Bending OneNote and Outlook to Fit my GTD System
I am now using Microsoft OneNote 2007 as part of my GTD (Getting Things Done) system. I talked about this a bit before in my post on EverNote vs. OneNote. My approach is a bit different than Rob describes in his 7Breaths blog. Where Rob tends to use OneNote as the hub of his system, I use the Outlook task list. I am really only using OneNote for three purposes:
- Capturing daily notes on the fly for future processing,
- managing projects, and
- storage of reference material.
I am not living inside OneNote throughout the day. Instead, I use Microsoft Outlook to manage my task lists (by context). Rather than pushing stuff from Outlook into OneNote, I am capturing and storing stuff in OneNote, then pushing it to Outlook during my weekly reviews. OneNote serves as an inbox and as a storage location for project information and reference material.
Here is my OneNote landscape (see screenshot below). One of the first things you’ll notice is that there is not a lot of complicated structure or oodles of tabs. It’s fairly clean and uncluttered. Everything is in a single notebook labeled “2007″. I deleted all of the sample tabs and pages that come with the OneNote install. The primary tabs/sections in my OneNote GTD system are: @DOING, @PROJECTS, @FOLLOW_UP, and @DONE.
In my world, things are either done or they’re not done. Stuff in the first three tabs is “not done”, and stuff in the “@DONE” section is “done”. My approach is not unlike the ants in T.H. White’s The Once and Future King. When Wart goes to live amongst the ants, he discovers that they only have two descriptive words. All people, places, and things are either “done” or “not done”. Pretty clear. Anything that is “not done” gets checked during the weekly review. The “done” stuff only gets seen again if I am looking for reference material or trying to remember some bit of obscure information. I might find it by using the OneNote search box, by searching OneNote tags, or through Windows Desktop Search (WDS). Otherwise, the “done” stuff is out of site and off my mind.
One of the modifications I made to the OneNote 2007 workflow was to abolish the “unfiled notes” section (blue circle above). By default, OneNote stores all incoming data, including print-outs sent to OneNote, screen captures, and web clippings to that section. I changed the settings to have all incoming data go to my “@DOING” section. In a future post, I will walk through all of the setup screens (updated - linked to setup details). If I click the button circled in blue, it now takes me to my @DOING tab.
The other thing you’ll notice is that I tend to only have one page that stays in my @DOING tab. Other pages come into the @DOING tab, and I either deal with them immediately or move them to the @FOLLOW_UP tab. The page that always stays there is my “DROE” page. This name is a hold-over from my Franklin Planner days where notes were captured on a page titled “Daily Record of Events”. This is a running life log where I capture notes, ideas, jotts, meeting minutes, etc. The DROE is driven by a set of AutoHotkey scripts that allow me to quickly open OneNote and jump to the top of the DROE page, automatically enter a time stamp, and start typing before the idea slips out of my head. I will share my OneNote AutoHotkey tool in a future post. UPDATE: Here is a link to the DROE tool!
The next tab is the @PROJECTS tab. Here I create a list of my projects, with one page for each project. The list of pages (shown on the left side of the screen below) is my project list. I created a project template and set it as the default template for the @PROJECTS tab. To add a project, I simply click “New Page” and fill out the information in the template.
Here is what my project template looks like. In this case, you see it filled out for a Basement Remodeling project. The page title contains the title of the project along with a project tag enclosed in [brackets]. I set a unique tag for each project and try to be as descriptive as possible in 10 letters or less. In addition to the project title, there are three main sections to the project template page:
- OUTCOME - This is a high-level mission statement that describes the goals of the project and the desired final outcome. It’s typically 2-3 sentences long.
- ACTIONS - This is a bulleted list of actions that need to be completed to move the project forward. As much as possible, I try to make each action a succinct doable task. During my weekly review, I will brainstorm for new actions, and also decide which ones on the list should be “next actions”. To make it a next action, I click the “Task” button on the OneNote toolbar. This creates a task in Outlook using the synchronization feature between OneNote and Outlook. I can then right click on the flag to open the task, make additional notes, and set the context. The project tag will also show up in my Outlook task list since it is in the list here.
