that it can handle a list of tasks pasted into the GyroQ dialog box. Each line is processed separately and placed into the appropriate destination map based on its keywords.

This can be used to pull in a list of tasks from sources like email messages, Excel, word, etc. If you already have MindReader installed, you can add this functionality by downloading an updated copy of MindReaderOpen.mmbas.

Related posts:

1. Four ways to add tasks to your maps from your phone
2. MindReader Syntax Updates
3. Outlinker Update

Although it is focused on corporate intranet use, Jim MacLennan's recent post on More Challenges for Applying Web 2.0 inside the Firewall resonates with me — "use the right tool for the job":

This also ties into the GTDT / GTD 2.0 discussion started by Eric Mack. If this community can't get our KM strategies optimized, how can we expect our organizations to do so.

So with that, I give you http://forum.activityowner.com.

For now it has forums for MindReader Installation, Usage, and Suggestions, which I think are needed in any case. Beyond that I'm looking for input as to the Categories and forums that might be useful. I don't want it to be redundant to the several great forums already available now (see main page sidebar), but there could be room for more rapid and detailed discussions on usage and customization of MindManager, ResultsManager, and GyroQ.

Comment below or in the Forum Design Suggestions and take the poll. The forum has an RSS feed you can use to monitor the discussions.

Related posts:

1. forum.activityowner.com returns
2. search.activityowner.com
3. GTDT (Getting Things Done Together)

The new ResultsManager Ribbon-interface that Gyronix created for MindManager 7 makes it a compelling upgrade. While MindReader has been updated to work successfully with the new version, until now the "run:rm:dashboard" command at the heart of "Put it in front of the door" has been broken.

I recently got an email from James mentioning that the script was working fine under version 7 on his tablet PC. I was puzzled by this until hearing from Gyronix that Mindjet has traced the run:rm:dashboard issue to some old 2001 Microsoft.Ink dlls (version 1.5) in "c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\ink" that are present on most people's systems. Its not clear why tablet pc files need to live on non-tablet PCs, but it explains why it works for Jim on his tablet.

MindJet will at some point issue a patch or service pack to address the issue, but in the meantime, I think I've identified a way that users can update their systems to get the run:rm:dashboard script working. I found this article about getting a Sudoku program running on non-tablet PCs by installing the Tablet PC Edition Software Development Kit. I found doing a custom install and just installing the "Tablet PC Runtime Components…" was sufficient to updated the necessary dlls on my XP system. If you want to use "put it in front of the door" under V7, give this a try and let me know how it goes.

Related posts:

1. Put it in front of the door in 2010
2. Put it in Front of the Door
3. Put it in Front of the Toolbar

The existing "o" tag works uses the "mindreaderOpen.mmbas" macro to open a map based on keyword entered at the GyroQ prompt. The new "s" tag works similarly, but takes that one step further by "cutting" the currently selected topics and pasting them into the destination map selected. If it doesn't find a keyword match, it will paste them into the in-tray of your "daily capture map".

Since the macro is preforming a "cut" operation, you should use it with caution initially. If for some reason the macro crashes, you should be able to retrieve your topics by "pasting" them to a map.

How to get the new "s" tag
If you are new to MindReader, you should install the set of files it needs based on the instructions on the MindReader Project Page. If you are an existing user, you need to paste the "packed text" for the s tag" from the GyroQ tag library into GyroQ and download the updated copy of MindReaderOpen.mmbas. You can get the macro from the macro library or by downloading the mindreader.zip file. Note that if you run "s" without the new MindreaderOpen.mmbas, it will cut your topics but not paste them!

Note that you can use the "mra" tag to quickly add new maps/keywords to your mindreader.mmap configuration file. It will also prompt you for new verbs and contacts, but you can "cancel" past those sections.

You can follow developments on MindReader by following the post-comments on the "A configurable GyroQ Tag for parsing Action Items" post.

Related posts:

1. MindReader Update: Capture notes and links without using keywords
2. MindReader 7
3. Feed your to-do list into MindReader

RSS Feeds

You still need to subscribe to the groups in order visit the web site to post or to search the archives, but these feeds provide a means to monitor the group using a News Reader without needing to receive individual email messages or remember to visit the website.

