Using ResultsManager to Reorganize My Work (Again): Part 8 of 9
Using ResultsManager and MindManager to Separate Someday/Maybe from “Maybe Never”
One of the most useful tricks I’ve learned over the past few months is to use the “Exclude from Dashboard” icon on some map topics to stop the Dashboard Generator from walking through them looking for activities. For example, in some of my project maps, I have rather large sets of notes mapped under a Main Topic called Resources. Under normal circumstances, the Dashboard Generator would walk through all of those subtopics. But I can put the “Exclude from Dashboard” icon on the Resources topic, and when the Dashboard Generator sees that icon, it just skips the whole branch. One of the best side effects of this is improved performance. So I use this icon all over the place now, anywhere I know that no activities that belong on a dashboard reside. This turns out to be a perfect mechanism for a Maybe Never list!
In the following project map, you can see that I’ve relegated a couple of activites to Maybe Never, simply by dragging and dropping them under the Maybe Never topic that is marked with the red “Exclude from Dashboard” icon. (Looks like a No Entry symbol).
When this map is scanned by the Dashboard Generator, it will ignore everything under Maybe Never. At some point in the future, when I’m cleaning up this map, I can glance at those Maybe Nevers. Maybe someday, I’ll be convinced that they really are garbage and I’ll delete them!
Wrapping Up
Now you can see a basic way to punt stuff to Maybe Never within each project map. Next, I’ll describe the other mechanism I use: The Maybe Never Map.
January 15th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
Mike, I like the ‘Maybe Never’ map part and philosophy. And that’s a definite best practice, putting a No Entry icon on the Resources section of a project map, given you know there are no tasks contained within it. Great post!
January 18th, 2007 at 10:29 am
Mike,
Arrggh! I have tasks all through my Resources topics. How would you (and Kyle) categorize recurring tasks that are related to a client, that are a resource and don’t belong in an separate topic?
I have a Client Master Hub map that links to child maps for each client. There are recurring resources to use for each of them that would seem pointless to duplicate in each individual map.
Thoughts on this?
January 18th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Walter, I’m afraid I don’t understand your problem well enough to offer any help. If you could elaborate, I’d be willing to try.
I never include tasks under Resources, because I don’t want them to get buried in what sometimes ends up being a proliferation of notes under Resources. I always include the actionable stuff in a separate branch. When I want to link some action to some resource, I’ll either use an in-map hyperlink, or draw a relationship (which can clutter fast). The other technique I sometimes use for SMALL notes/resources on a task/project, is to create a Callout topic above the action, mark it with a No Entry icon (just in case–I don’t actually know if it makes a difference), and then map out whatever I need under the callout. Then the callout and it’s subtopics end up looking like metadata/resources on the project/action.
But, again, I have a feeling that I’m probably not understanding your problem…