The Beta4 release of Actiontastic is fresh out of the oven.
Download It Now
(Mac OS X Tiger Required)
To get away from the industry-standard bulleted feature list, let’s just walk through a typical flow from idea to action — GTD-style. My hope is that this will benefit some of the new users in this growing community as well as provide a few things that may have been overlooked by the seasoned folks. And don’t worry, a complete bulleted list will be provided at the end. Old school readers are welcome to skip straight to the end for the goods.
Collect
One of the most powerful habits taught in David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done, is that of collection. Collection means getting things out of our heads when they pop up — all kinds of things. These could be business ideas, goals, things we need to do, reminders to email so-and-so, etc. When we have a place to store our ideas as quickly as they come to us, we reap a few benefits. First, we don’t spend time worrying about what we will forget, because we immediately get things out of our heads and into a trusted system where we can review them at the right time. Second, we reap the benefits of flow. Once you are “in the flow” working on a particular task, switching gears to think about some email from HR that just popped up or some new feature idea for your new app will take you out of a zone that is highly productive and place you in a distraction-oriented mindset. Staying “in flow” keeps you at the top of your game.
The Inbox in Actiontastic is the place to collect these sorts of things as they pop into your head. There is no need to give them more than a passing thought if you are in the middle of something. Just place them in your Inbox and get back to the work at hand. Collection is aided by the use of Quicksilver. If you don’t already have it, you can get it here.
Quicksilver allows you to collect at any point on your Mac, even while working in other applications. Just hit Ctrl+Space to bring up Quicksilver. Type a period “.” to enter text mode, and enter your thought. Hitting the tab key moves the focus to the action box where you can begin to type “Send to Actiontastic.” Once the icon appears, just hit enter and your item will be stored safely away until you are ready to “process” all of those collected items. (They used to call this “filing” in the old days.)
Let’s just assume that you’ve reached the end of a good coffee-fueled blur of productivity and you are ready to clean up some of those items that you placed in the Inbox earlier. Actiontastic has what some people like to call “wizards” but I am kind of scared of that whole fantasy scene so I have secretly called this the “Inbox Ninja” for lack of a better word. Just hit F3 or click the little arrow at the bottom of the Inbox to see this ninja leap from the tree.
Process
This helper screen pulls up each Inbox item, one at a time, to allow focused decisions to be made. The items are automatically highlighted so that you can instantly edit them into good prompts for action (i.e. “call VP re: flying car”) — things you can do immediately upon seeing the phrase. For these types of Actions, it is important to file them as standalone items (”Single Actions” in Actiontastic terms), or as part of a project (i.e. “Build Flying Car”). The real key to Zen-like action is to place these in their proper Context. A “context,” in GTD terms, is the frame of mind or physical location required to complete an action. For example, I have contexts named @web, @calls, @read, @errands, etc. Actions in these contexts can be carried out when I have the resources (in my car running errands) or the time (reading up on my RSS feeds) to complete them. When I am not in one of these situations, seeing these actions over and over on a typical ToDo list just adds unhealthy stress.
Projects, in GTD terms, are simply any outcomes that require more than one step. So think carefully about your Inbox items and decide if they are really Actions (one step) or Projects (two more more steps).
If the Inbox item doesn’t fall into either of these categories, it might be a reference item (someone’s phone number, a quote, etc.) or trash. Delete uneeded items right away (things you’ve already done, not-so-hot ideas) and copy reference items elsewhere for later use. Actiontastic allows notes for most items but full blown reference hierarhies are better handled by quality Information Manager apps like DEVONthink, Yojimbo, EagleFiler, and others.
Plan
Now that all of your Inbox items have been filed, planning can take place in the Project view. Here you can drag actions into different projects, quickly convert actions into projects (F2), create new projects, actions, and perhaps most importantly — order your actions in the way that they should be executed. If the order doesn’t matter, great. But if it does, you can drag and drop these actions to until they match reality. This ordering will come into play later. Also, new in this release, is the concept of “paused” projects, start dates, and due dates. Pausing a project just means “not right now.” Due dates are sort of obvious. Start dates in the future have the same effect as pausing, except they appear magically on the correct day. This timing information is aided by the new filters above the Project list — “All” and “Current.” Choosing “All” just means that all Projects will be displayed. Choosing “Current” will hide paused projects and those projects with start dates after today. This can be a big help when trying to choose what is relevant for today.
Do
With all of that quality planning under your belt, the Context view provides what is probably the second most powerful concept from GTD — blazing through your actions while seeing only the relevant choices for the moment. If you have access to email at the moment and feel especially extroverted, just highlight the @email context and fire off those HR responses and support emails. Better yet, if you are using ordered actions in your projects, click the “Next Action” filter and see only the very next action available for each project in that context. For extra speed, just hit the space bar to check off each item as you quickly glance at the prompt and then get to doing what you should be doing.
Sync
As many of you know, I have been building a complete GTD web app that will sync with Actiontastic. Fewer of you know that iCal support is in the works for the 0.9 series. But right now, you can pack those actions with you on your iPod with the new “Sync to iPod” feature.
Since doing and action are context-based, your contexts are where you enable syncing (via the info drawer) to your trusty white-headphoned friend. Any actions in these contexts will show up in the Notes section of your iPod sorted by context and in order. A project view is also available for those of you who care about such details when on the go.
And Now, The Bullet Point List…
New In This Release:
- Actiontastic can now sync to any iPod that supports “Notes.”
- New Inbox processor for better filing of inbox items.
- Projects and Actions now have start dates and due dates.
- Projects, Actions, and Contexts can be “paused.”
- Project and Context source lists can be filtered to only show current Projects and Contexts (those that are not paused and either have no start date or a start date of today or later).
- Keyboard shortcut for new inbox items now matches project and context actions. The old one is still available to add items from the other views.
- Cosmetic updates (lots of sheet de de-striping and rework).
- Quicksilver now properly passes along an action even after a start up delay in Actiontastic.
- Changing the drawer view no longer requires a mouse click.
- Clicking the “+” button to add new items while an item is still in “edit” mode now saves the edited item correctly.
- Drag-n-drop reordering of project actions no longer requires the filter buttons to be re-clicked in order to view the new order. (This was working in 0.8.1 but was broken by new code in 0.8.2.)
- Project and context renaming properly alphabetize the new name instantly. (Another working item in 0.8.1 that was broken in 0.8.2.)
- Changing from the “All” filter to the “Top” filter in the inbox while the bottom item is highlighted now properly highlights the top item.
Things That Could Be Better
- The Action table in Projects and Contexts needs its own filter for “Current” and “All” to make the best use of the Action start dates and pausing.
- Pausing a Project while the “Current” filter is selected doesn’t immediately hide the Project. This requires a re-click of the “Current” filter. This choice was made over a buggy alternative until the kinks are worked out. I err on the side of caution when it comes to your data.
- Choosing “Current” for Projects or Contexts really works and is perhaps over-zealous. It even removes these items from your choices when planning or processing. You can simply click the “All” filters, which is admittedly annoying but this was also chosen over buggy alternatives in order to release this update on time as planned.
