I’m still a GTD-newbie, so I wasn’t surprised that I fell off the GTD wagon during a particularly chaotic week (had to put the dog down, had to buy a car to replace my 12-year old Betsy). I knew that I had a couple of “can’t-miss” appointments and next actions, so I made sure to attend to those, but I basically ignored the rest of my lists. I even reverted to the scribbled notes on scraps of paper for the new car project. I felt a bit bad about falling off the wagon like that, but my stress was alleviated when I realized that I didn’t *have* to worry about forgetting important stuff. Because I had been very good at filling in my hard landscape and next actions (some with dates, I admit), I was confident that when the few days of chaos passed, I would be able to immediately find out what had to be done next. I had no fear of some minor project getting completely forgotten because it wasn’t at the forefront of my mind - if something hasn’t made it into my GTD system, I don’t need to worry about it. So last night, when I was doing a somewhat weekly review to catch up on what I had missed, I realized that I hadn’t “missed” anything. It was a very empowering feeling.

I received a question about how to use the GTD templates that I created for EverNote (here and here).

Here’s a really quick answer on how to use these:

1. Goto the above posts and download the template. Don’t left-click on the link in the post, because that will just show you some XML. Instead, right-click and select save as…
2. Each template must be in a separate directory (don’t ask me why). So, for each template, create a directory (I use a sub-directory of my EverNote directory to hold all of my templates, with one directory for each XML file.) and save the XML file.
3. It’s been suggested in the EverNote forum to test out templates in a separate test database, to make sure that they work and that you don’t corrupt your data. So, create a new test database.
4. Open the test database.
5. Import the template file. To do this, use File | Import… Navigate to the directory containing your XML template file. Click on the XML file.
6. If the XML is well-formed you should see the name(s) of the templates in that XML file, with checkboxes. Check the boxes for the template(s) you want to import. (I usually just keep one template per XML file). Click okay.
7. Now, the template should be available in your test database. Test this by creating a new note and clicking on the Note Type button.
8. When you’re happy that it works, import it into your good database.

Here’s what part of a template XML file looks like:

<EVERNOTE base="[0D46FD6A-63DD-4A64-AF1548A94E6B1566]"path="C:Documents and SettingsAdministratorMy DocumentsENBasestest.enb"date="2005/05/27 06:09:05">

<TEMPLATES>

    <template created="2005/05/10 23:28:03"    id="[00000000-0000-0000-0000000000000003]"    name="Project Outcome">

    ...magic goes here....

    </TEMPLATE>

</TEMPLATES></EVERNOTE>

The only things I mess with are:

• template id: this must be a unique number with that many digits
• template name: the name of the template - this is what you will see when you click Note Type in EverNote
• magic: tweaked from the default EverNote templates (discussed in this EN forum thread), or samples from other EverNote forum subscribers, like in this post.

Hopefully, this helps. If you have any more questions, be sure to post them on the EverNote user forum. Not because I don’t want to help you (I do :)) but because there are many more people out there who are working with templates, and because there are probably other users who want to learn more as well.

I used to consider myself pretty much a PowerPoint guru, but I admit that I haven’t kept up with the times. I was in a presentation yesterday, where the presenter was able to see her notes on the laptop, while only the slide was presented on the screen. Immediately, I was hooked - I wanted that functionality!

A painful bit of Googling today finally brought me the answer. I thought I was looking for “PowerPoint Presentation Viewer”, but no - that’s just a way to view presentations if you don’t have PowerPoint. Instead, what I really wanted was “PowerPoint Presentation View”. Ahhh, the difference two little letters can make!

I finally discovered a very well-documented answer at the Working Smart blog, which shows (with pictures) exactly how to set up this system - and the functionality is built into PowerPoint (well, at least newer versions of it).

Here’s the short form - for more info see the above-mentioned blog:

1. Need to have two monitors (or computer and projector) set up first.
2. To set up PP: SlideShow/Set Up Show. Under Multiple Monitors, select “Display slide show on Monitor 2″ and check “Show Presenter View”.

Voila!

In my last post, I discussed my new Mobile NoteTaker and how great it works.

My original plan was to use the software that came with the NoteTaker and simply import notes as images into my Evernote database. I tried that for a couple of notes and decided that I didn’t really like the results. It’s not that the images didn’t paste nicely (they did), or because EverNote doesn’t support the NoteTaker results as actual ink documents (they don’t), but because each note is basically a large piece of paper, and I have no desire to scroll through my notes, looking at large images. I basically keep things in EverNote that I want to refer back to, and these notes are more like minutes - I want to be able to access them if I have to, but I won’t be actively looking through them.

