Delay or Extend an Activity with MindReader
The latest version of MindReader will automatically add two new branches to your MindReader.mmap configuration file. The “delay” and “extend” branches add keyword phrases that will allow you to “delay” the start date and end date of a task or just “extend” the due date using the GyroQ “m” tag.
For example, if you type “m delay 1 week”, it will push the start and due dates of the selected task out by a week. If you type “m extend 1 month”, it will push out the due date but leave the start date as is. While this may facilitate a bit of procrastination, the reality check of a good GTD weekly-review will invariably result the need to make these types of adjustments. You can upgrade by downloading the MindReaderNLP.mmbas macro from the Macro Library. Thanks for these features goes to José Miguel.
Note that this version also allows users with non-default directories for ResultsManager and GyroQ to set their pathnames in the options section of the MindReader.mmap file.
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Mike Wilkerson said,
October 28, 2007 @ 7:24 pm
I’ve been trying to understand how to use the various new-looking features in MindReader. Like the stuff in mindreader.mmap under resourceverbs and resourcelist. Looks like new ways for MindReader to infer something about resources, but I can’t seem to trigger their uses.
Also, I thought I noticed in the revision history (http://wiki.activityowner.com/index.php?title=MindReader_Revision_History) that would allow for generically entering resource names, but I can’t figure it out. I would love to be able to enter the exact contents that I would like to appear in the final activities Resources field (enclosing it in square brackets to have it stripped out of the topic text). Is that possible?
ActivityOwner said,
October 28, 2007 @ 7:57 pm
Hi Mike — Yes, the documentation work is less fun that the tinkering so it tends to lag.
MindReader originally was set up to enumerate in the “resources” branch each specific combination of “resource verbs” like “waiting for” and “talk to” with each of your frequent “resources.
For example it would have
“Talk to Mike” , “Talk to Nick”, “Waiting for Mike”, “Waiting for Nick”.
Now it enumerate the resource verbs and resources separately checks for the combinations automatically. If you use a resource verb at the very beginning of the main or bracketed string, it will generically recognize the next word as a resource. Two word resources need to be separated with a “.”.
For example, if you type “Waiting for Activity.Owner to reply on blog comment”, it should add that to your map with R:Activity Owner. If you type “Talk to Nick about RM”, it should put in R:Nick@.
If you put these in the brackets, it should do what you want — e.g.
Test mindreader features [I owe Activity.Owner tomorrow!]
Let me know if this isn’t working.
For more info on these developments see:
http://www.activityowner.com/2007/09/22/mindreader-syntax-updates/
Mike Wilkerson said,
October 28, 2007 @ 8:29 pm
oh! I see. Yeah, that works. Clever. So I didn’t get the connection that it required the use of the resourceverb to trigger that whole feature area. And I also didn’t realize that I could tack that on at the end of the line inside the square brackets. That really opens things up for me.
One issue, though is that when I did [i owe Activity.Owner tomorrow!], I get “R:Activity Owner, %me%”. It didn’t expand into my name, but left it in the %me% form. But I share maps with my assistant; so when he generates a dashboard, it will look like he also owns this, right? Should that be expanded by the time it gets into the map?
Lastly, I would like to say [Activity.Owner owes me] (that’s my 80% use case, maybe 90%). I see that I could use the “waiting for” resourceverb to get a similar result. But when I do, it just results in “R:Activity Owner”, whereas I was hoping for “R:Mike Wilkerson, Activity Owner”. Am I missing something? Is there a way to create the delegation that I’m looking for?
ActivityOwner said,
October 28, 2007 @ 9:21 pm
Your are right on the %me% issue. Most users are in solo mode or are “ActivityOwners” so %me% has been fine until now :-).
I personally tend to handle delegation by the ownership of the parent topic, but that isn’t efficient for 1-off tasks.
I just uploaded a new mindreaderNLP.mmbas. It adds support for a ew resource verb type of “delegated”. Go to your mindreader.mmap (“o mapmap”) and add “delgated to” as a resource verb with “delegated” in the notes field. You may also want to change the note for “waiting for” from “waiting” to “delegated” if that is your preference. Then download the latest mindreaderNLP.mmbas from the wiki.
Once you do this you should type “m setoption:me:Mike” or add a topic in the options branch with text=”me” and note=”your resource name”. MindReader will now look for this setting first before defaulting to “%me%”.
This will allow you to type:
“q create delegated feature [delegated to Activity.Owner]”
and have it come out as R:Mike, Activity Owner
Hopefully you can use “mark task complete” on this as well :-)
In the meantime, I’m typing…
“q provide feedback on delegation feature [delegated to Mike]”
:-)