- NOTES & REFERENCE MATERIAL - This is a section for any notes, files, links, attachments, etc. that are pertinent to the project. The assumption is that anything attached here has already been processed for possible actions. I will often copy notes directly from my DROE and paste them here in reverse chronological order. I can also paste particularly important emails here… I usually strip the attachments first using an Outlook VBA macro that I wrote. This keeps the size of the embedded email small. The VBA macro replaces the files with links, so no traceability is lost.
The @DONE is actually a section with multiple tabs (see below). I made this into a section because I wanted to be able to create some hierarchy in @DONE, but I also did not want to clutter my work area (@DOING) with a bunch of “done” tabs and pages that would pull my attention away from the “not done” work. As I mentioned in my previous post on “EverNote vs. OneNote”, one of the main reasons I chose OneNote is that it can be indexed and searched by a desktop search application (WDS). Because of this, I can send all of my processed material into this section and not worry about it.
So let’s take a closer look at some of the tabs in the @DONE section:
- The DROE Archive tab is where I store all of my processed notes (Daily Record of Events), both typed and handwritten. About once a month I will move stuff here to get it out of the way. I have a special method to allow later indexing and searching of even the handwritten notes, similar to what EverNote’s Advanced Image Recognition (AIR) feature provides, but much simpler. I will share that in a future post.
- Key Information is where I keep things like passwords, account numbers, personal data, etc. The tab is password protected and not included in my Windows Desktop Search results. There are only a few well-organized pages in there so that I can quickly browse and find what I need without having to depend on WDS.
- The Project Archive tab is just what its name says. When a project is complete, I right-click on its page tab and send it to the Project Archive. A project is considered complete when all possible tasks are done or moved to the Outlook task list. There must also be no unprocessed information on the project page. Any notes or attachments remaining on the project page are simply reference material that can be found later via desktop search.
- The Articles & Reference section is a dumping ground for all other data that has been processed. Any tasks or actionable ideas from these pages have already been captured. The section just contains a long flat listing of pages in no particular order. The information here is for reference only and can be found later via desktop search.
So that is the basic landscape of my OneNote GTD system. As promised in a few places above, I will share set up details, tips & tricks, and weekly review methods in a future post. If you have other tips or would like to share how you are using OneNote 2007, please post a comment here!
Saturday, November 17th, 2007 : GTD, OneNote : 60 Comments
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60 Responses to “Bending OneNote and Outlook to Fit my GTD System”
November 18th, 2007 at 1:02 am
Great system Carl. I’m interested in how you are using AutoHotKey - look forward to the psot on that.
November 18th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Thanks Rob, I’d be happy to share the AutoHotkey stuff. I’ll try to get a post up in the next week or two.
-Carl
November 18th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
Thanks for sharing your setup. I’ve found great inspiration in both yours and Rob’s.
I personally use separate notebooks for: Journal (collecting with Journal powertoy), Single Actions, Projects, Reference & Archive.
I also use the Tags in OneNote (and I wish they were synchronized with Outlook Categories). Do you also use them but forgot to mention?
Also, do you happen to know anything about the next version of OneNote, other that it’s being developed?
Thanks, great article.
Looking forward for your posts.
Daniel,
Bucharest, Romania.
November 18th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
It looks like a very nice system, and I’m eager to read more about the custom code you’re using for it.
November 19th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
Hello Daniel, Bunã ziua!
Thanks, I’ll have to take a look at the Journal powertoy, I haven’t tried it. As for tags, I don’t use them much. As a former EverNote user I am pretty disappointed in how Microsoft implemented the tags in OneNote. Initially I was using OneNote tags to track which items had been processed vs. which were still “not done”. This was a bit awkward in OneNote since there are no rules to automatically assign and unassigned tags, and no tag intersection panel like in EverNote. I tried to get around this by creating a tag “Summary Page” in OneNote during the weekly review. The problem with the summary page is that it’s just a dead list with no links back to the original content. If you need to see beyond the title or first line, you have to navigate back to the original page. Finally, I settled on using the note location (@DOING vs. @DONE sections) instead of tags. Maybe I’m missing something – if you are using OneNote tags as part of your GTD system I’m sure others would like to know more about your setup.
