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Submitted by jan_rifkinson on 2009/04/27 21:20

I keep a daily journal of events, calls, mtg notes etc in a special grid "Daily Logs"

The grid consists of

item = date

column = boolean Foloup

column = boolean pending

column = boolean priority

column = DateDone

Foloup is coded pink

Pending is coded yellow

Priority is coded red

DateDone is coded text gray & pending or foloup or priority background color is removed

most other grids are filtered to remove done items

All my notes are entered as children of date

if something needs to be followed up or is pending it is checked off, etc.

and it will appear in a GTD grid whose source = pending, foloup or priority

if a sub-item is related to a person in my contact list, I create a link to the contact name & take my tel conv notes there

The question I have is that this method makes it a little awkward to sort or to use date filters as all items are sorted by created date which is generally the case, but not 100%

Any thoughts / comments -- pro & certain con -- on this methodology

Any suggestions on a better methodology would be welcomed.

Jan Rifkinson

Ridgefield CT USA

Comments

Personally, I find such a system too much structured by date. Date is just one aspect of things.

So I would use a field for the date. Changing an item's date is then easy

To group by date, you can either:

Use grid grouping feature
Use the pivot table

If you really want to outline with a parent date, you could also enter that date in a date field, set inheritance for this field, so all sub-items would inherit that date. Sorting and filtering would then work just fine. Main drawback, is that sub-sub-items would also inherit the date, which you'll likely want to remove.

Thank u, Pierre. You've given me a lot to think about. First I have to see if I understand the concepts offered.

Jan Rifkinson

Ridgefield CT USA

HP Blackbird Vista Ultimate SP-1

I experimented with some of these concepts in "Daily Logs" and Group Items by Sort Column.

Pierre, in your scenarios, is the html pane used for notes, thoughts, events, etc or is it your goal that every piece of data be free of all structure & then gathered by IQ's many ways of grouping items. Thanks

Jan Rifkinson

Ridgefield CT USA

HP Blackbird Vista Ultimate SP-1

I tend to use the HTML pane for :

large pieces of text
text which I know I won't want to process (sort, filter, etc)
web clippings (I use a mixture of clips stored in the database, HTM files and MHT files)
text that requires significant formatting
text that doesn't need to be broken down
text I won't want to collapse / expand the outline
text that I won't want to run auto-assign rules or equations
Images

[quote=Pierre_Admin]

Personally, I find such a system too much structured by date. Date is just one aspect of things.

So I would use a field for the date. Changing an item's date is then easy

To group by date, you can either:

Use grid grouping feature
Use the pivot table

[/quote]

I've been trying to experiment w both these suggested approaches & am not getting anywhere. For example, in outlining w a parent date, are you suggesting that the date be in a text field rather than a date field? If not wouldn't how would sub-items work under a date field?

When I experimented w grouping & see how it works but in my case I usually have a date parent & then time only for subitems. I could just do a double entry to a date field & get the current date & time which would be ok except that grouping then groups by the minute & not by the hour. It would be rare for me to add more than one item in a minute so grouping is sort of distracting in this case. I see where it is a useful funciton but am not sure how to set my data up to use it efficiently. Any further guidance would be appreciated.

Jan Rifkinson

Ridgefield CT USA

HP Blackbird Vista Ultimate SP-1