Beyond “On the Agenda"

Talk
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I’ve been using Agenda for a while, and I know there are plans to deal with tasks better. But something is bugging me, I don’t have a solution, and I don’t quite know what I’m looking for! So…

I’m using On the Agenda to keep my attention on Notes that I’ll need to deal with in the coming few days.

I came to Agenda from using an actual paper notebook, and despite now using Agenda for almost everything else, I still often find it really useful to write on paper, today’s date and list of the 3 - 6 key things I aim to acheive today.

These aren’t the same as Notes in Agenda, because they are tasks or goals (with multiple tasks I don’t need to write down), which may be included in several of the Notes that are On the Agenda. Looking at the list of Note titles in On the Agenda is therefore not a substitute.

Could Agenda include an alternative to my daily list in a paper notebook?

Perhaps this could be autogenerated by ‘starring’ tagged tasks or goals within Notes? Or by marking them as ‘today’ (a la Things)?

Could that autogenerated list also be manualy edited - so I could, as I do on paper - add comments, like “see Note about xyz”? (Automatic insertation of links by typing the title of a Note would make this fast and frictionless - which is what I want when I’m trying to get my head around what I need to do today).

Could that list plus my typed comments and links, be a kind of scratch pad that sits in the side bar, and I can tick off things as I finish them? (I can see various workarounds using the current functionality of Agenda, such as a pinned note in a project called ‘Today’ or ‘Focus’ etc, but it would be out of sight unless I navigated to it.)

Something in the sidebar, which could become a separate pop up window on click, would make it always there, like my paper notebook lying open on the table next to me. Under the calendar? At a glance, in one screen, I can see my calendar for the day, my key tasks/goals for the day, and the list of notes I’m currently working on. (Pop up window so that I can have it open while I scroll around other notes as I review them. Just realised, this ‘need’ is related to capturing the results of a regular review of goals/tasks/areas of work etc.)

Bit of a ramble, but need to get it out of my system!

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We do have ideas for quick notes.

The way I do it now is to have a General category, with a Scratch Project, and in there I have a daily list of todos. It is not quite what you want, but it goes a long way to a sheet of paper to jot stuff on.

The idea of gathering items from different notes may become possible with tags when we add a bunch of features, like paragraph level search results. Then you could create a saved search to show paragraphs that match your special tag, and you are very close to having what you want.

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Thanks!

I’m now trying this:

A recurring all day event in my calendar called ‘To do Today’, which is linked to a Note (in ‘Other Projects’ ‘General’) called ‘Key tasks’.

In this note I have the following headings:

  • today
  • every week
  • this week
  • next week
  • soon

I’ve set up this note before, but have been bad at keeping it up dated because it got lost from sight.

Hopefully now I’ll see the link to this in my calendar within Agenda every day, and that will prompt me to review and revise it regularly. I’ll move items between the headings.

‘Every week’ has a link to note with various recurring admin tasks, and a saved search on a tag ‘Admin’ to pick up Admin tasks within projects.

Setting this up just now, and reviewing my notes, I’ve found it much easier once I did the reviewing on my iPad and writing the note on my Mac! (Pop up window please!)

I’ll see how it goes!

EDITED TO ADD:

I’ve now added #Action to this note, so that other notes with that tag show up in ‘related notes’. This should be helpful for reviewing. I try to use #Action in notes to indicate an important task, which may often have several checklist items associated.

I’m also going to try to be more rigourous about tagging people in notes, so that when I add ‘call @JohnDough’ to my todo list, related notes will show in the side bar.

Edited to add more:
It’s now the day after, and I’m finding that Agenda doesn’t handle the date of a note linked to a recurring event as I expected. Posted in support forum.

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