I do still tag pages in order to categorize material for future reference. I wouldn’t say it’s part of my GTD system, just more of a filing method really. There are about 12 tags I created to do this. If anyone is interested I can share that list in a future post.
I don’t know much about the next version of OneNote… There are blogs maintained by members of the OneNote development team. Two of the blogs I have read are linked below, and they will link to other blogs from other members of the OneNote design team…
http://blogs.msdn.com/chris_pratley/
http://blogs.msdn.com/descapa/
-Carl
November 19th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
Thanks Martin, I’ll try to get that stuff posted in the next week or two.
-Carl
November 20th, 2007 at 1:01 am
[…] About « Bending OneNote and Outlook to Fit my GTD System […]
November 25th, 2007 at 12:16 am
nice tut! I wonder how did you change the color of the OneNote UI (not the pages but the surrounding UI) to green? Mine is blue and it seems it cannot be changed. I wish OneNote had a black/dark grey color like Outlook has.
November 25th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Hi Sascha - The colors you see in the screen shots reflect the overall desktop colors I set in Win XP (right click on desktop –> Properties –> Appearance). So, all of my apps use these colors by default. I’m sure you could make OneNote use black/dark grey but you would have to change your global settings.
-Carl
November 25th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Thanks Carl! Now I understand. I’m using Vista and Vista either uses the new Aero theme which color can be changed or some apps use the non-aero theme which is baby blue and cannot be changed (thanks MS!) such as like OneNote and Visio. So this means on Vista you are not able to change this baby blue on these apps! I hope they’ll fix that in future. The pastel colors in OneNote (also the page colors) are not everyones taste!
November 26th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
Hi Carl,
Great Post, I was looking for a way to link OneNote and Outlook for GTD, with exactly the same objective being to keep Outlook for my task list.
I’ve setup my OneNote like yours and downloaded the Autohotkey app. I’ve try to create my own script without success, could you provide me with your script for starting OneNote with th DROE page.
Thanks
Pierre
November 26th, 2007 at 11:27 pm
Thanks Pierre, no problem. I’ll get it posted by the end of this week.
Update 1: I took a look at my code again. I have a lot of other scripts/functions tied in with the DROE code, and also a lot of filenames that are hardwired. I’m going to take some time to clean it up before posting and maybe make some of the filenames/paths easily configurable. Sorry for the delay!
Update 2: Finally got it posted! Here is the link.
-Carl
December 2nd, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Carl. Thanks for you posts. They have been very helpful.
I notice on the screenshot of your project template that that your Title as well as Actions include the text “[Basement]”.
I am wondering how this text relates to your system. If you could briefly explain what this text is and how you use it, we would appreciated it.
Thanks in advance.
Matt
December 2nd, 2007 at 6:14 pm
Thanks Matt. I touched on this a little in the post, but here is some more detail… The project page titles and the individual actions each start with a project tag enclosed in [brackets]. I set a unique tag for each project and try to be as descriptive as possible in 10 letters or less. When I create an Outlook task from the project page, that tag is also included in the subject of the Outlook task. Now, no matter where those tasks end up, I can search with WDS and find all info related to that project. This also makes it easy to sort a list of tasks in Outlook by project. I also tag any emails related to that project using Taglocity. That ties everything together.
Hope that helps.
-Carl
December 2nd, 2007 at 6:29 pm
[…] and like to move tasks around, the links get broken pretty quickly. In my previous post on “Bending OneNote and Outlook to Fit my GTD System“, I talked about using this feature to get next actions from the project page into the […]
December 2nd, 2007 at 8:58 pm
That really helps. I was thinking that you were utilizing the Tagged Notes feature of Onenote, but it sounds as if you are entering these “project tags” manually.
Thanks for the follow-up and, again, nice job. Your postings have help out quite a bit.
Matt
December 5th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
I still don’t understand whether you manually type the brackets and tag name on each line or if you are creating new tags in one note (I think you are limited to 40) and hitting the tag key that you have designated with that project tag name?
December 5th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
aL,
I probably overloaded the word “tag” above… In this case, my tags have nothing to do with OneNote tags. If you scroll up to my comment from Nov 19th, you will see that I don’t really care much for the OneNote tag implementation and am not making much use of it.
