[pmwiki-users] Ideas for PIM, GTD (Getting Things Done)

Sandy sandy at onebit.ca
Tue Mar 6 14:33:22 CST 2007


Several here have expressed an interest in using PmWiki for
work-life-time management.

Check out http://www.dogmelon.com.au/ns/GTD.shtml

The page talks about using David Allen's Getting Things Done system on
a wiki. (Specifically NoteStudio, which, unlike PmWiki, runs on a Palm 
and hotsynchs to the main computer.)

In short, and translated to PmWiki:

Groups are:

- Homepage.
- Contexts. More details later.
- Projects.
- Calendar.
- Due. aka Tickler. Possibly combined with Calendar.
- Reference, Archives, all the other usual stuff.

The system makes extensive use of (:pagelist link= :)

All the notes for a project go on a page in Projects. Project is very 
broad. It can be an accumulation of little things, or a
big project. The key thing is that everything you need to do gets into
the wiki, no matter how big or small.


Each project gets at least one Next Action (NA). To be an NA, the action
must be doable. Getting the car serviced is a project, telephoning the
garage is an action. Reading the odometer so you don't feel like an 
idiot when the service rep asks for it is the NA. Every project gets an 
NA, otherwise you'll never be reminded to work on it.

"Wait" is a valid NA. Often these NAs will also have a Due.abc link, so 
you don't wait too long.

Some people have an additional group called Someday/Maybe, to collect 
things you don't want to call projects but may want to work on.

Each NA gets a Context, which is where you are when you can do it. 
Assign contexts by adding a link beside the NA. So, assuming you have 
the odometer reading, your NA is:
Call garage. [Context.Phone].

Only assign contexts to NAs; no sense reminding yourself to do step two 
if you haven't done step one.

The main page has (:pagelist link=Context.*:). Now you have a single
page showing all the things you have to do, sorted by where you can do 
them, and without all the actions that you can't do just yet. And you 
don't have to manually maintain a list of phone calls to make.

Beautiful, isn't it? (Yep, the Context group is a lot like the Category 
group.)

Calendar. If you need one. PmCalendar works. Or just a page listing
appointments. I'd (:include:) the current day (week?) on the site
homepage, I'm sure there's a way to do it.

Due. This one is a bit trickier. Decide up front how finely you want to
divide things. For each action with a deadline, add a link to Due.Date
(or Due.Month, or Due.Hour). Then on Due.HomePage (or Main.HomePage) put
(:pagelist link=Due.* order=#title :)

As with Calendar, I'm sure there's a way to include the next week's 
worth of Due on the Main.HomePage.

I wonder if you can add (:pagelist link=Due.ThisDay:) to each entry in 
the display-by-month?

You might not want to bother distinguishing between Due and Calendar. 
Depending on your schedule, you might not even need a proper month view. 
Just use (:pagelist link=Due.* order=#title :).

No more flipping back and forth between calendar and project page while 
planning, just stay on the project page and add a link to Due.Date. Then 
go to Due.HomePage to see the schedule for all your projects combined.

Note: The GTD system does not assign times to things unless absolutely 
necessary. It uses Contexts, which are more flexible. It reminds you to 
make the call while the computer's down but your phone's still working, 
even if you hadn't planned on doing it for another few days.

I remember talk about adding a feature to (:pagelist:) to include a
few words on either side of the link. This would save having to look up
each link for more details.

References, Archives, Diary -- all the usual suspects. Wikis are 
searchable. All the pagelist commands above can include or exclude these 
groups.

You can probably do most of this by searching for keywords. I like using 
backlinks because it's more forgiving of typos. If you misspell 
[C.Telephone], you'll still see it in the list of all pages linking to 
members of C.*, but if you'll never find it if you search for "Telephone".

+++++

The GTD refresher
http://www.dogmelon.com.au/ns/GTD.shtml
is well worth reading for philosophy and examples. (I still prefer 
Covey's system for deciding what you to do, but GTD is better for 
actually getting those things done.)

The rest of the stuff on the page, about how to use a wiki for GTD, is
movies. Skip the one about customizing it, and have something else to do
while the rest play. (I hate tutorial movies of any type, except cooking 
shows.) They use the first letter of the page name where I've used 
groups; the wiki they use doesn't have groups.

The templates they talk about are here:
http://www.dogmelon.com.au/ns/Resource%20-%20Downloads.shtml
They're in XML format; lots of codes to wade through to see the actual 
content. Each XML file is a book. You can run the demo of NoteStudio 
without a Palm if you want to read the full GTD manual.

If PmWiki ran on the Palm and hotsynched to the desktop, wow!

Cheers!

Sandy



















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