Looking for some Nirvana advice

[bcmyers2112]

I feel like I'm at a point where I'm outgrowing using Evernote as my GTD list manager and I'm strongly leaning toward migrating to Nirvana. I intend to purchase the David Allen Co. setup guide but I'm hoping some Nirvana black belts (oh... @Longstreet... hi...) can help with one particular question.

I see that in Nirvana when you're waiting for something from someone, you can create a tag with that person's name. The thing is, I'm in sales and I'm constantly waiting on lots of people for things including customers and even prospects whom I've cold-called and am waiting (hopefully) for a response. I could end up with dozens of names (or more) in this pool of tags and I think that could get unwieldy.

Do any of you create waiting fors in Nirvana without creating a person tag, and if so how does that work for you? Especially since, from what I can see, you can't sort list items alphabetically?

Thanks in advance.

 

[kelstarrising]

I feel like I'm at a point where I'm outgrowing using Evernote as my GTD list manager and I'm strongly leaning toward migrating to Nirvana. I intend to purchase the David Allen Co. setup guide but I'm hoping some Nirvana black belts (oh... @Longstreet... hi...) can help with one particular question.

I see that in Nirvana when you're waiting for something from someone, you can create a tag with that person's name. The thing is, I'm in sales and I'm constantly waiting on lots of people for things including customers and even prospects whom I've cold-called and am waiting (hopefully) for a response. I could end up with dozens of names (or more) in this pool of tags and I think that could get unwieldy.

Do any of you create waiting fors in Nirvana without creating a person tag, and if so how does that work for you? Especially since, from what I can see, you can't sort list items alphabetically?

Thanks in advance.

I can tell you that personally, when I was using Nirvana for a short time for my personal system, this "Someone" tag default was one of the few annoyances I had with the tool. And, it turns out, my advice in the guide to change the Someone tag to a "." is wrong (confirmed by Nirvana last week). You can change it, but as soon as you create another waiting for and don't assign a tag, the Someone tag emerges again like a zombie coming out of the bushes. So I need to change the guide to fix that. I personally found assigning a waiting for tag for every waiting for cumbersome and it slowed me down. For years I'ver just gotten used to typing the person's name in the subject line. When I did try to use their contact tagging system for everything, it seemed so dorky to have a tag for a one and done waiting for. Other people swear by this feature though. So I'd say it's personal preference. And no, you can't sort lists alphabetically. I was surprised by that too. But overall, I'd Nirvana is a solid tool for sure.

 

[bcmyers2112]

And no, you can't sort lists alphabetically.

Which is potentially an issue for me. At any given time I might have several "waiting for" items for my boss, who is a great guy to work for but not the most organized. Whenever I have him on the phone or meet with him it helps to have all open loops involving him grouped together in my Waiting For list for easy view.

Although as I write this it occurs to me the solution may be to just have a few tags for people I interact with a lot, and for the rest I can just rely on including the person's name in the subject line. It's a bit of kludge, but Nirvana has other features that look attractive enough that I may be able to put up with it.

Thanks for the response, @kelstarrising. It was very helpful. I'll check out the setup guide.