The tags I’m talking about are just short manual text mnemonics that help me tie the project together. For example, when I click the flag to add an item as a task in Outlook, the task shows up with this tag. I can then easily sort my Outlook task list by project, or search on the tag via WDS. The template provided in this link has some dummy tags to help me get started when creating a new project. Even though the tags are manual, it’s very easy to copy & paste the tag within the project page, and obviously there is no limit to the number of tags.
Hope that helps.
-Carl
December 6th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
Carl,
Thanks that does help.
Al
December 6th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Carl,
You mentioned that you would walk us through setup screens and share set up details, tips & tricks, and weekly review methods in a future post. Have you done that already? And if so, where might I find it?
Al
December 6th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
Carl,
How do you link a task you create in outlook that is related to a project you are managing in onenote? I assume that you do not use the mange project section of GTD add on for Outlook to manage projects.
Al
December 8th, 2007 at 10:17 am
Al,
I do still plan to write a post showing all of the OneNote setup screens, as well as the other topics you mentioned. You didn’t miss it : )
As far as linking tasks… The tasks created from the OneNote project page have an attachment linking them back to the project as described in another post. Tasks created directly in Outlook are only linked by the project [tag] in the subject line. I can tie all of the project items together by searching on the tag in WDS, or I can open OneNote (WIN-SHIFT-N) and browse to the project page. If it’s a task for which I will need to frequently reference the project information, I will jump back to the project page and create it from there rather than creating it directly in Outlook.
-Carl
December 12th, 2007 at 1:33 am
[…] promised in my previous post on “Bending OneNote and Outlook to Fit my GTD System“, here is the tool I use to drive my DROE (Daily Record of Events) in OneNote. This is a […]
December 17th, 2007 at 5:09 am
Al-
Your script works great..Iv’e been using it for about a week now in OneNote. Question: When do you archive your DROE’s? When you fill a page? Which leads to my follow up question. How do you index then, in your archive for later retrievals?
December 17th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
Ed -
I have a (text) page separator, basically an electronic version of what used to come with the Franklin Planner. I move it up in the DROE as I process notes. Anything before separator is considered done/processed. I’ll see if I can get some screen shots up so you can see it. (UPDATE: Screen shots and page separator description are included in the README file for the DROE Tool, available on the Downloads page). With the page separator in place, you can keep using the same DROE page for a year or more without having to archive (although I usually move stuff to the “@DONE” section about once per month). To index the DROE, I let WDS do the work. It’s all indexed for me without having to manually tag or file.
Hope that helps.
-Carl
December 19th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
I like the idea of the tool but unfortunately I am having difficulties with it. When I hit WIN N Onenote will come up to my DROE page I made but will just sit there without inputing the date time stamp. Then a few seconds later I will get an error box stating “Timed out waiting for Onenote”. Any ideas? Thanks in advance!
December 19th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
Thanks Tripp, it’s either a bug in the tool or it’s a problem with your INI file. The good news is that it is still launching OneNote and finding your DROE page. From there, the tool looks for your DROE window to be active before inserting the time stamp at the top of the page. It uses a loose string match on the window title to do this (based on your inputs in the INI). I just sent you an email asking for more info. If there’s an issue with the tool I’ll get a new version posted.
Thanks,
Carl
December 20th, 2007 at 9:19 am
Hi Carl,
Just rearranged my OneNote to something similar to yours. I’ve put my projects in tabs rather than single pages, just because I tend to work on long projects and don’t want mega long pages. So I’ve put these project tabs into project section.
I do have one question: I’ve got a couple of very ongoing projects. But they are so big I don’t know whether they really are a project. For instance I help set up and run a design group called Coalition. I think of this as a big marketing project… but it doesn’t really have an end as such, like a project “run company” would be a bit daft! How do you think your setup should deal with this kind of thing? Appreciate any advice!
