[emacs-wiki-discuss] Re: Questions regarding planner-trunk

[Michael Heinrich]

Hi Mark,

cc'ing my answer to the list. It's long, but you asked ;-).

Mark Simpson <address@hidden> writes:

> Pardon me for responding to you in person but i was hoping you could
> describe a bit of how you are going about using planner for a GTD like
> workflow.  I see from your post that you are using a single
> NextActions project; do you implement some sort of Tickler file?

Last week I did the transition to GTD.  So I'm new to planning the GTD
way with planner-mode although I use planner-mode since about one year.

Here's how I use planner-mode for GTD:

  - Day pages: I use the day pages as calendar-replacement, i.e. for
    actions that have to be done on that specific day or appointments
    and so on.  Therefore I want to use planner-appt and planner-diary,
    but the last time I tried both there was this infinite loop thing
    (s. mailing list). I also use the day pages as tickler file.

  - Plan pages: I use them as context-lists (@Home, @Work, @Web, ...
    they all begin with "@"), the other GTD lists (_NextActions,
    _AllActions, _SomedayMaybe, _WaitingFor, _Projects, ...) and as
    project pages (EmacsPlannerConfiguration, AdminServer, ...).

  - Tasks: Every idea, every project and every action gets a
    planner-task with default priority "B".  Projects go to the
    "_Projects"-page and get a new plan page for the actions of this
    project. Project actions go to the project page, optional to the
    _NextActions page and max. one context list.  But all go to the
    _AllActions page.  At this time I do this by hand. I still need a
    function to create a task without date (i.e. date "nil") which asks
    for a context and an editable pagelist with "_AllActions" and
    "_Nextactions" as default or a "planner-create-task-next-action"
    which only asks for context and project-page.

    What I already have is a planner-mark-tasks-hook (partly from you
    and Sacha) which removes the task from _NextActions or _WaitingFor
    and copies it to the daily page if it gets marked as done or
    canceled.  If the task gets marked as pending ("P") it will be
    removed from _NextActions and will be copied to _WaitingFor.

    All actions stay on _AllActions forever. With planner-trunk there's
    a separate section for completed tasks so I don't need a page for
    completed tasks.

    I'm looking for a possibility to mark the task-creation date and the
    pending date (when was it copied over to _WaitingFor?). The task-end
    date is marked by copying it to the daily page. If I would disable
    the automatic copying of tasks on the daily page, then I could use
    this date for task-creation and task-pending but this is too
    dangerous for me because I don't want to loose a task which I didn't
    do on that specific day (which not should happen ;-)

  - View of tasks: I use planner-trunk and will use the ideas from this
    thread to get different views of my tasks. E.g. _NextActions by
    context or by project.

  - Notes: I extensively use notes from tasks.  I still need a function
    which creates the task on the project page of that task (i.e. the
    plan page of that task which does not begin with "_" nor "@" nor
    matches a day page) and not on the actual page (in most cases
    _NextActions).  Notes on the daily page are not so important for me
    but sometimes I create notes there which don't belong to a project
    and have no other place to live at that time. This leads to the next
    point... 

  - Desktop search: At this time I don't have it running but I think
    swish-e is the one I will use. It should then index my plan pages, my
    mail and reference documents for my projects. If I search for
    something I want a muse-page as result with links to the found
    documents.

Regards, Michael.