Related posts:

1. GTD Phone Home
2. search.activityowner.com
3. A MindManager-based RSS News Reader

The method works surprisingly well except for one hitch — each time you refresh the rss map part, it re-imports all the topics. This prevents you from gettng rid of the ones you completed or moved to another map.

To address this issue, I changed the approach used with the rss map part. Instead of having the rss-feed as an in-tray, the new macro ("rss_to_intray.mmbas") in the Macro Library processes one or more main-topic rss map parts and automatically copies their "new" items to a main-topic "In-tray". It accomplishes this by creating another main-topic ("rssdb") whose subtopics serve as a database of previously seen rss items.

How to use it

1. Open one of your maps or start with an empty map.
2. Create rss-map-parts to sites you want to monitor (e.g. http://www.activityowner.com/feed/ ) by clicking on "Tool", "Macros", "Create Smart Map Part".
3. Drag the newly created map part(s) from the "News Feeds" folder on the "Map Parts" side bar tab to main topics on the map.
4. Download the rss_to_intray.mmbas macro to your My_Maps\AO directory.
5. Assign the macro to a menu for manual operation or paste the packed text of the GyroQ "rssi" tag into GyroQ to launch it from there.
6. Refresh the map parts using Shift-F5 (uncheck the box to allow it to be done automatically later).
7. Run the macro or the GyroQ tag. It will create in-tray and rssdb main topics if they don't already exist.
8. Optional: Process the In-tray with the MindReader "c" tag (or mindreaderNLP.mmbas macro) to convert the topics to activities and "process" them.

Using this approach you can "process" the items the macro has transferred to the in-tray with MindReader and/or mark them "read", check them off as "done", or move them to another map, without worrying about them showing up again.

General Use?
Although this macro was built to deal with the "You've got Mail" gap, it actually has some potential for use in general "News" reading. I am relatively new to using NewsReaders to track RSS feed instead of surfing the web, so I imagine I'm not alone.

Like many people, I started by adding RSS-feeds to my My Yahoo page. This is handy,as it allow you to keep an eye on infrequently updated blogs or forums (e.g. the Gyronix Formm) without needing to visit the site itself each day. The downside (particularly from a GTD point of view), is that you can't "mark them read" and "clear your in-tray".

You can address this problem by getting an account on one of several free "reader" websites such as NewsGator, Bloglines, and Google Reader that you can sign up for. Thus far I prefer NewsGator's fast FeedDemon application, which synchronizes with your online account, and allows you to monitor Keyword searches for things like GyroQ or ResultsManager.

For most applications, those options are probably much better than using this MindManager-based reader. On the other hand, there are occasions where working from within MindManager could be handy. For example, the ActivityOwner.com site gets lots of useful comments and suggestions that I want to "process" into tool improvements. Having the ActivityOwner Comment Feed automatically show up in an in-tray helps me avoid having suggestions or questions fall through the cracks.

You might consider doing your blog reading as a low-priority set of tasks on your daily-action dashboard, as an incentive to visit and refresh it often :-).

I'm not sure how well the macro will scale, as it will eventually accumulate quite a few "previous entries" in the database tree. It also might be cleaner to have the rss-feeds as sub topics and the rssdb as a floating topic. I'll cross those bridges at some point, but this fills the need for now.

Note: For those of you who still don't want to adopt a some type of newsreader, you can now subscribe to the ActivityOwner site by email using the side-bar link above.

Related posts:

1. Using MindManager as a Twitter Reader
2. RSS Feeds added for Yahoo MindManager and GTD_MindManager Groups
3. MindReader: Send topic(s) to a new map based on entered keyword

Around the same time a post on GenuineCuriosity.com speculated about about the "dream scenario of a GTD parser" that would take input from phone or email and make some sense of it.

Jim pointed out that "MindReader" provides a piece of the puzzle, so I figured I'd try pulling together the Rube-Goldberg setup needed to get a prototype working.