So, I decided not to keep my handwritten notes in EverNote. How else should I keep them? In the NoteTaker software? Nah, it’s pretty ugly. But you can set the option to have OneNote as the default program for these notes. So, I gave it a whirl. And I have to say WOW!, does OneNote ever work nicely for this application. Because of the size of the notes, each one is basically the size of a page in OneNote. I can create a new section for each note-taking session, and then just keep each note as a separate page. The OneNote navigation is perfect for just flipping through the pages, like in a real notebook. (Keep in mind that I’m not tagging any information, and not searching for anything, I’m treating OneNote exactly like a paper notebook.) And, I can erase scribbles with the eraser (excellent), and even add ink on top of the note, like a checkmark in a box, or even typing in a little additional information. Now, that’s great functionality for these kind of minutes.

There are a couple of weird things though:

• When the NoteTaker notes are brought into OneNote, the date/time of the OneNote page is off by an hour. Almost like my OneNote is on daylight savings, but the NoteTaker isn’t. Strange, because my computer and my NoteTaker are set to the same time.
• When the NoteTaker notes are imported in OneNote, each page is saved as one page in a separate section - that get’s annoying, because I have to then move pages around. What I want is one section per note-taking session, with one page per handwritten page.

So, I guess I’ve just added OneNote back to my stable ;)

Several weeks ago, I ordered a Mobile NoteTaker from NexConcepts. Touted as a “the ultimate handwriting capture device”, it seemed a reasonable alternative to the Logitech io Digital Ink system. (While I like the fact that Logitech is a well-known brand name, and the system seemed quite suitable, I was put off by the initial cost of the newest version of the pen, as well as by the fact that I would have to keep buying expensive paper products.)

Anyway, my Mobile NoteTaker finally arrived (it was on back-order) and I’ve had the chance to use it. The first few days, I just played around with it, getting to know its functionality. But yesterday was the big test - a 5.5 hour meeting, with 16 pages of handwritten notes. The Mobile NoteTaker was GREAT! It’s a two part system - a calculator-sized thingy that clips to your pad of paper (any paper - up to 8.5 x 11) and a digital pen (a little fatter than a normal pen). Write out a page of notes, click a button, the page is saved to the NoteTaker. Bring it back to your computer, download the notes (I chose to use OneNote as the default receptacle). Print all the notes to pdf, and you have handwritten notes that you can share with anyone.

There’s a couple of little niggly annoyances, but overall I’m quite pleased with it. Well worth the $99 US plus shipping that I paid. I bought mine through the NexConcepts online store. I originally found this product through a review, which was for the Pegasus version (don’t ask me the difference between Pegasus and NexConcepts), but Pegasus wants $189 US (and that’s a sale!) for their version. I’ve also seen the NexConcepts version being sold on TigerDirect for $135 CAD. (I’m in Canada, eh.)

I particularly liked the fact that 16 pages of handwritten notes in pdf took only 1.69 MB of space, while a previous set of minutes (say 12 pages of scanned notes, plus 3 pages of typed notes) took 4.2 MB.

As for the annoyances:

• had some initial difficulty getting the drivers to stick in my Windows installation - every time I reconnected to my computer, WinXP asked me to install the drivers. I ended up uninstalling/reinstalling the software several times, as well as just installing ever driver I could find on the disk. It seems to be stable now though :)
• the web page(s) all said it was easy to find pen refills (they’re tiny little refills); however, when I searched for the refill suggested by my manual (i.e., Staedtler 930-9 Black Fine Point), I couldn’t find any online for Canada (i.e., not in Staples, Office Depot, or Grand & Toy). I found quite a few different office supply places that offered them for sale, but exactly ONE online store (Du-All Store, link to refill) offered to ship to Canada! The refills are a reasonable price, but they basically cost me twice as much because of the shipping.

Related links:

• review of Mobile NoteTaker
• review of Logitech io Digital Writing system
• AceCad DigiMemo Digital Notepad
• comparison of Logitech and AceCad

Note that EverNote supports the Logitech and AceCad systems, but not the NoteTaker. Well, you can import the NoteTaker pages as images, but that’s not the same…