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Folke X |
Posted Jan 12, 2012 in: Trying to sink my teeth into GTD, but it isn't coming naturally
Score: 0
I'd be interested to learn from you if there are any major additional thoughts or concepts in the big book.
Anyway, all in all, I think the MYN-Toodledo combination looks very, very strong. Well worth considering, even for GTDers. Essentially, from a GTD perspective, it transforms your main lists into one long list Today-Next-Someday that has more accurate control of the time frames. Consider going for that, Linda! |
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Folke X |
Posted Jan 12, 2012 in: Trying to sink my teeth into GTD, but it isn't coming naturally
Score: 0
Just the free pdf e-book. What about you?
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Folke X |
Posted Jan 12, 2012 in: Trying to sink my teeth into GTD, but it isn't coming naturally
Score: 0
OK :-)
Well, I am in a similar split situation - Toodledo and Nirvana. I have implemented these MYN thoughts: SOC: I always wanted something important right at the very top of my list - as an 'overriding general focus'. Over the past ten years I have had various kinds of stuff there, but never been happy with the result, and a cannot remember exactly why, but I guess I did not like the seemingly arbitrary and contradictory way that some things ended up at this 'over the top position' and some others just at the 'normal top'. But now I implemented a SOC that felt intuitively right - I just created a new task, gaved it an intuitive name (SOC: xxxx) and made a few tasks notes roughly defining the SOC. This task has no physical connection (no tags or anything at all) to the rest of my tasks or projects. It is entirely 'redundant', 'heuristic', 'intuitive', 'unscientific', call it what you will. But I like it. And I even put a target due date on it (against all normal GTD rules - there is no real deadline for this SOC; just a nice-to-have-it-all-done-by feeling). I only have this one SOC now, so it is too early to see a pattern, but with this one, if I analyze it, I can see that what I seem to have done intuitively is I have apparently looked at four projects that are different but still a bit related, and I seem to have defined a 'current phase' in each of these four projects, such that the SOC is a kind of 'overall platform to reach' for that whole 'area' to which the four projects belong. Next/Opportunity: I have also moved the more distant Next stuff into Someday/Horizon (the MYN 10-day rule). I have even gone a step further and have chosen to subdivide (sort) the Next list such that the upper part is 'likely within the next FEW days'. I have not implemented the Start date. This for purely technical reasons. I like the idea. It just seemed (in my personal case, with Nirvana-Toodledo) to be too drastic an experiment if I want to change back again. But I implemented (in Nirvana) the 'spirit' of MYN it by manually dragging and grouping the Someday list such that the less likely to ever be done go at the bottom. I even have taken the MYN spirit of time frames to implement dividing lines in the Someday list representing 'perhaps within a month or so' and 'perhaps in six months or so'. This message was edited Jan 12, 2012. |
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Folke X |
Posted Jan 11, 2012 in: Trying to sink my teeth into GTD, but it isn't coming naturally
Score: 0
@Linda: Sorry for interrupting, but:
@Purveyor: Have you tried to implement MYN to some extent? (I have now loaned a few notes from MYN, and I am very happy with the result so far and am interested in comparing experiences - if you are.) This message was edited Jan 11, 2012. |
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Folke X |
Posted Jan 11, 2012 in: Auto forwarding emails to Toodledo
Score: -1
I think your idea is a good one - if you have 3/4 actionable mail like you do.
But like Peter, only a fraction of my email is actionable (most of it is reference or trash). For actionable mail, I usually word one or two concrete actions straight in via the keyboard, or, if the mail has valuable information, I forward the mail first, and then reword it. |
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Folke X |
Posted Jan 10, 2012 in: Trying to sink my teeth into GTD, but it isn't coming naturally
Score: 0
Yes, thanks a huge lot for those tips, Purveyor!
