Get Everything Done

First, I thought I should share the electronic method I am trying. I am using an outliner (specifically Omnioutliner on Apple's Mac). I set up the top level of the outline as "Page 1, Page 2, etc. The second level is the individual entries, 35 (a screenfull) to a "Page".

Now for my question. Clearly, in a paper version, the only alternative to striking through completed items is erasing or obliterating them, which is time consuming. On the other hand, striking through them on the computer is a bit cumbersome. Is there any reason that completed items need to continue to be visible? Or could one simple delete them (or cut and paste repeaters)?

I would, of course, retain my "page" structure. So I might conceivably reach a point where a "page" would be reduced to a couple of items.

Since the release of Autofocus, I've been using it on my PDA in a similar page structure.

I just cut & paste "repeaters" to the last "page" and filter out any fully-completed items so they are not visible.

Some pages now have very few items left visible on them which contributes to a powerful closed-list effect. And also, because of this, I won't even need to highlight items if I reject them - I'll just move that page to an archived section of the folder structure.

I've had no problem at all with using Autofocus over the past week and, in my opinion, it makes it much easier and slicker to use electronically.

Frank,

could you please explain which kind of PDA and which software you are using?
I still have a Palm, but I couldn't see a good way to make AF work with it.
(In addition, I might add that I have a Windows PC at the office and a Mac at home, which complicates synchronization.)

As for an electronic solution on the desktop, I built a mockup with Excel (which is the closest to a "pages" metaphor I could think of, if you use sheets as "pages"), and I found that you can apply conditional formatting to make completed items "greyed out" and struck through (which leaves them on the page and might give you a sense of accomplishment).

However, I didn't proceed any further into the question of dismissing/archiving items, because I found no good way to sync the Excel file (yes, there are ways to sync/use Excel files on your PDA, but I found them inadequate), and overall, it didn't feel "right" as a to-do manager.

--
Alex

Alex, if you are using Office 2007 and like Excel etc do have a look at OneNote. I am finding it very easy to tailor to AF, particularly the fact that my pages can be called Page 1 etc, have 34 lines like my notebook, and clearly show completed and dismissed items. Haven't looked at converting to my Windows based Treo as I feel I would be frustrated by small pages but that is just my personal preference.

ps Happy to give more info but do not want to overpost on my love for OneNote!

Alex,

I use a Blackberry Bold with ToDoMatrix software. It syncs wirelessly in the background to a server (hosted by the software company) so I can immediately switch to a web browser on the desktop whenever I need to.

I've been using Jarte ( http://www.jarte.com/?so=j&ed=s&ve=33 ). It's a simple word processor. With one click I can strikethrough. With one more click I can make the item a subscript (which reduces its size and makes the page easier to see unfinished items). One click on the scrollbar brings me to a new page. I can highlight an item by selecting it and using one click. I can minimize it to the notification area, so it doesn't take taskbar space. Lots of other features, too. It's all very versatile and easily adaptable to AutoFocus.

Has anyone tried it with Microsoft Outlook tasks and got any tips?

Frank, thank you for the additional information.

Christine, thanks for the suggetion. I know that many people rave about OneNote, but I don't have it and I wouldn't touch anything MS Office 2007 (read: the 'Ribbon' interface) with a ten foot pole. In addition, there is no OneNote for the Mac (and I'd like to be able to use the files at home as well, preferably synced via a portable device).

Rod, thanks for the pointer towards Jarte. Nice find. As far as I can tell from their website, this program is free and portable (can run from a USB thumbdrive), and it uses a tabbed interface, which would make it easy to emulate the page structure of AF. Plus, it uses the RTF format, what makes it compatible with many other programs (even on my Mac).

As for Outlook, I think the only reasonable way to group batches of tasks like the pages in AF, is to group them by date created. Which isn't exactly the same, but might come close enough. I had a brief look at it, but I'll go with a paper-based solution for the start.

Hi Kirsty,

I posted on my setup using Outlook 2007 -- it was a day or so ago. Let me know what you think.

-David

Rod,

in the meantime I downloaded Jarte, and it looks nice. I especially like the 'minimal' Layout. After activating the tools panel (that is off in the minimal layout by default), I can see what you meant with "one click" strikethrough (however, you still have to triple-click before to select the whole line). Highlighting takes one more click (to select the color).

Some special niceties:
- you can set it to always reopen all the files from your last session (so you can open all your 'active pages' at once),
- you can easily search through all open documents (albeit this setting will not 'stick').

Unfortunately,
- the minimal layout doesn't show the tabs (you can cycle through open files with Ctrl-Tab, though),
- you can't (at least I couldn't figure it out) select non-continuous items (like you can in Word or OOo), which would come in handy for cut/paste archiving multiple items,
- I couldn't find out how to add footnotes (I doubt that this is possible, although I read it in a review of Jarte). This immediately defeats its usefulness as a word processor for me, but I can see it as a good AF tool.

BTW: You can also have one-click strikeout in Word (I don't know about 2007, but at least in 2003) by adding the strikeout formatting to the toolbar. You can even add a keyboard shortcut to it. Word also gives you one-click highlighting.

Rick,

I have been using paper, and so I have that visual cue of completed items.

To me it has been motivating to see how many items on a page are completed. It both gives me a sense of satisfaction and encourages me to complete the few remaining (provided i get that appropriate sense that the item "stands out").

You say that you're finding it cumbersome to deal with this in OmniOutliner. If you're still using OmniOutliner, have you tried creating a named style for strike through and associating it with a function key. Then you can check off the item and then strike through with a keystroke.

Lenore