Those are all great responses but I’m still not clear on how to get that last mile.
Tasks are being accumulated during the day(s), where do I see the bigger picture on what needs to get done?
Projects have due-dates. I have overviews for projects that end, for example tomorrow or in ten days. Select an overview and then, from the top of the screen see what projects are in (drop down).
Through the day, notes and tasks collected belong to projects. If a certain note contains something with a due-date I assign it with such.
When I really need to be remembered I make Reminders for notes.
For me, this illustrates (again) why the folks at Agenda need to develop and share very good models and tutorials. These could introduce a handful of ways to use Agenda, and introduce the underlying concepts at the same time. The models and associated tutorials wouldn’t take but 1-3 hours tops to get through, but at least folks would have a few solid models to start with.
I agree with Peter. I soooo want to make Agenda work for me, but the “Holiday in the Pencils”, “Developing Yak App”, etc sample projects don’t really work for me. They’re good to see as a final result (if anything in Agenda can be called ‘final’) but I don’t understand how the examples got to the final result.
I do sound, live shows and recordings. I was talking with a student (intern) about manuals for mixers, and they were saying how the manuals don’t really help you do things (mixers can be used for many different purposes), they just explain features. The same can be said for other equipment (eg mics; they rarely tell you how to place them for different uses). I told the student to look at Mackie mixer manuals as they show you how to use the mixer and how to hook it up for different scenarios.
This is what Agenda needs to do IMHO; have multiple well thought out scenarios of how folks can use it, and explain it well enough so folks can understand what the options are. After looking at a few scenarios, folks will understand enough to decide how they want to start. It is very frustrating to make a mess and not know what your doing. Better to start out with an organized approach from the start and then make adjustments.
Peter is hitting the point, I also have the feeling that Agenda could be much more useful for me but it doesn’t. It isn’t yet in the flow as I have to think that it is time to write a given note in Agenda. Workflows would be very welcome
Thanks for the feedback and suggestions, I already have it on my list for quite a while to make some screencasts to illustrate some of the workflows already highlighted in the Talk section of this community. Unfortunately always tricky to find a balance between adding features to Agenda and spending time making the screencasts, but I hope to get to it one day!
I have taken quite a liking to Agenda, but without a way to effectively (and, most importantly, reliably) handle the Inbox and the review, it never will be. OF and Things are way better choices for GTD.
Agenda’s integration with Reminders is a good start, as getting stuff into Reminders can in turn be picked up by OmniFocus or Things… so I can certainly see Agenda serving as an entry point for tasks that wind up in a GTD system.
Agenda shines at planning for meetings, and reaches just far enough out from that to help the user integrate meetings into what they have to do.
Honestly, I could argue that trying to make it a proper GTD app is a bridge (or three) too far.
While Agenda isn’t built as strictly around GTD as some other apps, there’s nothing to prevent you from creating and inbox project, use tags to mark notes with certain states, etc. And with the introduction of the powerful sharing extension in version 10 it’s easier than ever to send content into this created “inbox” project, ready to review once you return to Agenda.
Did you see how few videos on YouTube are there? It’s a shame…
I vote for an official YouTube channel, with webinars and screencasts; even collaborations with users or gurus of productivity. Maybe you must hire someone for only for this area.
… there’s nothing to prevent you from creating and inbox project, use tags to mark notes with certain states, etc.
That feels a bit like a combination of reaching over my shoulder to scratch the itch on my butt and driving nails with a hammer, though—you can…
Of course, you’re right: where there is a will, one can certainly find a way. And, as overly laborious as applying that workflow at scale sounds to me, I’m sure there are users with light enough task lists to make such an approach work for themselves.
All I’m offering here, as a thesis that speaks to @orencheni’s original message, is that there definitely exists a tipping point where Agenda will lead to more friction than benefit as a “GTD tool”.
All that said, I would support a YouTube channel, if indeed you guys had the bandwidth to organize and maintain it (that, too, is challenging work). From the activity I’m seeing in these community discussions, you may even get some good mileage from inviting the community to upload their own videos, which Agenda moderators could elect to feature by adding them to official playlists of videos from the community.
Anyway, I’m starting to suspect I’m procrastinating some work thanks again for the super enjoyable app.
The YouTube videos are indeed high on my wishlist to spend some time on, there’s indeed a lot of requests. It’s difficult to find the time alas and so far when it comes to spending time developing vs spending time making the videos it always fell towards the former so far. I’m going to try to make a pilot and see how the reaction is. Thanks for the encouragement!
A quick plug for yesterday’s NestedFolder podcast episode from @heyscottyj and @RosemaryOrchard in which they address exactly this question: “as a starting user how do I go about setting up my organisation”:
I agree with Scotty that often it’s best to start out simple, not trying to overthink the structure and organisation, and instead let it grow organically and adapt to your personal style and situation.
I agree with some people here that there is a last mile issue.
I love that I can create reminders within notes, that is one of Agenda’s game changers. I would like to kindly suggest that the next step be to
Create a pane that pulls all of those reminders (or tasks) from within notes and centralizes them into a single window/pane within Agenda.
Going further it would be great to see them ordered by date so people can get a sense of what is to come.
Idea: Once someone creates a reminder within a note (say in a “Next steps/ Tasks” section of a template for meeting notes), those reminders are viewable by date within Agenda in a pane only for reminders/tasks
@mekentosj is something like this in the pipeline?
) but I don’t understand how the examples got to the final result.
thanks again for the super enjoyable app.