Get Everything Done

I've been using FV for the past few days with a good deal of success. So far, I've only experimented with my personal tasks using paper, but am ready to try to implement FV at work. I could use paper for this, but my company is highly Outlook dependant, so this may be the easiest choice.

Has anyone experimented with FV and Outlook yet? So far, I've set up the following using the Tasks feature:

- I customized the task list to include the task's Subject, Date Modified, Priority, and Date Due.
- I inputed each task I need to complete, both large projects and small items.
- Sorting the list by Date Modified orders the tasks from oldest -> most recent.

To process the list:

- Using FV rules, I start at the top and "dot" the first item by making it High Priority. The task is automatically moved to the end of the list.
- Continuing down the list, I add additional tasks to the chain in the same fashion.
- When I reach the end of the list, all the tasks in new chain have been automatically sorted to the end.
- I work on each task in the chain in reverse order. To complete a task, I simply mark it as complete. To reenter a task at the end of the list, I reset the priority to Normal.
- Once all tasks in the chain have been worked on, I repeat the process from the top.

Other points:
- I add new items to the list as they pop up throughout the day.
- For emails, I use the Follow Up Flag feature if messages require some sort of action or if I am waiting on a reply. This way, I'm able to treat these items the same as tasks in the FV list.
- Items that cannot be acted on yet (much like deferred tasks in Autofocus) are given a Low priority. I review these items periodically.

This process is quite simple and seems to be working well so far, but I wonder if I am missing something, or if there are other ways of going about it. I'd appreciate any feedback.

Thanks!
Stew

Will
You might give Pocket Informant a look. It works on all phone platforms, including Blackberry, Android, iphone and Windows based. The task set up capabilities give many, many options, including a starring feature (a la toodledo). I've been using this program since my old pocket pc days. I've tried lots of others, but end up coming back to Pocket Informant every time. I've found it well worth the cost. It can be set up as simply, or as complex as you wish, that's the real beauty of their system.

If you enter today's date as the 'start date', you can sort by start date ascending, which would work for your 'modified date'.

Hope it works for you. I've been using it with PI by using the star capacity, which you can then filter by. It's not bad at all.

Hi,

Will is correct. I have two views, one that has due date sorted earliest to most recent. I don't use due sate "as "due date" anything created today has a due date of today. Any earlier task that I worked on but did not complete gets a due date of today. The view has conditional formatting so any thing that gets a high priority is highlighted.

I "dot" by making it a high priority, then have a saved view that shows only the high priority tasks in reverse due date order so I only see the dotted tasks and the most recent ones are on top.

Re: Portability, I gave up on making it any more portable than with a laptop. I do take my laptop home everyday and keep Outlook on. So the only time I don't have the list readily available is when I am out of the house or office and not travelling from one to another. New tasks I think of at the time are sent to myself as an email with my blackberry.

Hope this is helpful.

gsync can sync all outlooks tasks to toodledo or google tasks. Toodledo has very good iPhone and iPad apps. So, Toodledo might help you in terms of portability but you would still have to sort it appropriately to get the right "view" as you may have setup in the outlook. Perhaps, one view with due dates and the other with priority might do the trick. Of course, I haven't tried this setup but I did try outlook with Toodledo setup for AF earlier.

GC