Blue Knight Sojourn of the Mind

### ATTENTION ###

I have combined all the posts in to a separate area on this blog. You can reach it by selecting the “Getting Things Done” link on the top of the page or by clicking this link.

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Before Pocket Informant 8 I had to have tons of categories to get the Getting Things Done (GTD) system working, and that confused me to no end, which is probably the reason that I went away from it and tried to find other solutions.

With the inclusion of multiple filters and “my views” there is no more reason to do so, I can make Pocket Informant (PI) behave any way I want to.

So here is my system!

I create a new category group in PI and call it Topics. Now the name does not matter but the category group is important as you will be using this group in conjunction with GTD group.

In this group I create the following:

- Home
- Work
! Projects
! SubProjects
#Inactive

Now lets go in to how I use them and then I will guide you how to create the appropriate filters.

The filters starting with a dash (-) I use to subdivide my GTD Tasks in to home and work, so that in a click I can isolate appropriate tasks and look at them. I so fra has limited them to only two (2) but that does not really matter as you can have as many as you want. Just one thing to note is that the more you have the more filters you have to set-up, but that is a one time task.

How is this used? Simple, every time you mark something for any @Task simply add the -Category to it and then you can filter on that easily.

I have the ! Projects, and that is there only for the purpose of isolating the Projects away from everything. As I will be doing projects later in another post. The second task of the kind is the !SubProjects, now that is there for one reason only. It is there so that sub-projects will not show up as part of the daily task list.

How is the !Projects used, also pretty simple, if the task is part of the project, and we will be talking a lot about it when I get to describing projects, then you simple check that as part of the category as well. For !SubProjects it is also a simple thing to use, that is done for exclusion purposes, so if you are creating a main project, a sub project, etc, just select this one and it will also be excluded from normal filter view.

The #Inactive is a very special project, it is there to exclude things from views when they are inactive. For example, if you are working on a project, and have outlined every step but until you complete step one, you can not go on to step2. Well you just mark it as part of your category selection and it will not show up on the regular view, but will show up on the project view.

FILTER SETUP

Now for the filters! In PI you have the ability to select multiple categories as part of a “any or all” as well as “Filter Selected or Hide Selected”. We are going to start by hiding anything that is not work related.

To do so go to the filter screen and select “Hide Selected” at the top and then select “Any Of” at the top, then click on -Home, !SubProject, #Inactive. This will create a view that will allow you to see any of the things that are in any category accept the ones below. Follow this by clicking filter on the bottom left of the screen. After you verify the view is correct, select My Views from the menu, and proceed to save the view. Call it GTD-Work or whatever you want.

For the next filter lets hide everything that is not Home related, we follow the same steps as above accept when we get to the Filter screen we select -Work, !SubProject, #Inactive. Once again verify this view and save it as GTD-Home.

Now we create a filter to work on #Inactive tasks, now for now we are going to select all Inactive tasks. Even the project tasks. If GTD had real boolean categories that would be a lot easier. For that in filters just hit Filter Selected and then select #Inactive.

Now for the hard part, we need to create a project view. This becomes a little bit harder as now we need to switch views as well besides only doing filters. So first from the Menu select Task Filtering, and then Project. This will put you in to the correct view. Then go ahead and bring up the filter and select !Projects and !SubProjects. What this will do is create a view for all projects. Save this in my views as GTD-Projects.

USE!!!

Now for the use! Each task must be part of a GTD @ Task, it must also be part of GTD - Category (Home or Work). In Project a sub task automatically inherits parents categories, so if the parent is a su task (which is most likely) then make sure that you select !Project so that it will not be filtered.

OK!!!

Any and all comments welcome on this!

- May 04, 2008 -

A little update here as to the usability of this system, and I want to say that so far it has been working out great for me and I recommend that you try it. I can see it on the PocketPC / Microsoft Mobile device any time I need to. I can also use Outlook, and other services that I sync with to edit the information as well.