It’s where tasks go before they’re assigned to Projects.
It works especially well in conjunction with Quicksilver — think of something you need to do, invoke QS, write it down, send it to the Inbox, and forget about it until your next Review, when you assign a Context, Project, Dates, etc.
After I synched my old document using the new kGTD scripts I found that I had a new project called “Inbox” as the first item in my Projects list, and this contained a bunch of items drawn from my old Someday-maybe section. The top-level section named “Inbox” is empty, however. Some of the items in the Inbox project are duplicated, appearing both under a general heading (which they were under in my old Someday-maybe section) and broken out into separate headings for each sub-project.
I did try to anticipate a lot of different document formats (they tend to vary a lot user to user) but there will be some cases where the upgrade script interprets things incorrectly and messes up.
I’d recommend that you consider just making a new document (as per the intro video method) and copying your old projects (from the pre-upgrade backup) to the new blank document. This should ensure things are back on the straight and narrow. Also, of course, copy over the archive and any other important data…
Drop me a note if you keep hitting a wall on this and I’ll lend a hand.
Thanks for the reply. I take on-board your suggestion and will probably end up going that route, but before doing so I’ll experiment with getting it into shape by hand. The main reason is that I’m not confident that copying the contents of the Someday-maybe section to a new document won’t also carry the same problem over to the new document. I’ll report back after the football (Arsenal v Juventus kicks off in an hour).
OK, I’m working on something, think of a todo, invoke QS, jot it down and send to kGTD. The todo shows up in my inbox. I can assign it to a project as needed no problem. I can drag the item directly to the projects tab to create a new project. I can’t seem to actually mark todo items as done directly from the inbox though. I’ve got items in my inbox with check marks, but they don’t seem to be archived or marked as done when I sync.
Doug, the Inbox isn’t processed for completions, so that’s intentional behavior. If you find you want “live” tasks in Inbox, I’d recommend you change your kGTD settings.
In kGTD settings, go to General Task Settings and find the (currently) last setting in that section: New, incoming items with no project go to which section. Change this to “!Single Tasks” (no quotes, and use whatever name you are using for your Singletons project section). Then when you send a task to kGTD it will become a live task immediately.
You can always change the project of a single-task once it’s come into kGTD just like you would for any task, using the project drop down to select a new project and then hitting sync.
Ethan — this doesn’t seem to work for me, or may be i am not understanding properly. I have changed the setting as you suggested, but after sync my inbox remains unchanged. The tasks in my inbox have no project assign to them, just a context.
it seems like i have to assign a project !Single Tasks to get it to work. Is it possible to have tasks moved out of the inbox without assigning it to a project?
I’m a newbie myself, but I’ve been studying kGTD carefully all week and I think I know the answer in this case :)
In regard to the items in your inbox being unchanged, I believe that is because that setting only affects new items that are added after that point, and (I think) it refers to items that are input from an external source such as Quicksilver and not directly into kGTD in the normal way. There “might” be an automated way, but to my knowledge, you’ll need to manually set the project for all your pre-existing inbox items.
For your other question…
I have noticed that there is a bug currently that prevents you from assigning tasks from the inbox to a new Project you just created in the Projects view — if the Project does not have any actions assigned to it yet, it does not appear as an option to be assigned to in the Inbox. As a workaround until this is fixed, what I do is make a single empty task for each new project at first (after entering your project’s name, press Return to make a new line, and press Tab once to make it into a task for that project. Sync kGTD, and then return to the Inbox - that project will now finally show up in the Inbox for you to begin assigning tasks to. Since kGTD won’t delete the extra blank task, delete it manually when you’re back in the project view.
It’s where tasks go before
It’s where tasks go before they’re assigned to Projects.
It works especially well in conjunction with Quicksilver — think of something you need to do, invoke QS, write it down, send it to the Inbox, and forget about it until your next Review, when you assign a Context, Project, Dates, etc.