Thanks,
Andy
December 23rd, 2007 at 5:58 pm
Carl,
I’m getting the same issue (almost) as Tripp. I’m running Onenote 2007 and Vista 32 bit. I don’t get the time out error, but win n causes my DROE page to open, then the cursor jumps into the title bar of the page, with no date and time stamp I’ve double and triple checked the ini file and followed the steps exactly. If I’ve messed it up, I can’t see where. Any further suggestions? By the way, thanks for some fantastic help and advice on these pages.
December 23rd, 2007 at 10:26 pm
Steve,
I had this same issue too. The problem is in onenote. Make sure your new page in onenote isn’t autostamped with the date. Look at your one note page just below the title box. Do you see a date? If so highlight it and delete it. Then rerun the tool and it should work or at least it did for me.
Great tool. I will be getting a lot of use out of it!
Tripp
December 24th, 2007 at 3:45 am
That’s exactly right, Tripp. Thanks for the info and a Merry Christmas to all!
December 26th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
[…] raised an interesting question last week commenting on my post “Bending OneNote and Outlook to Fit my GTD System“. His question relates to something I like to call “Forever Tasks”. These are […]
December 26th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
Andy - Thanks for the suggestion and for raising this question… I actually created a new post with some ideas in it. I call these Forever Tasks - Take a look. Let’s see what other folks come up with as well.
-Carl
December 26th, 2007 at 11:54 pm
Tripp, Steve - I copied your comments to the other page that describes this tool and posted a reply there. Thanks for working through this. I’ll have an update posted soon.
-Carl
January 2nd, 2008 at 12:37 am
A belated thank-you for the interesting articles. I look forward to reading the next ones in the pipeline.
Your article points to the need for tighter integration between Outlook and OneNote. Whether you work primarily in either app, there will be some clunkiness as you move data backwards and forward. It will be great when the integration is seamless.
Initially, I didn’t understand your comments about the ON tag summary, but I get it now. You’re quite correct - “create summary page” provides no links. I assume it is designed to set up a page for printing, rather than as a launchpad. I very rarely use it given its limited functionality. What I do use constantly is the “Show all tagged notes” command which creates a Tags Summary with hyperlinks back to the original pages.
A few tips that might help:
Undock the tags summary window and position it front and center. It will retain that position and size when you need it.
Secondly, make sure you add some text when you insert a tag onto a page. Sometimes, I would add just an urgent tag next to some pre-inserted text and wonder why it wouldn’t appear in the summary. A phone icon isn’t enough on it own - add “call Bill” or whatever and then it will pop up in the summary. “Call Bill” will also be the hyperlinked text that can launch the original page.
Finally, if you can’t see a particular tag in the summary, remove the tick from “show only unchecked items”. If you use icons without check boxes (like the phone or exclamation mark) they don’t appear unless you uncheck the box.
Hope all this of use to someone.
Best >> Jack
January 2nd, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Great tips, Thanks Jack! Yes, the tags summary pane is much more useful than the tags summary page since the pane has live links. I also like your idea of undocking the tags summary pane. That’s especially nice if you have a second monitor and can drag the tags summary pane on to the other screen.
January 11th, 2008 at 7:39 am
OneNote Tag Summary Bug.
Thanks for the tips, Jack. I noticed that cycling the ‘Show only Checked Item’ box fixes the summary issue I am seeing. (I only use checkbox Tags, but I am seeing the summary problem described previously). It’s a pain that I have to cycle it every time to refresh it, but I can live with it as it’s the same amount of time as hitting the ‘Refresh Results’ Button.
January 23rd, 2008 at 5:22 am
Carl. When I am with my PDA in the city, and I want to add a next action for a project: Do I enter this to my inbox which then gets processed at home, added to the relevant OneNote project and exported to Outlook?
And, when the task is done, can I mark is off as completed in Outlook? Will it be marked done in OneNote as well?
January 24th, 2008 at 1:03 am
Vegard -
To answer your first question, you could add it in a number of ways. I will often use Jott since I don’t have a PDA phone. There are also similar services in Europe and elsewhere. An email would be fine too since you know it would eventually get processed and not lost. When you process the email, you could create a task directly in Outlook, or paste it into a OneNote project first.
As for your second question, you can mark the task complete in either Outlook or OneNote and the two will (eventually) synchronize as long as you don’t move or delete the task in Outlook. For more details, see my post on OneNote and Outlook Task Synchronization.
