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Best tool for NPM

L

lisaGTD

Registered
Hi all,

I love the natural planning model. I mainly use paper to go through the stages as i haven't found a software/tool that enables me to go through the 5 stages seamlessly and get my brainstorm ideas out my head quickly.

Is anyone using a tool for the npm that they rate highly?
 
The way I see it there is not "the" one tool that covers everything. Each phase of planning requires tools that fit to what you want to do. You will most likely use a completely different tool for brainstorming than for organizing and assigning next actions.

Depending on the project theremight be lots of different tools involved: email-client, list-manager, mindmapping-tool, paper, ...

The big challenge is to get these to work together smoothly.

Cheers,
Tristan
 
lisaGTD said:
Is anyone using a tool for the npm that they rate highly?
Click to expand...

I have a keyboard macro that expands to keywords for the five stages of the natural planning model, but I don’t use it all that often. Your post is a reminder I should remember to use it more.
 
mcogilvie said:
I have a keyboard macro that expands to keywords for the five stages of the natural planning model, but I don’t use it all that often. Your post is a reminder I should remember to use it more.
Click to expand...


What's a keyboard macro? How does it help with the natural planning model?
 
lisaGTD said:
Is anyone using a tool for the npm that they rate highly?
Click to expand...
Paper and pen is always my first choice.

Then I can either, scan the paper to PDF and store it as project support in an electronic project folder or more likely, because my handwriting is poor at best, I edit and type it into an appropriate tool based on how big it is. Smallish project plans go into DEVONThink. Once it gets much over 2 pages in length I will either put it into a LibreOffice file or into Scrivener in my new things I'm testing which is one big scrivener project.
 
lisaGTD said:
What's a keyboard macro? How does it help with the natural planning model?
Click to expand...

You type a certain combination of keystrokes, and what you type is replaced by whatever text you have set up to appear. In this case, if I type "xnpm" (not an English word) it expands to "Purpose: Successful Outcome: Brainstorm: Organize: Next Actions" which are the five steps of the natural planning model. I use this in the notes section of project entries in my list tool, currently Things 3. Then I do whatever I feel like doing to help the project along.:)

On most platforms, there are several apps with this capability, and Apple has a simple version in both iOS and MacOS. People who do a lot of forms and form letters can really get a big productivity boost out of this.
 
mcogilvie said:
You type a certain combination of keystrokes, and what you type is replaced by whatever text you have set up to appear. In this case, if I type "xnpm" (not an English word) it expands to "Purpose: Successful Outcome: Brainstorm: Organize: Next Actions" which are the five steps of the natural planning model. I use this in the notes section of project entries in my list tool, currently Things 3. Then I do whatever I feel like doing to help the project along.:)

On most platforms, there are several apps with this capability, and Apple has a simple version in both iOS and MacOS. People who do a lot of forms and form letters can really get a big productivity boost out of this.
Click to expand...


Interesting, thanks for sharing.
 
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