Categories
GTD

Outlook, Clear Context and MindManager Pro GTD

I’ve been using the excellent “Clear Context” plugin for Outlook to help me organize my incoming mail stream into tasks in Outlook. I like the way you can almost instantly turn mail into a task. I also use ActiveWords to copy the body of a mail message into a task if I want to do more custom editing of a task. (ActiveWords also lets me change the SMTP server in Outlook on my laptop from my work SMTP to my home ISP and back when I get to my desk). Both are helping me get more organized

Another cool tool in the arsenal is MindManager Pro 6. I know I can export tasks to MM and have it make a mind Map. What I’d really like to do, though, is find the way to the category property of each task I export to MM, and sort or group the task by their categories in MM.

Since I keep tasks in the @-next-action, @ project, and @ waiting for categories (there are others, but these are what I care about) I want to sort/keep them together by category in the Mind Map. I’d also ultimately like to draw links from the projects to the next actions for each project, so I might be able to visually see when a project doesn’t have a specific next action.

This KB article http://www.mindjet.com/us/forum/viewtopic.php?t=431 seems to start to address the issue:

 Once you add categories to tasks in MS Outlook and sync these tasks with MindManager (File -> Import -> Microsoft Outlook Tasks) all categories from Outlook will be converted to text markers group called “Categories.”


I’ve now Imported my tasks, and they are grouped as I want. Now the interesting part – can I link the “Next Items” and “Waiting For” items to the Projects with which they are associated. Stay tuned. Your comments welcome.