I had a look at this last evening and it turns out this can all be strung together in about 20 minutes if you don't run into any problems:

1. Set up a Jott account to convert your voice to email subject line text
2. Forward the Jott email to a cryptic mailbucket address (say gtd4me9898@mailbucket.org).
3. Call Jott to have it transcribe your voice into emails or just send text email the mailbucket account directly.
4. Add the rss feed from mailbucket (e.g. http://mailbucket.org/gtd4me9898.xml) as a smart map part under one of your in-trays.
5. Select and "Process" the subject lines in the items that come in through RSS using MindReader to convert them to activities and add context, etc. This can be triggered manually using the GyroQ "c" tag or scheduled and automated using the mindreaderNLP.mmbas macro.
6. Refresh your dashboards.

With the setup above you can press a speed-dial key on your cell phone to call Jott, Tell it "Buy anniversary gift before Thursday", and have that wind its way to your dashboard "errands" list in a matter of minutes (the dashboard refresh is probably the longest step). I've only tested it with a few messages, but it seems to work surprisingly well and quickly.

There is still one missing piece though. There is no way to mark the RSS items complete for good as they will return in the next feed refresh. What is needed is a macro that compares the RSS feed items against a map-based database of items it has already imported from the feed so that only new ones come into the system. This should be relatively straightforward but will take some tinkering to optimize.

Time will tell if this has any use, but it is amazing the world lets you get from point A to point B this way.

Up Next: How to close the loop by making your "next actions to go" go even farther….

Related posts:

1. A MindManager-based RSS News Reader
2. Four ways to add tasks to your maps from your phone
3. RSS Feeds added for Yahoo MindManager and GTD_MindManager Groups

For me this leads to a process of "GyroQ Idol" in which I must vote off one of my existing tags to make room for a new one. Given this situation, and the six months of experience with the software, now seems like a good time to review the inventory of tags that have emerged over the past six months and put them in context.

Note that you can toggle to a GyroQ tag quickly if it is named with a short name followed by 3 spaces. These short names are used to refer to tags in the remainder of this post and can be used to find them in the tag library. Note that these tags are often updated based on user feedback, so check the revision dates of any you have found useful for an updated version.

The sections that follow catalog the ActivityOwner.com tags by the phase of the GTD methodology they contribute to:

1. Collect — corralling your stuff
2. Process — getting "in" to empty
3. Organize — settting up the right buckets
4. Review — keeping your system functional
5. Do — Making the best choices

Collect

GyroQ is pitched primarily as a capture tool – the default set of three tags provide ways to quickly log ideas, information, and "amorphous blob" action items into a default “Daily Capture Map” without needing to launch or get bogged down in MindManager. Unfortunately this can result in the accumulation of a daunting swarm of unrelated tasks to “process” into home maps. The “map” tag tries to address this problem by prompting for a specific destination map and allowing the optional addition of a context, hyperlink, and/or note. Since this aspect bleeds into the “process” phase, it is described below.

The "GyroTrigger" (gyt) tag captures your “open loops” by running you through David Allen's incompletion trigger list".

Tangent: The Swamp and the Stream

Many years ago (in the days of the HP95LX) I used a custom to-do list program to manage my action items. I found the "average" age of my action items (both complete and incomplete) typically ran steady at about 35 days, but few actually fell in that age range. My inventory of action items segregated into two populations. The first set consisted of short lived items that flowed by like a stream — completed almost as fast as they were identified. The second set consisted of items that had drifted into the “swamp” adjacent to this stream, and hung around much longer than 35 days. In the Post-GTD era, I now recognize the first set were likely well-defined “physical next actions” (widgets that could be cranked), while the second population consisted of "amorphous blob" projects or items that belonged on a someday/maybe list. Even with good GTD practices, my to-do lists (and I suspect many others) still tend to fall into this paradigm.

While canonical GTD might suggest hard edged between "capture" and "process", I think it often makes sense to give those "swift stream" items an immediate boost in the "capture" phase by adding obvious "process" attributes such as context, deadline, priority, “contact about”, etc. At a minimum, having them fall in with related items on a project or “area of focus” in-tray can make the subsequent “process” step less daunting than having to crunch through a long “daily capture map” list. This risk is letting a “blob” destined for the swamp slip through without due consideration. Having everything go to in-trays can help guard against that risk.

Process

While some items that come up in a typical workday are pure capture (“buy milk”) from the soup, much of what is needed in practice is "transfer" — from paper inboxes, from Outlook, from pockets notes, etc — into your "trusted system". Should you fully "process" items during this transfer? I think it is situation dependent — when time is short, it may be better to consolidate into ResultsManager in-trays than leave your email and paper inboxes half full.

