I’ve been spending a great deal of time with EverNote Plus 1.5 recently. I’m so glad that I submitted a handwriting sample and obtained a license for EverNote Plus 1.1, and even more grateful that EverNote provided free upgrades to EverNote Plus 1.5 when it was released. I haven’t played much with the new features such as PC to PC Synchronization and the ability to open multiple databases - instead I have been trying to organize my reading lists. A couple of months ago when I started using EverNote
I read an essay on how GTDWannabe uses EverNote to organize research materials. Back then I filed this information away in del.icio.us. Now I use the technique espoused in the essay of using keywords such as @get[] and implemented a rudimentary state machine to help me organize personal, academic and professional reading lists.

MindJet has provided a link to the David Allen webcast as well as the mind maps used during the presentation. These can be accessed on the David Allen website as well.

Technorati Tags: Freemind, GTD, Mind Mapping

Yesterday  I had the opportunity to listen to David Allen speak about his use of Mind Mapping using MindJet’s Mind Manager. The webcast was sponsored by MindJet and broadcast by WebEx. David spoke for about an hour and covered many examples and situations where he uses Mind Maps. MindJet will have the transcripts of the webcast along with example mindmaps available for download shortly. I’ll update this note with the links when they become
available.

On a related note, a test version of FreeMind 9.0 is available for download. I installed it yesterday and have just started playing with it. The Wiki explains the new features.

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.

Well, it has been about two months since I started my Analog Deep Dive experiment, and so I have accumulated a fair amount of mileage with an analog GTD implementation to begin to comment about my personal experiences.

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

I’m slowly weaning myself off Outlook as I develop a GTD trusted system in the Analog domain. The Levenger Circa system investment is really paying off: I purchased a set of dividers and when they arrived I installed them in my folio. These are heavy duty plastic dividers that have a solid heft to them. Five to a pack. If you are using small Levenger or Rollabind rings you will find that the thickness of the dividers does take up some of the space you’d normally use for paper. I also bought a few lined Levenger notepads. These have a margin on the left hand side. I’m developing a notation to clearly identify the state of an item on my lists using that margin. It is in the early prototyping stage. When it is ready for primetime I’ll share it with the loyal readers of speakhead.com.

So I started the Analog Deep Dive experiment using @Home, @Calls, @Waiting For and @Errand contexts. I’ve been reading up on a number of interesting, pure analog implementations to develop a feel for what kind of information I’m going to need so that I can design my page layout to manage each of the context lists. I felt really energized when I put pen to paper to perform a MindSweep of my personal open loops. Got a few Projects and a large number of Next Actions jotted down in no particular order. At first, it felt that the act of putting ink to paper was limiting, confining, less flexible: much harder to tweak, align and order items. But then as I thought more about it, there is a fair amount of wasted effort doing these manipulations digitally - I’ve never been satisfied with any digital list, subconsciously maybe I feel I’m making progress on an NA by bit twiddling. Furthermore, the act of writing encourages an internal dialog before committing pen to paper. Typing on a keyboard is akin to thinking out aloud. You tend to see what is on the screen and then word smith (continuously ) until it sounds right. Once I overcame my hangups around having the list “just so”, I began to focus my energies and attention on the more important parts of deciding outcomes and placing the time-sensitive or date-sensitive NAs on the hard landscape. Completion of a Next Action in the analog domain is more satisfying to me: a checkbox indicates completion and it is there right in front of me as a badge of accomplishment. Juxtapose this with the default behavior of Outlook which transfers the NA into the digital bit bucket in the sky.

Over the next couple of weeks I will be moving my trusted system to a Levenger Circa host: a letter sized Circa Notebook with tab dividers protected by a Circa Leather Jacket and supplemented with a Circa Slideout. Primary writing instrument is a Lamy Vista with a Fine nib and Levenger Cobalt Blue ink. I’ve also got the Waterman Phileas Fine nib. I want to explore an analog GTD implementation this Summer to see how it stacks up to other implementations that I have tried.