Currently Google Calendar only supports notification for the Primary Calendar. I tried to implement the notion of facets to a Hard Landscape implemented in Google Calendar. I created secondary calendars for the major aspects that I wanted to track on the Hard Landscape. The ability to hide a subset of the calendars is very useful during a Daily or Weekly Review. Unfortunately the current limitation means that appointments from the secondary calendars do not show up on your daily agenda, and you don’t get notification.

I’ve developed a notation for capturing Next Actions. Projects and Someday/Maybes in an analog/digital GTD implementation. I call this notation nano: Next Action NOtation. In nano the trusted system is primarily analog, relying on a digital implementation to support notification such as ticklers and alarms for scheduled items on the Hard Landscape.

There are many well documented analog notations that are in the public domain. Matthew Cornell, in an article written for www.diyplanner.com entitled “Four Planner Hacks for Paper-Based Productivity” has outlined one. In a previous article on speakhead.com I offered “13
powerful precepts for an analog GTD notation.” These were based on an iterative development of nano.

An ideal analog notation for managing GTD lists ought to embody the following design precepts:

1. Succinct Notation

A notation should be succinct enough that it not command a premium on the real-estate of your planning system.

2. Ease of entry into trusted system

A notation should enable the user to quickly jot down the pertinent details of an item and come back later to annotate the entry.

3. State Transition Model

A notation should have a supporting state transition model with visual cues.

4. Upstream and Downstream traceability