A popular tag on the site is "map", which provides a way to direct an action item to the in-tray of a particular map (rather than the "Daily Capture Map") while prompting to optionally adding context, notes, and/or hyperlinks. This tag could be customized this tag to direct to a predetermined map (e.g. "blog"). Using this approach allows subsequent processing of smaller in-trays that already contain related items for a particular project or area of focus. "q" and "c" provide a generic way of doing this (more later). GyroQ can also be used to aid in processing using ResultsManager (e.g. the "ea" tag to edit an activity).

Mike W. has shared a method for turning a outlook email into a ResultsManager activity that provides a streamlined method for the outlook to ResultsManager trip

Organize

The “organize” phase is largely handled by ResultsManager Dashboards that summarize information captured and processed by GyroQ. This site has a library of customized dashboards as well as instructions on how to create your own.

Review

Two tags emerged that can aid in the review process. The "Put it in front of the door" script ventures out of GyroQ to provide a GyroActivator script that can be scheduled nightly and provide up to date dashboards each morning, lowering the activation energy to keep your daily action lists up to date or doing a Sunday morning review. This can also be done manually from within GyroQ using the "rgd" tag, but the external approach is better as it leaves GyroQ free for "capture" during the sometimes lengthy dashboard generation process.

The "1o1" tag enables the generation of “1:1 meeting dashboard templates" that allow the action items in a set of maps to be framed and organized to set the agenda for an effective 1 on 1 meeting. The manager or employee can rapidly update a diverse map entries in real time via the dashboard. This provides a way of building commitment to the approach and releasing potential uses of the software.

Do

Unless you are one of the lucky early beta-testers of "GyroDo", you still have to get your actually work done yourself. Using GyroQ in concert with ResultsManager can help keep your tasks "in front of the door". The “ldb” tag (customized for your system) can quickly load the dashboards that the “rgb” macro has refreshed overnight.

The “Next Actions to Go” (cna) tag automatically copies the “next actions by context” list from your Daily Action dashboard to the clipboard as a plain text outline for compact printing or pasting into a mobile format (e.g. gmail, outlook, palm). The "clp" will do the same for the currently selected map branch.

The “Logging things done” tags ("dit", "diw", "dim", and “mtc”) tags provide a way to quickly reset repeating tasks on a daily, weekly, and monthly horizon as while logging the current item complete in a "completed map". The "mtc" tag logs a set of selected tasks as complete (note: the original only logged a single task).

GyroTimer (gts,gtf) can help you maintain your focus and priority by measuring the amount of time spent on a project or area-of-focus.

Utilities

Navigating between linked maps and dashboards you can easily find yourself with a dozen open maps. The Close unmodified maps (clo) tag allows you to quickly close all previously saved maps. The MindReader “OpenMap ("o") tag lets you quickly open maps based on keywords you have defined. It also enables applications, documents, or web pages to be opened quickly based on a keyword. "fn" puts the absolute name of the current map on the clipboard for use in hyperlinking or emailing to colleagues in a network-server environment. Frequently used tags can also be set up as GyroActivator scripts to be run as batch files or placed on the Windows Toolbar.

What's made my list?

My current tag list in roughly order of use frequency is rgd, q, o, c, ldb, clo, cna, dit, mtc, dit, diw, dim, 1o1, gts, gtf, gyt, fn, clo, and cnt, with one spare slot for testing new tags.

The ”Put it in front of the door” is probably the most valuable and impactful “tag” in the collection; helping keep the system current and complete.

GyroTrigger (gyt) should get more use, but I usually have my hands full with obvious action items without searching my subconscious for more trouble!

Gyrotimer (gts, gtf) needs a bit more polish, but it’s a tag I wish I used more as it encourages deliberate focused time rather than multi-tasking and surfing.

The “map” tag was my most frequently used tag. It was followed closely by several variations with hard-coded destination maps (e.g. one for each one of my direct reports at work). Unfortunately this led me to quickly exhaust the 20 available tags and required a solution as described below.

