GTG

Additional tag use cases

Asked by Greg Knittl

I have been working on my own implementation of the GTD for a year. My "GUI" is just a text editor using text indenting and folding. I have spent most of my effort wrestling with tagging issues. Here are some thoughts for you to consider in your tag design.

I group tags into "axes". So far when, where, who, how and project.

when - I put both fixed times like appointments, flights and target times on this axis. I have designed for the ability to include calendar logic such as meetings that occur on the second Tuesday of each month. This is by allowing tags on the when axis to point to a when axis helper file that will contain calculation details (not implemented yet).

where - I'm car-less so I need to maximize the number of errands I do per trip. I have designed for the ability to include GPS points and map where tagged todos probably using Open Street Map. I have enabled this by creating a where axis helper file that includes the GPS coordinates, subway stop, street intersection etc for a where tag. Some things, such as shopping at a chain store can be done in multiple places so I may end up with multiple levels of where tags.

who - If somebody calls on the phone, if I'm emailing or meeting somebody in person I want a quick reference of all outstanding todos related to them. It would be nice to integrate this axis with my address book, but I haven't even thought about that yet

how - what tools are required: internet? computer? telephone? book? For example when travelling it's important to batch up and prioritize internet tasks at an internet cafe. I'm still experimenting here to get a consistent, orthogonal set of how tags. So far no obvious requirement for a helper file.

project - usually this is one level above a GTD project as it has broad objectives to group my actions which are more like GTD proper projects with more hard edged completion criteria. I have a helper file for this axis to contain project close date which closes out all sub actions.

I definitely have a need to associate additional information with a tag, more information than I care to type each time. This could also be done with a macro. Currently I include the axis in the tag such as how:internet (or how:@), who:Anne. I could just write @2009-03-11, @internet, @Anne and have one consolidated helper file or a lookup that allows my programs to find the correct helper file.

Eventually I would like to be able to use boolean and default logic on tags. For example to indicate the default location for a running meeting but specify the odd exception when it is in another location.

It's a lot and I'm finding it challenging to define a concise syntax to handle everything I would like.

Your concept of variable levels of nested todos might help with some of the complexity I've encountered with longer running or repeating todos. If I get a chance I will look at your source to find how you store the information. I'm currently using XML and querying it with XSLT 2 which could handle variable depth records.

Greg Knittl

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Bertrand Rousseau
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Lionel Dricot (ploum-deactivatedaccount) said :
#1

That's interesting Greg. We are also using XML. But I don't see any question. Could you please highlight me the question and, if there's no question, mark it as "solved" ?

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Greg Knittl (gknittl) said :
#2

You're right, it's not really a question. It's more of a feature request/design suggestion. Would a bug report be the more appropriate way to report this?

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Best Bertrand Rousseau (bertrand-rousseau) said :
#3

Yes, if you have feature requests to suggest us, a bug report would be fine - just make sure you split your requests in a bug per feature so that we can discuss them spearately.

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Greg Knittl (gknittl) said :
#4

thanks, will do