ForumsQuestionsFolder Groups and Folder Notes
Folder Groups and Folder Notes
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uuo118 |
I'm trying to implement GTD on toodledo (iPhone & web) but I'm stuggling with a couple of things...
I'm using Folders to represent "Projects", and as (according to GTD)any "outcome" that has more than 1 next action required to complete is classed as a project then I have a lot of projects (at least 60, up to 100) at any one time. 60 Folders would be quite difficult to navigate on the screen, so for now I am having to mix projects within folders. What I would like is to be able to arrange folders into groups of similar projects for easier navigation. Also, to fulfil the intention of GTD, it is necessary do define the required outcome of a project in order to maintain the direction of the project. To solve this it would be handy to add notes to Folders to define the required outcome. I have tried to use sub-tasks to acheive this (making the projects "tasks" rather than folders). But this leaves the (non-actionable) projects mixed in with all the actions, and they cannot be easily organised when creating a sub-task, as the "parent" task is not shown as a characteristic of the sub-task (unlike folders), you have to go onto the web and drag them around. Any ideas on how to resolve this (other than creating Folder Groups and Folder Notes?). |
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vegheadjones |
No real resolution, but I do prioritize projects by putting a "*" before the folder name on the projects I am most likely going to work on that week, and then used a saved search to list only projects with a *.
Alas, you cannot to a saved search on "folder contains *" only "folder is *" so I have to redo the saved esearch every time. Oh I long for a folder contains function in the saved search. And I have a separate list with project outcomes Putting them in a folder note field would be great. |
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Canyon Russell |
I think an important distinction, that I have only recently come to, is the dividing line between the Project list and the Someday/Maybe list.
The Project list, as described by David, is only your "Active Projects". The Someday/maybe list is the "All Projects I could ever do" list. I think this misunderstanding was one of my early stumbling blocks with GTD. I was trying to keep a "Master Project" list and ultimately felt overwhelmed by it. It seems much more reasonable to make the Someday/Maybe list the "Master" list and only move projects to the "Projects" list when you are actively working on them. Each week in the Review (you are doing weekly reviews, right?) you look at both lists. Then you decide, for the coming week, which projects need to move from the Someday list to the Projects list, and which need to go from Projects back to Someday because you aren't going to do anything on them this week. As this applies to Toodledo, I am "Rebooting" my GTD system right now and my plan is to create folders for my "Active Projects" and keep both my "Projects" and "Someday/Maybe" lists in Evernote along with all my "support materials". This leaves Toodledo for what it does best: Track Actions. I hope this helps, I know it was a major revelation to me. |
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uuo118 |
@vegheadjones
I do attempt to group folders already by using prefix letters, such as customer projects start with an "x", home projects start with a "z" and personal work projects start with a "u" etc. This helps to keep similar projects together, but it's still one long list. @Canyon Russell That's a good point about separating someday/maybe list from projects, but already I keep all my s/m items in just 2 folders (home and work). All the other items are active projects, and moving them around all the time is quite a pain. If I fully followed GTD and made things like buying tyres into projects rather than single next actions I'd end up with hundreds of projects. How do you plan to move items between evernote and toodledo? Manual typing, or is there a more automated method? |
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Canyon Russell |
@uuo118
Copy and Paste. I really don't think that I'm going to need to spin up a new project faster than that. One of the other things I'm focusing on is not "Capturing" into Toodledo. I have a LoFi capturing system and only put things into Evernote/Toodledo after it has been processed (What outcome does this represent and what is the next action.) I found that by trying to skip the "Processing" step and just capture into my system I ended up with many "Outcomes" as next actions. Often these were not clearly defined or shouldn't be currently active. |
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Adam Compton |
I'd also like to put in a vote for a more integrated form of Folder Notes, particularly some way to view the contents of a folder alongside the tasks in it. The first thing I do when I break a project down into tasks is to braindump the project's parameters and desired outcome, and then use that data to define tasks. I then revisit the project notes for all my active projects during my weekly review, adding and revising any tasks that I might have forgotten earlier. This is much harder to do when the notes are stuck in a different organizational system.
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jgallen23 |
As far as Folder Groups, you can check out my greasemonkey/fluid script to allow for folder categories: http://www.jga23.com/2009/01/08/toodledo-folder-categories-script-10/ This will let you group projects (folders).
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roddyt |
I'm trying to get up to speed with with both Toodledo and GTD, so forgive me if I misunderstand some of this discussion, but as regards the desire to have folder notes, doesn't the Notebook category satisfy that?
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