The Task Mark up Challenge

ResultsManager activities have more than 20 different attributes that a user might want to set including the items listed below:

• destination map
• icons: task, project, sub-project, someday, committed, deadline
• priority
• start date, due date
• resources: delegated to, owed to, contact about
• contexts, areas, categories
• notes
• hyperlink

While you can program a tag to prompt the user for all of these items, that results in a tedious process when you just want to capture a simple action item. On the other hand, if you want to customize tags to prompt for or hard-code a subset of these attributes, you quickly find there are an astronomical number of possible combinations and permutations that rapidly consume all your spare GyroQ slots.

A Solution

One solution to this problem is the MindReader “q” tag. MindReader allows you to optionally choose the destination map set all of the above attributes using user-defined keywords and no prompting. This eliminates the need for “map” and custom variations on it. The "q" tag is now my only "capture" tag. The “c” tag skips the destination map selection phase and instead acts on one or more selected topics.

The installation procedure has been simplified over time and the customization options enhanced, so check the MindReader page for instructions if you are interested. "ActivityDaughter" took a shot a drafting a French version, which is available at the bottom of the project page.

Wrap Up

So what has proven useful to you? What gaps need to be filled? The existing tags have benefited from user feedback and user contributed tags have started to trickle in (see the bottom of the library for a tag from a fellow reader). If you have one you want to share let me know.

Related posts:

1. Choosing the GyroQ Destination Map on the Fly
2. A Configurable GyroQ Tag for Parsing Action Items
3. Next Actions to Go (farther)

1. Make sure you have the professional version of GyroQ and extended tags enabled
2. Download or create a mindreader.mmap file and place it in your default MindManager directory.
3. Create the a main topic with text "links" and a subtopic with text "defaultmap"
4. Link the default map for unrecognized keywords (e.g. "Daily Capture Map").
5. Create a 2nd subn topic "mapmap" an add a hyperlink to this map itself
6. Add additional keyword topics/map-links for frequently used maps (e.g. career, blog, etc).
7. Choose keywords that will work in a "next action" sentence later when using "MindReader" "c" and "q" tags.
8. Save the mindreader map
9. Install the "o" tag using the packed text from the GyroQ tag library
10. Toggle to the "o" tag in GyroQ, type "mapmap" to bring the parsing map back up
11. Type "defaultmap" into GyroQ to bring up your default map
12. Try your other keywords
13. Have fun

As I went to make a short video to demonstrate this tag, I realized it also had an additional functionality I had not intended. If you associate a web page hyperlink instead of a map hyperlink, you can use this method to open up web pages instead of maps. For example, 'nytws" to http://nytimes.com or "actown" to http://activityowner.com. This could turn out to be as handy as the map functionality. It could be problematic in ao-parse, but we will worry about that later.

Taking this one step further, it turns out that you can launch documents and applications using this method as well! For example, add a keyword "excel" and browse to the excel.exe file for that application, and the excel keyword will launch it.

There is no limit to the number of keywords you can use, but they need to be main topics (for now). You might try getting into the habit of adding a keyword link to your parse-keyword-map as you start major projects. This could provide some assistance on avoiding the problem of mapping your maps. Your keyword map can double as a map central if that makes sense for your system.

How "o" Works
The GyroQ code to do this looks like the following:

{temp:'_clipboard_'; clipboard:'_queueitem_';run:macro:'[macro code here]';clipboard:'_temp_'}

The tag uses the clipboard to communicate into the macro, so it stores the current contents on the temp variable in order to restore the clipboard after the macro is complete.

In the actual tag, the macro code below has its double quotes and line feeds converted to %22 and %OD%OA respectively as a strategy for getting GyroQ to run multi-line macros. A more readable version is listed below with comments.

' Open the parsing map
Set doc=Documents.Open(GetPath(mmDirectoryMyMaps)&"mindreader.mmap")
'
' Loop through the maintopics
For Each Topic In doc.CentralTopic.AllSubTopics
' Check the clipboard text passed in by GyroQ against each main topics text
' If it matches, follow the hyperlink to open the file
'
If InStr(LCase(Clipboard),LCase(Topic.Text))>0 Then
Topic.Hyperlink.Follow
'
' If the parsing map was being modified, save it
'
If doc.IsModified Then doc.Save
'
' If the parsing map wasn't the one being opened, close it
'
If InStr(LCase(Clipboard),"mapmap")=0 Then doc.Close
Exit Sub 'exit if a match was found
End If
'
Next
On Error GoTo X
' open the default map
doc.CentralTopic.AllSubTopics(1).Hyperlink.Follow
Exit Sub
'If it can't find the default map open a blank one to absorb subsequent dequeueing
X: MsgBox "Could not open file"
Document.add