Hope that helps!
Carl
January 27th, 2008 at 6:11 am
Help! The Task Function in OneNote doesn’t work any longer??
January 27th, 2008 at 6:40 am
I am using this system for my GTD process. Til now it is the best by far in terms of implementation. But I can’t add tasks more to Outlook, and done tasks doesn’t show as done. Havent moved them or anything.
January 28th, 2008 at 3:20 am
OK - so I woke up this morning and it worked again. I don’t get it - has the task function in OneNote holidays at the weekends?!
January 28th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Glad to hear it’s working again. I must agree that the link between Outlook and OneNote is not as robust as I would expect. Even though linked tasks is a new feature for OneNote 2007, Microsoft owns both products and should have the knowledge to build a more reliable link.
Here is process for those that don’t trust the linking:
[1] As soon as you create a task in OneNote, right click on the flag and open the task in Outlook to convince yourself that it’s really there, and to set any other fields (such as categories) that you can’t set from OneNote.
[2] Consider anything on your OneNote project page with a task flag or a task check (open or closed) as “handled” by Outlook and don’t worry about it anymore during your project review.
[3] Track all task closures in Outlook.
-Carl
January 29th, 2008 at 6:25 am
Carl - already do some version of it. But now it blacked out again. I use Ctrl-Shift 5 to add a task, and then open it in Outlook and set categori. Now I can do that? Do you know why?
See screenshot: http://thingvoll.net/onenote.jpg
January 30th, 2008 at 12:06 am
Vegard,
Thanks for the screen shot. It almost seems like there is no active cursor or nowhere for OneNote to attach the Task tag. The only way I was able to reproduce that situation was by creating a new Section in OneNote and deleting all of the pages in the Section. I then saw the same situation as in your screenshot.
In most cases, even when Outlook is closed, you should still have the option to create Outlook tasks from OneNote. The only exception might be if Outlook is closed and you have multiple email profiles defined. See this note from the OneNote help: “If your installation of Outlook is configured for multiple e-mail profiles, you must start Outlook before you can successfully create and save Outlook tasks in OneNote.”
I’m definitely not an expert on the internal workings of OneNote. If my suggestions above don’t work, you might be able to get more in depth technical help (or at least report a bug) on the Microsoft OneNote forum. Here is the link.
-Carl
March 18th, 2008 at 7:10 am
The task function on my OneNote is doing the same thing today but it was working fine yesterday. For what it’s worth, the only difference today is that the computer I’m using it on isn’t connected to the internet. I’ll need to check when I get home whether it works when I’m connected but perhaps this is the cause. I am thinking that Outlook may shut down programme interactions when it can’t receive mail.
March 19th, 2008 at 7:29 am
MJM - Was there a previous comment that is missing? When you say OneNote is doing the “same thing today”, what is it doing? There were some other users that had sync issues - see the discussion with Vegard above. I also have a post that talks a little about how the task sync works (on this link).
Hope that helps!
Carl
March 28th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Thank you Carl for these tips! But i am also interested in time management. Because i believe i have problems with using my time, both on projects and other stuff. I have several projects which are coding, designing, and so on. I want to analyze my “total-spent-on” and additional time consuming actions.
There are several tools for that like worktime, timepanic but what i am looking for is a “really working” and “compatible - syncable” one.
Can you recommend me time tracking tool which can be integrated in this GTD system ?
Thanks
March 30th, 2008 at 12:51 am
[…] I promised earlier in my post on “Bending OneNote and Outlook to Fit my GTD System“, here are the setup details for OneNote 2007 along with some screen shots. For each of the […]
March 30th, 2008 at 8:38 am
Erdem,
Thanks for your comments. So, you’re looking for some sort of integrated time/effort tracking & reporting. One of best tools I’ve found in general for task tracking (especially within collaborative teams) is the multi-user version of TaskFreak. It’s free, open source, well written, and GTD compliant. There is also a time clock plug-in you can install to do the time/effort management tracking you need. I use this with my team quite a bit and plan to write a separate post with the details.
