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Getting Things Done with Yojimbo

Tim Gaden — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 14:11:31 +0000

On the Yojimbo mailing list, Robert Foxworthington has posted his system for “Getting Things Done” (GTD) with Yojimbo.

It’s the first comprehensive attempt to do this that I’ve seen, and makes clever use of the new tagging features recently introduced in Yojimbo 1.3.

Naturally I prefer to use Mail.app to manage how I get things done, but Yojimbo is also a good candidate as Robert points out:

It’s lightweight, easy to use and very well designed (usability wise). Since I keep a lot of my “stuff” in Yojimbo, I also wanted to do my GTD in it so that all things are in one place instead of spread out over multiple applications… which, ever since tagging support was introduced in 1.3, works pretty well now.

He uses Yojimbo Collections to define his projects, grouping them by assigning the same custom icon to home projects or work projects.

Most actions or tasks are empty notes with just a title (and tags). He admit that he misses the strike-out feature for completed actions that often grace GTD apps but it’s not fatal:

When you’re done with an action, simply click Yojimbo’s Delete button and select “Move to Trash”. That way of course, the completed action just moves to the trash and there is no cool crossing-it-out-which-makes-you-feel-you-just-accomplished-something, but that’s OK. You can always look at the Trash’s item count to see that you’re actually getting things done.

Contexts, people, “states” and due dates are all handled by tags with specific suffixes:

Contexts are tags with an @ suffix (e.g. home@, work@).

People have tags too, basically the person’s initials with a #
suffix (e.g. af#, sk#).

Tags with a + suffix are used for “states” (e.g. waiting+,
deferred+, someday+, inbox+).

Due date tags are a date with an ! suffix (e.g. 0612!, 061224!).

Using suffixes helps Yojimbo to auto-complete the tag more reliably.

These customised tags give him nice flexibility in filtering his items with Yojimbo’s search box:

Search for the “home@” tag to see all the things to do at home… or search for “fm#” to see all the items that are related to Fred Madison, or simply search for the “#” tag to see all items that involve other people… or search for “!” to see all the items that have a due date, or search for “0612″ to see everything that’s due in December 2006… or create tag collections for frequently used searches like “inbox+”… or search for the “Urgent” label to see all urgent tasks.

Yojimbo can’t order actions and items as well as some other GTD apps nor does it easily allow for sub-projects, but Robert finds that he doesn’t miss those traditional aspects of the GTD approach as much as he thought he would.

It’s a fine system, useful and clever in equal parts.

If you are not a Yojimbo user, there are lots of other Mac apps to help you get things done.GTD, getting thins done, yojimbo, productivity, tags, collections, howto, mail.app, apple mailSimilar Posts:

Howto for Thunderbird Address Book integration

Tim Gaden — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 13:36:46 +0000

Earlier this year Torsten Curdt worked out how to get Thunderbird working (sort of) with Address Book.

Robert Coleman thought it might be “interesting to repeat the process with the updated patch and the latest trunk Thunderbird.”

And he has, producing a clear walkthrough of how to do it, complete with the steps and code-snippets he used to compile it.

It still looks pretty complicated to me, although it might be a walk in the park for you.

UPDATE: Or as Stan rightly points out in the comments, you can just grab a Thunderbird 3.0a1 build already compiled with the Address Book patch from Torsten’s site . address book, thunderbird, integration, howto, do it yourself, ai carumbaSimilar Posts:

Mail.app plugin template and instructions

Tim Gaden — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 12:33:12 +0000

Aaron Hanly, the developer behind the widescreen Letterbox plugin for Mail.app, offers a plugin template for others who might be interested in writing a plugin for Mail.

The XCode template is “pretty bare-bones”, he writes, but will spare you some of the hack work and provide a helping hand to plugin novices.

He also provides a longer list of suggestions to get you started.

James Eagan, Missing Attachments plugin creator, has also written a tutorial on how to make a Mail.app plugin.mail.app, apple mail, plugins, howto, template, tips, developing, codingSimilar Posts:

Thunderbird and MS Exchange Guide

Tim Gaden — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 14:06:55 +0000

Some enterprising staff member in the IT Department at McGill University has produced an illustrated guide (PDF) on setting up Thunderbird to use an Exchange Server account.

Although written and illustrated with screenshots from the Windows version of Thunderbird, the author says that it applies equally to Macs.Thunderbird, IMAP, microsoft, exchange, howto, tips, screenshots

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The virtues of IMAP

Tim Gaden — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 11:59:10 +0000

Joe Kissell, author of Take Control of Apple Mail in Tiger and senior editor for TidBits , has written a piece for MacWorld on the advantages of IMAP .

He outlines how the IMAP protocol is better than POP, although he notes some drawbacks too (account quotas, very slow with Apple Mail over dial-up).

Instructions are provided on switching Mail.app and Entourage over to IMAP accounts. Joe also offers some tips for IMAP users, including the thorny issue of whether to sync changed mailboxes automatically or not.apple mail, mail.app, IMAP, entourage, POP, email, howto Similar Posts:

How to make a nice .sig file using CSS

Tim Gaden — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 00:10:07 +0000

Melvin Rivera has written an excellent illustrated tutorial on how to create a CSS signature in Mail.app.

He provides detailed instructions and a sample template, from which you can quickly create a signature of your own:

Of course, this will only work if you are happy to operate in Rich Text format. If you are an old-fashioned plain texter (like me), this tip is not for you.

UPDATE: Melvin has updated his post with some extra information on how Gmail handles CSS.

[Via TUAW ]HTML, CSS, signatures, mail.app, apple mail, tips, rich text, howto

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Google Calendar and iCal Tutorial

Tim Gaden — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 03:11:32 +0000

I guess that everyone on the planet now knows that Google has launched its CL2 web-based calendar.

Scott McNulty at TUAW has written an illustrated tutorial on how to share a calendar from Google Calendar with iCal.

It’s read-only subscription in iCal at the moment, but better integration will soon come.

Just don’t try it in Safari:

For the moment you’ll need to use Firefox (or one of that crowd) to get the best out of this service.

UPDATE: And high earth orbit shows you how to go the other way.ical, Google calendar, CL2, howto, tips, sharing, calendars
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Roll your own Mail.app plugin

Tim Gaden — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 14:23:50 +0000

James Eagan, the creator of the Missing Attachments plugin, has written a tutorial on how to make a Mail.app plugin.

He writes:

In the course of writing my email un-attachment plugin for Mail.app, I found that Apple has a capable, but entirely undocumented, plugin API. Iâ€™m providing this tutorial in the hopes that it may be useful to anyone else considering implementing a plugin for Apple Mail.

Personally, I can’t understand a word of it, but many Hawk Wings readers with Python skills will no doubt find it excellent.

A poster on the macOSXHints forums has already used the tutorial to create a plugin that does something with signatures in Mail.app (adds a random signature to each email from the UNIX program Fortune?).plugins, tutorial, howto, signatures, python, mail.app, apple mail, fortuneSimilar Posts:

More on HTML signatures in Apple Mail

Tim Gaden — Sat, 15 Oct 2005 22:43:02 +0000

One of the “Mac heads” at Skype has produced a tutorial on how to insert a Skype graphic into an HTML signature for Apple Mail.

This walk-through is more detailed than the tip posted on macOSXHints and is useful even if you want to insert a different graphic into your signature.

UPDATE: You now need a Skype account to view this tip on the Skype site. And one with more privileges than I have.skype, signatures, email, graphic, walk-through, tutorial, howto, mail.app, apple mail, tips, HTMLSimilar Posts: