Kelly,

I use the Treo 700p and agree...I love the Palm desktop. My favorite memos:

1. Article ideas for newsletter
2. Blog topics
3. Birthdays and anniversaries
4. Books to read (I may or may not eventually purchase or get from the library)
5. Bus stop info
6. Combination locks (so I can take the sticker off)
7. Errands to run
8. Gift ideas (cool things to buy for birthdays and holidays)
9. Girl Scouts (important troop information)
10. Groceries to buy (even though “go to grocery store” may be an item on my daily to-do list, this list contains the individual items I need to remember to buy)
11. Honey-do’s (a list of things I need to remember to ask my husband, John, to do at some point)
12. Personal data (where I track social security numbers, driver’s license number, clothes sizes, blood types, etc. You never know!)
13. Projects (see section #4 below)
14. Restaurants
15. Shopping list (a list of things I need to remember to get when I’m running errands)
16. Soccer (team roster, practice and game date reference)
17. Speech ideas
18. Vacation ideas
19. Videos to rent
20. Wish list

Best,

Laura Stack
www.TheProductivityPro.com

Kelly:

I use the hipster pda as my inbox, and I process it when I am near my mac. Some of the contexts I use are: Waiting for, Call, Email, Errands, Home, Read, and Later maybe

Kelly,

In memopad, do you have all those memo's under one category or are the topics you listed the actual categories?

Thanks
Rian

Hi Rian,

The topics I've listed are Memo Pad categories. Palm only allows 15 of these. Under each of those categories I have dozens of entries. For example, under the Travel category, I have entries for things like:

When in Chicago...
When in London...
When in Minneapolis...
Membership Numbers
Cell phone rentals abroad

Under the Inspiration category, I have 145 great quotes that I've collected over the years. Under Someday, I have 65 entries for possible personal projects, actions, good ideas etc.

Hope this helps!

Kelly

May I ask for a little more detail of how you implement your projects? You say "Projects - the list of my outcomes that will take more than one action step to complete"

Is each project a task, listing the multiple steps in the body of the task? Or do you simply add a task for each step, and if so, how do you tie the project steps together?

Kelly,
I love using the PALM for my GTD process. As of now I have my Someday Maybe List in my TASKS section. I can understand the benefits of moving these over to memos...

Do you have any tips on how I could move my SDMB tasks to memos?

You know... I would love to see Davidco do a whitepaper on setting up the Palm- Tasks and memos and all. I have this slight pang that I am not using my Palm as effectively as I could be.

Thanks for the great post- it got me rethinking my system!

Hi Lesley,

My Projects list is like an inventory of my projects. It lists all of my current projects and applicable due dates.

For example, one of my projects is:
Present GTD Seminar-Minneapolis-Oct 23

My action lists (Calls, Laptop, Waiting For etc.)track the moving parts/to do's/tasks etc, some of which are related to projects, some are not. It's feasible that one action list could have action steps related to 1/2 dozen different projects and things not related to projects. And several action steps for one project could be listed across different lists.

For example, for the project above I could have:
@Calls - call Minneapolis hotel to change departure date
@Laptop - request upgrade for Minneapolis flight
@Waiting For - Minneapolis client to let me know schedule for implementation day

To tie the action steps together, you could use a simple keyword that is searchable or be descriptive when listing the action step. In the examples above, the word Minneapolis is enough information for me to know exactly which project that relates to. Or, if you are an Outlook user, our Add-In software is designed to link your projects to action steps. You could try that for more structured linking. I've always found just being pretty descriptive when listing my action steps is enough for me.

For some people, it's a shift in thinking to splinter off current action steps from projects. Most people seem to be used to having an action list for each project, then just working off that. The reason we suggest moving current actions only on to your action lists is that you are then seeing a distilled view of the actions you can take NOW. Versus having to look at a project list anytime you are looking to take action and having to figure out what's a current action vs. a future action. I still have project plans that I refer to for future actions, but only current actions get listed on my Action lists as I can do them.

There are lots of ways to organize project plans. I use things like the note field of the project, mindmapping software, paper notes, shared databases, Word, Excel docs etc.

Hope this helps. I'm happy to answer any questions if you have more.

