Develop the Integrated Management System

I normally keep list of doable actions in the Notes field of a Task. The Task header will normally read:
Current Action [Project Name]

+ Done Item 1
+ Done Item 2
_______________
- Next Item 1
- Next Item 2

Now there appear to be larger, complex projects like preparing oneself to a Caribbean holiday! :) It requires more thorough planning. But the most important feature of a “complex” project is that there could be several doable items on it…

- >> Buy Air Tickets [: Tickets]

+ >> Buy Air Tickets [: Tickets]

This enables to track even complex projects like moving house or preparing to a holiday.

Higher-level planning (on Life objectives & Goals levels) still remains to be implemented. Sally McGhee’s approach is one of them, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to have “meaningful objective” intermixed in the same list… something doesn’t seem right here. Gotta try & see.

Some small lists are very well maintained in Notes section.
You just have to start its name with, say, Underscore (”_”) and it will be shown at the top of the list.

Examples are: one-time shopping list for Tesco, data about fuel purchases on petrol stations, defects list to sort at the car dealership.

The splendor of these is – when you don’t need them anymore, you just flush them from your PDA, and that synchronises everywhere (hopefully).

Using ListPro for very easy lists is definitely an overkill.
For short-lived, short notes keep with Notes.
For big and/or longer-lived reference lists like: International Telephone Codes to Country and vice versa conversion list; UK Postcodes; Personal DVD catalog…—ListPro is a good choice because you can search it.

According to what I’ve read, I started with the Task List.

I didn’t agree with Sally McGhee that there is a reason to keep goals in the Task list and structurise the goals in several levels - that, in my opinion, should be left outside PDA and Outlook (“43 things”, on the other end, is a great place to maintain goals but it’s a lousy to-do list - everything to its own).

But I agreed with Ms. McGhee that Categories:none task list is a great place to collect actions and project ideas—because in PDA there is also a filter where you can see “No Categories” tasks and work on them everywhere (including queues or sitting on the toilet! :))

So all the “Projects” (complex, non-elementary tasks) will be replaced with “Next Actions” which are what needs to be done on the project right now and has no dependencies. I use square brackets to enclose project name, and put this project reference after the task. My idea of IMS means it must work on PDA as well, so I keep project name and actions concise. Example: Call Dell [Tape Unit Xchange]. This allows to keep the task names mostly readable in PDA 240*320 screen—and jog the memories necessary to complete this task.

Whatever additional information needs to go with the project (yes, whole project, not just this action) – starting with the project action list with checkmarks, required contacts, references – goes to the notes.

When I finish the Next Action, if project has more Next Actions, I just change the title to further Next Action, preserving the project name. This scheme produces much less rubbish accumulating in Task list - only ONE Completed Task for a Project - yet constantly updating Next Action which you mark done within the project Notes—so you still have the pleasure of checking out the items! :)

“Recent” filter in my PDA Tasks list allows to see what I’ve accomplished/changed recently, so if a Next Action arises where you thought it was all done, you just find the last Next Action on this project in Recent list.

So looks like without buying and studying more third-party software, I’m so far fine with what I have on PDA. (I hate the situations when lots of tools exist to do the same job – it’s dirty… I prefer just to find one tool good enough and scrap the others.)

In big Outlook I also drag Tasks to Calendar to schedule them and drag selected text into Notes (not forgetting to put a reasonable title to the first line—it will name the note in the list later!).

Among next To do items now: how to use Outlook Notes -> Microsoft OneNote export capability. I do capture some notes on PDA and Outlook Notes. Must find a way of manually export only relevant ones. Also probably it’s worth to try & always keep Notes to a minimum so they aren’t lost - the relevant should go to OneNote and the short-term ones promptly deleted after they become irrelevant.

The problem so far is I haven’t figured out how do I synchronise OneNote books at home & at work easily. Sending .one files to myself by mail works to a degree but isn’t the pretties way of doing things. Could be, I don’t need it at all – just synchronise home-related notes at my home PC and business-related notes at my work PC. But this all needs more thought.

Integrated Management System is what Sally McGhee calls a fully-loaded Outlook and paper processing system, also following the Getting Things Done ideology (cf. David Allen’s book)

I already had some of my ideas working, these two books just look like a revelation to me, lots of fresh ideas and insights.

Very soon I will have it all in place, working. 100%. These books were worth every penny. Still more to read.