[bnystrom]

Dwight C. Carr has given me permission to repost one of his "how I use Bonsai" messages posted over on the Yahoo groups "GtD_Palm · GtD_Palm_Oriented". I thought some of you would find it useful.

---

Re: Projects in outliners - one big one or many small ones? (Bonsai/Shadow et al)

I have tried both and each has pluses and minuses. Having one master file with links to lots of individual project files keeps the lists lean, but causes you to have to move back and forth a lot. I am now with the one list.

My Bonsai outline is set up as:

1. Role 1 (category: Role)
2.---Focus Area (category: Focus Area)
3.------Project (category: Project or Someday/Maybe Project
4.---------Successful Outcome (category: Successful Outcome)
4.---------Next Action (category: Next Action and link to todo)
4.---------Next Action or task that can be next action when current next action is complete. (category: Next Action or Tasks)

Couple of really handy tricks that work for me:

The most important thing of the outline is prefixing each Next Action with a context and linking to palm todo. I use Pop! to ensure standardized prefixes and easy entry of them and I then use CanDo to be able to set up views by context.

Set categories in Bonsai to color code the project and next action categories. This makes review a lot easier because active projects stand out as bright blue and next actions stand out as red. Any Bright Blue entries that aren't followed by a red entry need a next action.

Also, filtering on categories of Project and Next Action gives a quick list that will show my bright blue projects with red next
actions. Again, making it easy to spot projects without next actions.

Filter on Focus Areas to assist with mind dump during weekly review.

Hope this is helpful.
Dwight...

---

Thanks Dwight!