Kelly

Erik,
One benefit of keeping Someday/Maybe items in Tasks is that it is easy to recategorize them from Someday to a current action list. If they are in Memo Pad, the only way I know of to get them over to Tasks is to copy/paste. I don't mind this, but some Palm Desktop users prefer to keep them in Tasks for that reason. Outlook users have it easy in that they can drag and drop across between email, calendar, Tasks and Notes.

Good idea on the Palm Desktop whitepaper. Perhaps a podcast or something like that would be helpful too. I use to teach Palm classes, but the handhelds are so diverse these days it's hard to give universal instructions anymore. But Palm Desktop has been consistent throughout the years and pretty straightforward to give setup instructions.

Thanks. Kelly

Kelly,

It's always a pleasure to read your post - enjoy the clarity and simplicity.

Since you store all your reference data in Memo Pad, do you find it an issue trying to get to the exact information you need, quickly? If you do, suggest you try a little program called Memoleaf.

It is a beautiful piece of software, and you will not believe just how much easier it is to find any information you need, that's stored in Memo Pad. You can build up free form key words in the Memo title area (the 1st line of Memo) - hence getting around limitations imposed by 16 Palm categories, and set up the program to start on a something called KeyBank - several panels of predefined keywords.

So how to find the info one needs? Activate the program by pressing predefined key combos, say OPT + Calendar, then point to a key word (or multiple key words) on KeyBank, then one gets the info required. It's that simple. Memoleaf uses the same database file as Memo Pad.

Best regards, Shudong

Kelly,
I have finally caught on to what you have been describing by "categorizing memos"! What a big difference this makes! I have been wasting time and energy putting [possibly buy new Wilco CD] in my SDMB tasks, when it is much more approiate to park that in a memo called MUSIC to buy under the SDMB category. I guess I had never really realized how Memo Categories worked... this will streamline a lot of things for me and give me a more approriate place to park my ideas! THANKS KELLY! erik

Shudong: Thanks for the kind words about my blog. It's nice to know you're getting value. I will check out Memoleaf. Sounds interesting. Do you work with Redwood? Just curious.

Erik: When I caught on that Memo Pad categories could hold lists among the categories, rather than just using it for single line entries, it expanded the possibilities. It's a very powerful digital filing cabinet and project reference area for me now.

Kelly,

No, I have no association at all with Redwood, just a user of their software.

Like you and David, I like the plain vanila approach in GTDing with Palm. However I've found that using Memoleaf rather than Palm's built-in Memo Pad makes it so much easier in getting to the information needed. Finding information now is a pleasure rather than a headache - Memoleaf really releases the power of Memo Pad as a powerful digital reference library.

Regards, Shudong

Thanks, Kelly, for a very informative post. I've gone back and added to my own set of lists based on a few of the things you posted here.

I'm another MemoLeaf user, so I second Shudong's recommendation -- it's a really very versatile piece of software, and compared to a lot of less useful Palm programs, it's quite a bargain. I've written a fairly long article about how I implemented basically my whole GTD system in MemoLeaf; for the curious, it can be found at http://www.tammycravit.com/gtd/

Thanks again for another great blog entry!

-- Tammy

I'm a Lotus Notes user and just bought the new book. Any reason why you don't use EasySync to put Notes files into the Palm? Saves me from having multiple systems and I can "cross reference" easily - i.e. put an email into a To Do, a Calendar entry, or Memo pad.

Just wondering...

Hi Dave,

I think EasySync is a great product and I would use it if all of my lists were in Lotus Notes. I've used Palm Desktop since 1997 and love it. My email and lots of my project collaboration is still in Notes but I choose to keep my personal calendar, to do's and memos in Palm Desktop. It does mean I don't get the benefit of creating to do's out of emails, but the simplicity of Palm Desktop works so well for me it's hard for me to give up!

Hi Kelly, I'm reading Getting Things Done, and I'm loving apply all those methods in my hole life.

I'm a Palm T|X user, I'm searching for a software to use... I'm managing 10 or more projects at a time, are work projects, freelancing ones, and college.

I'm wondering how do you do to keep track of different projects using only the tasks from palm. How do you group tasks in a specific project?

Hi Rafael,

I recommend this blog post and podcast about managing project actions:
http://www.davidco.com/blogs/kelly/archives/2007/04/managing_projec.html#more

There's really no one way to do it with GTD. It's however works best to you to see the information as often and as easily as you need to.

Cheers,
Kelly