I am experimenting with OneNote 2010 as a means of implementing David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) system of listing projects and next actions. OneNote 2010 has a tag system which I customized to indicate the various contexts in which a next action may be done (at Home Desk, at Work Desk, on an Errand, etc.). I created a small set of pages and next actions, with the appropriate tags, and then used OneNote’s Find Tags command to generate a list of tagged next actions sorted by context. I then created a Tag Summary Page which I printed out.
My thought was I could update the OneNote notebook with new next actions, tag them, and then the next day generate another Tag Summary Page – my available next action list current as of that day. However, when I came back to OneNote, added some more tagged next actions, and ran the Find Tags command, the Tag Summary showed only the new tagged next actions and not all the undone tagged next actions in the notebook. In essence, the tagged actions summarized the prior day were not included in the next day’s sweep.
I did some monkeying around and changed the Tags option from “Show original tagged notes as dimmed,” to “Leave original tagged notes undimmed,” and also checked “Show dimmed tag notes in the Tags Summary task pane.” I redid the Find Tags command and all the tagged next actions were shown. I thought my problem was solved.
However, after I added some more next actions and tagged them and then redid the Find Tags command, the Tag Summary showed two copies of each older tagged next action and one copy of the new tagged next actions.
My questions are as follows:
1. Can I clear out an existing tag summary and start fresh each time, thus only getting one copy of all the tagged next actions?
2. If I can’t clear out the tag summary, how can I avoid duplicates (and triplicates, ad infinitum) of tagged next actions in the tags summary?
I would appreciate any help with this. OneNote, other than this glitch, seems perfect for how I envision using a computer to implement GTD.
My thought was I could update the OneNote notebook with new next actions, tag them, and then the next day generate another Tag Summary Page – my available next action list current as of that day. However, when I came back to OneNote, added some more tagged next actions, and ran the Find Tags command, the Tag Summary showed only the new tagged next actions and not all the undone tagged next actions in the notebook. In essence, the tagged actions summarized the prior day were not included in the next day’s sweep.
I did some monkeying around and changed the Tags option from “Show original tagged notes as dimmed,” to “Leave original tagged notes undimmed,” and also checked “Show dimmed tag notes in the Tags Summary task pane.” I redid the Find Tags command and all the tagged next actions were shown. I thought my problem was solved.
However, after I added some more next actions and tagged them and then redid the Find Tags command, the Tag Summary showed two copies of each older tagged next action and one copy of the new tagged next actions.
My questions are as follows:
1. Can I clear out an existing tag summary and start fresh each time, thus only getting one copy of all the tagged next actions?
2. If I can’t clear out the tag summary, how can I avoid duplicates (and triplicates, ad infinitum) of tagged next actions in the tags summary?
I would appreciate any help with this. OneNote, other than this glitch, seems perfect for how I envision using a computer to implement GTD.