Of course, this does not really integrate with the personal GTD system I’m showing here. For that, you would want some sort of Outlook plugin that could track time for the individual tasks right in Outlook. I could imagine start & stop buttons on the Outlook toolbar that triggered a VBA macro and wrote the currently selected task title, task ID, and time stamp into an XML or CSV file for later processing. There may already be some examples on the Outlook Code web site.
For more general time management tips, I provided some suggestions and links in this post.
Hope that helps!
Carl
March 30th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Thank you very much Carl!
May 9th, 2008 at 7:49 am
I really like this, but I am wondering how to handle long continuing projects, like software projects. You have design work, developing new code, and fixing trouble tickets. This can go on for years on one project. Any ideas?
May 9th, 2008 at 7:53 am
Oops, I just now saw the “Forever Tasks” article. Sorry, about that. I will read through that, and post any questions I have to that thread.
September 17th, 2008 at 11:52 am
[…] jsem ale objevil zajímavý článek na webu Manage This! Jeho autor v něm popisuje jednoduchou, ale viditelně funkční metodu, jak […]
September 17th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Hello Carl,
would you be so kind to describe how do you use the FOLLOW_UP folder in your One Note? What information goes to this folder?
September 17th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Hi Peter,
The @FOLLOW UP tab is used to defer items until I am ready to act on them. I don’t want to put them in @DONE because they are not done, and I don’t want to leave them in @DOING because I don’t want to see them 20 times per day when I am making notes in my DROE. So, I store them in @FOLLOW UP.
During my weekly review, I look at everything in the @FOLLOW UP tab and either:
(1) handle it immediately,
or (2) move it to @DOING if I plan to handle it in the next 7 days,
or (3) move it to @DONE if no action is required,
or (4) leave it in @FOLLOW UP for one more week.
An example might be a new software tool I want to try out. If I don’t have time to download & install it, I will clip the web page to OneNote and move it to @FOLLOW UP. Eventually, during a weekly review, I will move the page back to @DOING so that I can handle it later in the week.
Hope that helps.
Carl
September 18th, 2008 at 3:26 am
Thank you Carl,
just one question. How do you manipulate with text in OneNote? Do you copy everything into one text frame (for example from DOING to FOLLOW UP, or you use individual text frames for different information on one page?
I’m still not sure what is better. Thank you.
September 18th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
Hi Peter -
I try to move only whole pages into the @FOLLOW UP tab. Web clippings, clippings from Office Documents, etc. come into OneNote on their own individual pages and I try not to edit them too much.
Small text notes that I make in the DROE just stay in the DROE page, which has a single large text frame. As I process the text notes inside the DROE, I move my text separator bar up towards the top of the page. Anything below the bar is considered processed/handled. The actions are either complete, or I’ve created a task in Outlook. For more information (and pictures) of the text separator bar, download the DROE Tool and read section 2.1 of the README file. You can also get the README file directly here if you don’t want to download the DROE Tool.
-Carl
November 17th, 2008 at 9:30 am
Why do you put brakets [tag] around tags? Vista search and onenote search doesn’t limit search using brackets (or even quotes, etc.). Using quotations only limits alternative words. For example, using [basement] as tag for your basement project: when you type [basement] or even “[basement]” in the search field, it’ll return results for anytime you used the word basement (in text, unrelated conversations about basement, etc.). I assumed it would limit the results to only [basement] not anytime basement was used. How do you limit your searches?
November 17th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
Brian - You are absolutely correct with regard to Windows Desktop Search (and Vista search) as well as OneNote. I wish that wasn’t the case.
The brackets do still serve as a quick visual cue of the project title, and you can use them in Outlook searches. For example, all of the Outlook tasks that I created as part of my Basement project also had the [Basement] tag in the subject line. When you press CTRL-E while viewing your Outlook tasks, you can quickly find all tasks in that project by searching with the [brackets]. (Note that CTRL+E is the shortcut in OL 2003… I assume OL 2007 has the same or similar shortcut, but I don’t have a copy to test.)
If you are dead set on searching project titles in WDS/Vista Search and OneNote, you could try using a different character to delimit the project title. You’d have to experiment to see which ones are not excluded from the search and are still visually helpful.
-Carl