Related posts:

1. MindReader Update: Capture notes and links without using keywords
2. Don't leave OutLinker Code on your Clipboard after Installation
3. Add Notes and Hyperlinks to GyroQ Entries (or not)

You can improve the situation by using dynamic input capabilities of the Gyroactivator language to send the item to the in-tray on the map of your choice. You can also use the 20 "types" available to set some of the attributes for you (e.g. Priority 1, Due Tomorrow, etc). The problem is that ResultsManager activities have 12 different attributes, so you run out of "types" quickly if you want to set more than one attribute automatically. One solution is to use dynamic input to select or enter each parameter. The downside of that is you are faced with answering or skipping up to 12 prompts for each action item entry, which defeats the "quickly unload" goal.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could use a shorthand in your action item that marked up your action item automatically? For example if "Call Joe about Project X by tomorrow" inserted Joe@ as owner, "phone" as context, and "tomorrow" as the duedate or if "Pick up dry cleaning this week" inserted a context of "errand" and a duedate of 7 days from now.

So can this be done today? I think so. The trick is to leverage the Gyroactivator "Send" command to allow MindManager's "find all" command to locate text within the target strings.

The first step is to decide on the syntax you want to use. Some ideas are listed below, but through discussion we can arrive at a more complete set of ideas:

Call -> context: phone
Pick up -> context: errand
buy -> context: errand, web
Visit -> context: errand
Read -> context: reading
(P1) -> Priority 1

Many people tend to interact most often a small subset of contacts. Custom code can be created to identify text related to them:

Contact X -> owner: X@
X about -> owner: X@
Waiting for X -> owner: X
for X -> owner: X, %me%

I envision this could be implemented in a customizable map template that is read by gyroactivator such as this:

The code below implements the parsing in a hardcoded format for testing.
Caution: This is highly untested code below is meant for example purposes only. It will more than likely mess up your maps and delete random tasks. Use on test maps only.

A hack is required to deal with situations where the macro fails to find a particular string in the map. The code below gets around this by inserting a dummy "mother of all activities" string containing all the text that is searched for. This allows the find command to always find and mark up at least one activity. At the end of the macro this string is located and deleted.

Gyroactivator Script (can be run from within GyroQ):

1. Create a dummy task to ensure all search yield at least one hit:
{new:maintopic:'catchalltask:CallPick up today tomorrow Nick about';bookmark:'dummytask'}

2. Run Context Related Searches
{send:'{alt}efCall+{tab}+{tab}+{tab}{enter}';rm_contexts:'Phone'; send:'{alt}ef{esc}'}
{send:'{alt}efPick up+{tab}+{tab}+{tab}{enter}';rm_contexts:'Errand'; send:'{alt}ef{esc}'}

3. Run Duedate related Searches. Note this will move things enter previously
{send:'{alt}eftomorrow+{tab}+{tab}+{tab}{enter}'; duedate:1 send:'{alt}ef{esc}'} {send:'{alt}eftoday+{tab}+{tab}+{tab}{enter}'; duedate:0; send:'{alt}ef{esc}'}

4. Run Owner related Searches
{send:'{alt}efNick about+{tab}+{tab}+{tab}{enter}'; rm_owners:'Nick@';
{send:'{alt}ef{esc}'}

5. Delete the catch-all task
{send:'{alt}efcatchalltask+{tab}+{tab}+{tab}{enter}{esc}{delete}'}

One additional advantage of this approach is that it encourages you to think about your action items in a "Next visible physical action" format that is encouraged by David Allen's GTD approach. Given the extreme customer-focus of Gyronix, I have no doubt this capability will evolve into the Gyroactivator language over time. In the meantime, the user community can start to prototype ideas on what that functionality should look like. Hopefully this prototype will provide some food for thought. Feedback and ideas are appreciated.

Related posts:

1. MindReader — let GyroQ read your mind
2. Top 20 Uses for GyroQ?
3. New MindReader features: the "m" tag and explicit context