ZTD I was aware of. Good reading. Goes well with GTD. SuperFocus/AutoFocus I had missed entirely. I did read his DIT book, though - quite similar in spirit to GTD. SuperFocus has a quite different approach, though. Very interesting. Seems difficult to use in an app like this, but it gives rise to an interesting thought that never occured to me before: Maybe it makes sense to increase the priority for tasks that you have started on but have not yet finished. This is, in effect, one of the things he does with his right-hand column. I am going to have to think about that. Master Your Now: Many, many thanks for this tip in particular! I had previously just brushed Linenberger aside when I saw that he had a book about Outlook, which I do not use. But now that I checked more thoroughly I found that his concept has many similarities with GTD and at the same time has some very interesting flavors of its own. I am now seriously considering trying to find a hybrid of the two. His use of the Start date as a fine-tuning tool seems very practical. His definitions of Critical+Opportunity+Horizon matches Focus+Next+Someday closely enough, but with some value-added aspects about the time frames involved. And just like Allen he wisely and strongly advises against due dates, unless absolutely necessary, but recommends these in his SOC's (~goals), which may be just the carefully balanced opening that I have been wanting. I think it should be possible to merge all this and get the best of both worlds. Many thanks again. (And there is even a predefined out-of-the-box setup of MYN for ToodleDo at www.toodledo.com/systems.php, which Linenberger also explains in his free e-book/video - not that this is difficult to do manually, but still nice. What you have to do is add, keep, or modify your GTD implementation for contexts, areas of focus, waiting etc, which MYN does not cover at all, but this should not be too difficult. Also, his use of the Start date precludes calendar syncing, but that does not matter in my case - I don't particularly want calendar sync, anyway.) This message was edited Jan 10, 2012. |
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Folke X |
Posted Jan 08, 2012 in: Trying to sink my teeth into GTD, but it isn't coming naturally
Score: 1
Hi Linda,
I don't think I can answer all those questions satisfactorily, but perhaps I can give you some food for further thought: Relationship with life goals, big picture etc: I think most of these software apps are geared towards dealing with the nitty-gritty tasks, projects at the most. Some apps do have some lame "goals" feature, but seldom anything elaborate enough to be really useful. The connection between projects and the bigger picture is something you'd better be prepared to have in your head or in some other system, and/or implement in your software app to the extent possible using tags and other features. Actionable? Well, sometimes the choice of words may not be what ours would have been. Yes, tasks may all be actionable at some stage under some contitions, but what is being meant here is "Is there anything else stopping me from getting started and getting this done right away except for the fact that I have other "actionable" items competing for my time?". Item - Next action I get the impression, when you say you have an item in your inbox and wonder what the Next action is, that the item in question is something big and unclear. Then what you can always do (mentally or explicitly) is precede the task's title with something like "Take 15 minutes to tentatively analyze this item: ". That will be your Next action. It may result in whatever you decide during those 15 minutes - a whole project taking shape or maybe you simply discard the whole thing, or maybe you decide on a few steps of further inquiry or analysis. Projects Projects are a bit of a weak spot in GTD (and in many task managemnt apps) as there tends to be a myriad of projects with little or no distinction between large "real" projects and small "multi-step tasks". In practice what you do is make the best use of the app's features (using tags, sub-tasks, projects or whatever the app has) to get the hierarchy or other kind of overview that you want. Hopefully one day more apps will have better support for multi-level projects and dependencies. Maybe GTD is simply not for you? Or maybe you have just come to the wrong place (app) here? Toodledo is a super-powerful general toolbox, but if you want GTD you have to create the whole setup yourself, knowing what you are doing. There are plenty of dedicated and more inutitive GTD apps out there, but most of these are incomplete or in closed beta testing or have some other limitation, but you could always keep an eye open ... Personally I like GTD becuse it has a situation driven "Queue-and-Review" type philosopy that I like, as opposed to the more static Make-Schedule-/-Allocate-Time-Slots type philosophy that is also very common in task management. The choice may ultimately depend on how plannable you think your life is. Is it like an emergency room, where new important cases come up all the time from out of the blue, or is it more like a plastic surgery clinic, where you can schedule appointments months in advance. This message was edited Jan 09, 2012. |
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Folke X |
Posted Dec 31, 2011 in: Which Status has a task which follows the next action task?
Score: 0
True, Peter and Alexandre,
GTD does not have as many states as Toodledo does, so if you use them all anyway, it will be in some "enhanced GTD" way. GTD has Next, Waiting and Someday - and project actions in some form of internal sequence. I think one implicit question back to Bernd73 is: In your question, when you say Next action, do you actually mean it in the GTD sense of "actionable task" or do you mean those that you actually choose to DO first of all? The reason I am asking you this is that it will have an impact on how you use the rest of the statuses. Some people use the Star as a Focus marker, i.e. your narrow current selection of tasks (among all the actionable tasks) that you will actually DO first of all. In that case you can go ahead and use the Status of Next Action in the original sense of Next Action (= actionable tasks). If instead you decide to use the highest status Next Action for the current "Do" selection, then probably the status Active would be the most natural one to use for all the other actionable items. (This is what I used to do. I used the star for other purposes). Actually, in a strict GTD sense these are all Next actions - it is just that you have decided to actually do some of them before the others. In that sense, I would recommend the Star as a Focus marker. It keeps the status intact. Further, as Alexandre probably means, if you have dependent actions in a project - actions that can only be done after the first action (next action) has been completed, then the question arises which Toodledo status to use for those. You could use Active or Hold or none, but not Waiting (or Delegated). This message was edited Dec 31, 2011. |
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Folke X |
Posted Dec 25, 2011 in: Do I have to create a "Search" for every context???