Basic GTD stuff…
Also, you can tell QS which
Also, you can tell QS which project and context you want the new task in…there’s instructions right in kGTD…i think this is right..
newtask>projectname@contextname
I think that syntax is correct and it shows up when you next sync…really cool!
After I synched my old
After I synched my old document using the new kGTD scripts I found that I had a new project called “Inbox” as the first item in my Projects list, and this contained a bunch of items drawn from my old Someday-maybe section. The top-level section named “Inbox” is empty, however. Some of the items in the Inbox project are duplicated, appearing both under a general heading (which they were under in my old Someday-maybe section) and broken out into separate headings for each sub-project.
Iggy, sounds like you bested
Iggy, sounds like you bested my upgrade script ;)
I did try to anticipate a lot of different document formats (they tend to vary a lot user to user) but there will be some cases where the upgrade script interprets things incorrectly and messes up.
I’d recommend that you consider just making a new document (as per the intro video method) and copying your old projects (from the pre-upgrade backup) to the new blank document. This should ensure things are back on the straight and narrow. Also, of course, copy over the archive and any other important data…
Drop me a note if you keep hitting a wall on this and I’ll lend a hand.
Thanks for the reply. I take
Thanks for the reply. I take on-board your suggestion and will probably end up going that route, but before doing so I’ll experiment with getting it into shape by hand. The main reason is that I’m not confident that copying the contents of the Someday-maybe section to a new document won’t also carry the same problem over to the new document. I’ll report back after the football (Arsenal v Juventus kicks off in an hour).
OK, I’m working on
OK, I’m working on something, think of a todo, invoke QS, jot it down and send to kGTD. The todo shows up in my inbox. I can assign it to a project as needed no problem. I can drag the item directly to the projects tab to create a new project. I can’t seem to actually mark todo items as done directly from the inbox though. I’ve got items in my inbox with check marks, but they don’t seem to be archived or marked as done when I sync.
Doug, the Inbox isn’t
Doug, the Inbox isn’t processed for completions, so that’s intentional behavior. If you find you want “live” tasks in Inbox, I’d recommend you change your kGTD settings.
In kGTD settings, go to General Task Settings and find the (currently) last setting in that section: New, incoming items with no project go to which section. Change this to “!Single Tasks” (no quotes, and use whatever name you are using for your Singletons project section). Then when you send a task to kGTD it will become a live task immediately.
You can always change the project of a single-task once it’s come into kGTD just like you would for any task, using the project drop down to select a new project and then hitting sync.
Ethan — this doesn’t
Ethan — this doesn’t seem to work for me, or may be i am not understanding properly. I have changed the setting as you suggested, but after sync my inbox remains unchanged. The tasks in my inbox have no project assign to them, just a context.
thanks for your help!
it seems like i have to
it seems like i have to assign a project !Single Tasks to get it to work. Is it possible to have tasks moved out of the inbox without assigning it to a project?
thanks again in advance :-)
Hi zimpff — I’m a
Hi zimpff —
I’m a newbie myself, but I’ve been studying kGTD carefully all week and I think I know the answer in this case :)
In regard to the items in your inbox being unchanged, I believe that is because that setting only affects new items that are added after that point, and (I think) it refers to items that are input from an external source such as Quicksilver and not directly into kGTD in the normal way. There “might” be an automated way, but to my knowledge, you’ll need to manually set the project for all your pre-existing inbox items.
For your other question… I have noticed that there is a bug currently that prevents you from assigning tasks from the inbox to a new Project you just created in the Projects view — if the Project does not have any actions assigned to it yet, it does not appear as an option to be assigned to in the Inbox. As a workaround until this is fixed, what I do is make a single empty task for each new project at first (after entering your project’s name, press Return to make a new line, and press Tab once to make it into a task for that project. Sync kGTD, and then return to the Inbox - that project will now finally show up in the Inbox for you to begin assigning tasks to. Since kGTD won’t delete the extra blank task, delete it manually when you’re back in the project view.
I hope this helps :D
— Dave
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