Get Everything Done

I've struggled to find a good way to do the Randomizer method in an electronic task list such as in Evernote, OneNote, or Outlook. The "sliding" rule seems to be an important part of the system, and it's surprisingly difficult to implement anything like it in an electronic notebook. I found myself introducing artificial pages, empty note tasks, etc.

Here is what I've been trying lately:

Roll two ordinary 6-sided dice:
- If you roll doubles, advance to the next screen (click the scroll bar, use the Page Down key, or the equivalent), and count from the top of that screen.
- Otherwise, cycle around the current screen.

Seems to work pretty well. :-)

I suppose if you are just opening a new note, and typing your tasks into a list there, that would work fine. You can just cross them off, or use checkboxes or something, and get something exactly like the pages of a paper notebook. Or use tables, perhaps with each cell of the table counting as a "page", and a page-full of tasks in each cell. Or perhaps the table itself counting as a "page", and the tasks entered into the rows.

But that's not how I typically work when I'm on the computer. Here's how I typically do it. Tasks are usually whole notes or whole task objects, not just a short line of text.

In Evernote, a "task" would be a whole note, which might have several subtasks and supporting details inside it. All the notes go into a notebook where I capture all my new stuff. I process this notebook using Random RAF.

In OneNote, a "task" would be a "page", and there would be several pages in a "section", and that section is my "list". I process this section using Random RAF.

In Outlook, a task would be a task object. I could group them by date or something, but it's hard to organize them into a page-like model. I process the list Outlook tasks using Random RAF.

I mostly use OneNote at work, and Evernote at home. In OneNote, I found some page-like mechanisms, such as limiting each section to 20 tasks, and when it gets full, I start a new section. But when I completed a task, I normally just want to delete it, or maybe archive it, and not leave it there in the section. So after I delete or move it, I would replace it with an empty task, which served as a "crossed out task" and allowed me to do the "sliding".

But that was rather tedious, and didn't work at all in Evernote. That's why I tried finding an alternative method that doesn't require pages, and came upon this dice-based method.

Mark -

<< You can make it more easily managed than that in Evernote. Any note can be linked, so each "page" could consist of one note which contains a series of links, one to a line. >>

That's a great use of Evernote's Table-of-Contents feature! Thanks for the tip! I do think that will speed up the process.

<< Evernote has scripting support. You could write a randomizer script for your set up. >>

Thanks for the idea! Maybe if I were already familiar with Evernote scripting, I'd give it a try. But it sounds like too much work otherwise. :-)

vegheadjones -

<< When I convert an email to a task, I change the name and write the name in my book. >>
<< For OneNote, I create an outlook flag and write that description in my book. >>

I've tried to do things like that, but found I just can't keep it up. Too much overhead. I can process emails and action items and so on much more quickly if I can avoid writing down shorthand duplicates in my notebook.

But if it works for you, great!