Score: 0
You can see if any of the following suits you:
1) Use the Show meny (in the blue bar) to select one or more contexts 2) Or Sort the list by Contexts, either using the Sort menu (blue bar) or by clicking the Context heading in grid mode 3) Or use the built-in view called Context |
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Folke X |
Posted Dec 18, 2011 in: Projects: do you use "Folders" or "Goals" for projects?
Score: 2
My line of thinking concurs with PPH's.
Maybe (or maybe not) there is a small difference in that I use Tags to distinguish between permanent Areas of Responsibility (say, different "jobs within the job" - Areas are very useful for long-term planning.) Like PHH, I have used the Status function for Next etc, but agree with PHH that it is probably better to build your own structure (using Folders, for example). And myriade; if you do not already do so, I would advise you to build your own menu (complete set of views aka lists aka searches) under Search. This message was edited Dec 18, 2011. |
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Folke X |
Posted Dec 17, 2011 in: Projects: do you use "Folders" or "Goals" for projects?
Score: 1
No idea. Sorry. But I have got the impression that many use tasks and subtasks - tasks then being the "project".
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Folke X |
Nested contexts and tags would be useful, but they are not implemented as such.
What I have done instead is I have chosen to use Tags, as these have more varieties of search critera available, and then I have my searches include the line "Tag contains Work". This message was edited Dec 15, 2011. |
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Folke X |
Posted Dec 14, 2011 in: How to capture thoughts while on the road?
Score: 0
Is it possible to start Vlingo with the Home button on an iPhone 4?
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Folke X |
Agree.
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Folke X |
Posted Dec 12, 2011 in: Suggestion, please, to use tasks as events?
Score: 0
@keith
You can enable GCal integration for Toodledo - one-way, from Toodledo to Gcal (see help section). Then you can have all your "timed" Toodledo tasks show up as events in a separate Google calendar with a its own color. I tried this, and it works perfectly (except there can be a bit of delay until they show up in GCal). |
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Folke X |
Posted Dec 11, 2011 in: Projects: do you use "Folders" or "Goals" for projects?
Score: 1
I use Goals.
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Folke X |
So how do you actually use Toodledo?
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Folke X |
I think the hodge-podge aspect is no problem as such. I am sure we all have a hodge-podge, no matter what kind of philosophy we have in general. Most of us have one or more physical paper inboxes, one or more email inboxes, one or more calendars for appointments etc and we probably make use of simple timers and alarms etc in our hand-held devices, and we have todo systems such as TD. It is always a hodge-podge, more or less.
What seems to make your particular hodge-podge work for you, Salgud, and probably would not work equally well for me, may have something to do with whether you have very clearly delineated working hours vs. private hours. Many people have that. Often, even within one single system, they simple close the window on one of the two "worlds" by applying some filter or similar mechanism (just like you said you used to do). If you only carry out work when you are at work, and never work when you are off work, then this division comes very natuaral. For me, though, I do private and work related things interchangeably sixteen hours a day and prefer to have it all on one list. And I even want my calendar items on that single list: If I am going to have lunch with someone, then I want to see it clearly on my list, regardless of which particular job or private grouping I need to do that lunch for. But I realize that my life is probably a bit messier than normal ... it might be nice to be able to compartmentalize it a bit, I don't know ... As for GTD, I do not think your hodge-podge will scare any seasoned GTDer. You need to have a list of tasks and projects and stuff no matter how you cut it, but as far as I know there is nothing in GTD that dictates that projects must all be one one single physical sheet of paper or in one single software - as long as you can get it all out and review it properly in a focused way. (But I have never read David Allen's book, so I don't know, but I have noticed that GTDers and I generally appear to take similar views on many things :-) |
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Folke X |
Option 1: Click the circular gray icon on the left side (to the right of the star) and choose Delete
Option 2: Change the tasks's repeat setting to take aways the repeat altogether. Then just check it off. |
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Folke X |
Posted Nov 26, 2011 in: "Out of the blue" events/tasks
Score: 0
Basically hove have no choice but to choose ;)
If the new thing cannot wait, and you are already swamped with other things that also cannor wait, then obviously the choice can be difficult. But the choice must be made, regardless of which to-do system you use. |