Interesting take on GTD, MindManager and GyroQ

I love mind mapping (I use MindManager Pro all the time), and am into GTD, so I'm always interested in hearing how people put them together.

Eric Mack (or Eric Mac, as I call him) has a great article on how he is using GTD and MindManager, and he has also added Gyronix's GyroQ into the mix. Ironically, I just watched the online demo of GyroQ yesterday (I own a copy of Gyronix's ResultsManager but have never quite gotten it to "click" for me).

One of the things I really like about the GyroQ demo is that it seems like it allows you to simultaneously add a task to your queue, assign an "owner" and file it according to whether it's a commitment you owe to someone else, or one that someone else owes you. That's pretty slick.

If I spent more time at my desk instead of traveling, I think this might be a viable option for me, but I just don't see it fitting with my work style because I don't always have my computer open to capture commitments. What about you?

If I had a magic wand:

In my dream scenario, I would be able to send an email or voice mail to a "GTD parser" service that would decipher my tasks and email an Outlook task back to me that would automatically show up in my list in the proper category/context. That would be cool.

I could also let other people send emails to that address, and they could be added as "candidate" actions. The service would, of course be able to tell me by my originating email address or caller ID from my phone. Any request originating from anyone else would be subject to my reviewing the task before accepting it, assigning it, etc.

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Related items:

• My GTD Odyssey - Parts 1, 2, 3, 4
• Creating job descriptions with MindManager (8/14/2005)

Comments

[Eric Mack]

OK, Dwayne, are you by chance in league with Michael Sampson? He's been trying to get me to change my last name to Mac for some time.

I enjoy your blog. Thanks for the mention.

Eric

[Big Wes]

There is a free service that does something like what you want. It is called Jott (you can register at www.jott.com). I learned about it over on the David Co. forums.

After you register an email address, you are able to call a 800 number and leave a Jott. This Jott is transcribed to an email message and sent to your chosen email address. The transcription is great--because it is done by humans. THere is also an option to skip transcription and just have the audio file delivered.

Pretty cool service and it's free...I've been using it for about two weeks with pretty good results thus far.

[Dwayne Melancon]

Thanks, Wes - great tip. I just signed up for Jott and will give it a try. It seems to answer part of my wish, and looks pretty cool. I'll report my experiences after I've used it for a bit.

[Jim]

Your dream scenario exists - after you've purchased GyroQ - go directly to www.activityowner.com - the person who runs that site is a GENIUS (not me) and has already written several scripts that can "parse" your action items and put them in the appropriate context.

"Email Dave about Wesley project by the end of the week!"

Will assign the @Email context, put it in the Wesley.mmap and set a deadline for this Friday. It really works and saves MASSIVE amounts of time.

As far as Jott goes - it creeped me out that real people listen to your messages and send you email. I don't need someone knowing that I need to remind myself to "clean my underwear tonight" :)

[Dwayne Melancon]

Excellent suggestion, Jim. I think this is very cool, and a natural fit for GyroQ. However, it may not be a good fit for me for a couple of reasons:

1) Outlook is my primary "dashboard" for GTD. I think this is the main reason I've had a hard time with ResultsManager. While MindManager works for me as a project tool, when I try to use it for tasks and actions I feel like someone trying to have two dinner dates at once -- and I end up eating too much and can't enjoy either of my dates).

2) Closely related to #1, I don't always have the ability to sit in front of my computer and run MindManager when I need to do things. With my Outlook-centric view, I can do everything I need to do (albeit without some of my gadgets) even from the Web UI of Outlook. When I tried to use MindManager as the center of my system, I found it drifted and got out of date quickly due to my work style.

As for the Jott creepiness, I guess I don't mind having other people hear my tasks. I already share my calendar, projects, tasks, etc. with other people so it doesn't bother me.

Thanks again -
Dwayne