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Off topic: best practices for using @Agenda
Tue, 2006/03/07 - 5:29am — Guest
There seems to be a certain amount of overlap between the @Agenda and other communications-related contexts (ie. @calls, @email, @fax). Often I find myself wondering how much detail I should place in an @calls task and at what point this call becomes part of a larger “agenda”?
For example, I could either enter “Call J. Smith - Install kgtd 0.8” or “Call J. Smith (see @agendas)” and then supplement this with an @agenda entry for J. Smith with a list of all the things I need to talk to him about…
Does anyone else have thoughts on this?
I've been thinking about
I’ve been thinking about this too. I don’t think it’s “Off-topic” at all, although it may go beyond the itch that Ethan was initally trying to scratch with kGTD.
I don’t like having to enter things is multiple places, so I wouldn’t have separate Phone & Agenda items for the same communication. But I am thinking of how to adapt kGTD to track tasks by person.
Right now I enter “J. Smith: schedule install kgtd 0.8” in Phone for particular call where I that’s the next action, and enter “FinCom: Approval to write off J. Doe receivable ” in Agenda+ for things I want to discuss when the chance arises, or at our next meeting where all the people involved are available. So I am using Agenda as a sort of tickler file for things I don’t need to think about until I am meeting with a particular person or group.
So far I’m tracking about 10 different persons and groups in Agenda+ and have about 25 tasks, each preceded by the Who: — the person/group involved. I’m implicitly sorting into Agenda+ or some communication context, based on urgency vs. amount of collaboration (everybody hearing everybody else’s viewpoints) that is needed.
I’m about at the point of getting more separation & organization in kGTD, especailly since my agenda list may quickly expand to 25 or 30 different Whos. Maybe making contexts in kGTD for each Who [not much work to implement] and probably recoding so that Agenda becomes a separate Section like Future [more work to implement]. Maybe using Merlin’s suffix trick, I’d have Owners@, ExecComm@, John@, Jane&Jim@, etc as contexts that get collected under an Agenda section.
Another possibility is to be able to sort by Who and get a list of all the communications and other tasks — Phones, Emails, Agendas, WaitingFors — for each Who. That would be a lot more work to implement, unless OOP introduces clones.
I need to think more about what will work best. What would help other people make Agenda work better for you?
For people I don't have a
For people I don’t have a LOT of contact with, I just add a detailed to do to the particular contact-related context: i.e. “call Plumber re: garbage disposal nightmare”. The plumber doesn’t get his dedicated agenda list, unless of course I just bought a turn of the century house in grant park. ;)
For the big people in my life (my beloved, key coworkers, my boss, etc.) I have dedicated agenda contexts. Depending on urgency (and the frequency with which I connect with said person) I either:
- just hold onto that context list and then blast through it each time I have regular contact (whether that’s phone, face-a-face, or email.) No other to do item necessary, just pull up the agenda each time you meet with them and run through all your running items
- add a call/email/schedule meeting To Do if I don’t anticipate regular contact or I’m adding an urgent item to an agenda. OR BETTER YET: I call/email the person right then with said item, AS WELL as any other items that are on their list.
So to summarize:
- I keep actual “contact/communications” to do’s detailed for folks that I don’t have a running rapport with
- Agenda lists for those that I do.
- For the latter, I try to avoid needing a “contact/communications” to do item if I can help it, and if i really do need to defer it AND can’t anticipate a regular correspondence, I keep it general, and use the agenda for tracking the individual items.
Yeah... For me, @Agenda is
Yeah… For me, @Agenda is the place I put notes for people I talk with regularly. Direct reports and supervisors at work; project teams (yeah, I keep an @Agenda so at the next project update meeting, I can include everything); my wife; co-workers I meet with a lot; people I’m involved in ongoing litigation with; my wife’s obstetrician.
Otherwise, if it’s just “talk to this guy about these things”, I’ll put that into @Calls or @Email.
I also use @Agenda for when I’m building up reasons to talk to someone and I’m not clear on what context I intend to talk with them in. Example: I want to pitch a new business idea. So I’ll create an @Agenda for the capex committee or the person on the committee I’m going to, and as the case builds, add notes. Then those notes either come up in an “informal” conversation, or else they get turned into a real project launch proposal.
So @Agenda is really the “Next time I talk to this person” context, whereas @Call/@Email are more specific.
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Check out the Vicarious MBA
so THAT'S what @Agenda is for!
I have only read (well, listened to) the downloadable short version of Dave Allen’s book, and he doesn’t mention Agenda in it, so I had no idea what htis was for. I’ve been using it for “things I need to do today” - I check through all my various context lists at the end of every day, move the ones I REALLY REALLY NEED to do tomorrow and think I actually CAN do tomorrow to “@Agenda”, print out only that page, and put it on my desk so I’ll see it first thing when I get in in the morning.
Great topic. Since i moived
Great topic. Since i moived to kGTD i have been struggling with the @Agenda. I moved from Entrourage where I would use @AgendaSalesMtg, and @AgendaJDoe for individuals and groups where i was managing topics to discuss. I have been hesitant to creat all these additional tags in kGTD and have started using specific agenda contexts as suggested above. Thanks for the useful discussion!
Ok now that i have added 20
Ok now that i have added 20 or so @Agenda tasks it seems to be sorting the tasks by Project then Action. This causes me some confusion as i have several actions for the same person but for diferent projects. Ideally i would want them all sorted by action so that all @Agenda actions for JaneD: were sorted together. Maybe i have overlooked something in the settings.
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