Quote:Mark Anderson: I found new projects were getting created and moved straight to 'Finished projects'. The cause of the problem was the evaluation of $ProjectDoneAt in the query of 'agent File finished projects'. A Date-type is never 'empty' as that data type has an uninitialised value of 'never.
Thanks for catching that!
Quote:Notice in the new code I've used =; instead of ="". The latter sets a local value of an empty string, the former return the value to an inherited/uninitialised state.
Yay I didn't know how to reset to an inherited attribute. Now I do!
Quote:you can actually get rid of the last agent by making this the action of the 'agent File finished projects' - new code in blue:
$Container(original) = "/Finished projects/";
$ProjectName(children(original)) =;
This is very cool. I didn't expect something like that to work, but now that I look at it I see why it would. I created
another version of this tinderbox that manages the workflow entirely via stamps – no agents or rules involved at all.
Quote:Lastly, something worth considering further is recurring projects. If 'clean windows' is a 'Chores' project task, when the project is marked as complete it is moved. The new set of 'Chores' the next day/week/whatever, follows the same path. The completed projects container will have multiple same-named 'Chores' containers, one for each completion cycle. That may be desired - I'm not to familiar with the whole GTD type productivity, so may be misunderstanding.
Yeah I don't adhere strictly to GTD at all... which is part of the reason I want to move away from OmniFocus. It is REALLY nice software (some of the best Mac software I've ever used) but there are certain tweaks I want to make to my process that it doesn't support very easily. Plus its note-taking abilities are nothing compared to Tinderbox – though to be fair, I don't think ANY other software compares to TB in that sense.
Anyway... recurring tasks are an interesting case. There are three kinds of recurring tasks I've identified:
* ones that occur (nearly) every day – think morning routine, or daily responsibilities
* ones that occur on specific day(s) – taking out the trash
* ones that I want to become available at certain intervals
The first one I handle with a prototype. I have a "p_daily_todo" prototype which represents a TODO list for that day, and includes all of the tasks that I would ordinarily work on in a single day. These get bequeathed every time I make a new note inheriting from that prototype. Super useful.
I actually haven't done the second one yet, but it'll be similar. I'll add a "TODAY" note to my p_daily_todo prototype. Then when I make a new todo list for that day, I'll choose a "p_todo_tuesday" prototype to pull in the tasks for Tuesday. Move those tasks into the main todo list and delete that placeholder...
The third is pretty interesting. In that case, I think that I'll have an agent which looks to see if a $TaskDoneAt is beyond a $RecurringInterval and if so remove the $TaskDoneAt or something.
I'm already getting a lot of mileage from my basic todo list stuff, so adding project notions will be a big step up. Recurring stuff can be down the road...
Quote:Mark Bernstein: Have you thought about using the Attribute Browser to look at your projects?
If you have a set attribute $Project whose values might include "Chores", "Errands", "Urgent", "Home Repairs", and "Campaigning", then an attribute browser could show all the errands when you're out, or all the repairs when you're home.
I had not! I actually had not ever used attribute browser before. But it looks pretty nifty. It actually does exactly what I want in this case. A GTD concept that I use regularly is Contexts – so I'd have stuff like "Phone", "Office", "Home" etc... with this, I can set a query to find the notes that I want, and group by context or project depending on how I want to look at it.
What would be really amazing would be to save a specific "view" like this. So I can easily switch between views of the tasks organized by project and by context, or have multiple queries.
Quote:Mark Anderson: Also possibly of use: Pre-populating key attribute pop-up lists
Yep that works really nicely with contexts, which I want to be available even if there are not pending tasks matching that context. The projects list on the other hand should change as I complete them.
Thanks for the input, guys! I learned a lot here, and have some new ideas to make it even better. Glad I posted