Entourage GTD: Action Scripts 2.0
September 3rd, 2007 by Adam Sneller
When Michael Day asked if I would write some custom scripts for Entourage
In his email, Michael details a set of scripts that lets you move a message, task or note onto the calendar. I found the notion intriguing and had actually played around with a similar concept before. But there was always something about this that bothered me.
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The Problem
The first issue is, if I ever forget to check my calendar, any task that I move to that day, could potentially, get lost from the system. I can’t count the number of times I’ve fallen off the “GTD
The other issue relates to how I plan my projects. Lately, I’ve become a fan of Alan Lakein’s book, How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life
Now the neat thing about this, is that regardless of whether you finish your Today List, you always have your Master List as a complete record of where you are and where you want to be.
And therein lies the problem. If we now start moving tasks from our Master List onto the Calendar, we immediately loose the reference. And when it comes time to do our weekly review, we find that our Master List is now riddled with holes, where all of our most important tasks used to be!
The Inspiration
After screwing my head around this for about a week, I did the only sensible thing one could do… and took a shower! And like clockwork (somewhere in-between the lather and the rinse), inspiration struck.
Instead of moving a task onto the Calendar, what I should be doing is creating a new event that links back to the selected task! And what better way to get this done, than by modifying the Action Scripts that I have already written!
Actions Revised
Now, the original Action Scripts were designed to quickly process your email by creating a new task (or event) that links back to the selected message. This separates the action from the email, which can then be filed or deleted.
But what if these scripts could work with other objects? What if they could recognize other tasks or events, or even notes? Not only would this solve our problem, but we could use the same keyboard shortcuts to transfer a task to the calendar (for example) as we would to process our email! And that’s pretty slick.
Here’s a bonus. What do you call a task that gets created from another task? A Follow-Up! And because these scripts copy the time-stamped contents of the selected task into the notes field of its follow-up, a complete history of everything that has transpired is maintained!
Requirements
These scripts are built to run on OS 10.4 Tiger with Microsoft Entourage 2004
Installation
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September 6th, 2007 at 9:20 am
This is absolutely awesome!
September 6th, 2007 at 9:21 am
Thank you!!!!
You are a genius!!
September 9th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
Some really nice scripts here, Adam. I experimented with them a bit, and I really like them. Thanks for making me aware of them. In fact, I think I’m going to use them to create a task that tells me to write a blog post about how useful they are.
I’ve mostly been working in my email folders previously, having created various context folder and just moving the messages there. What I like about these scripts and creating tasks with them is I can indicate what the next action is instead of having to remember it. And I can delete the email, because it will have been copied into the background.
The more I think about this, it could really streamline what I’m doing. Will need to play with it some more.
September 9th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
OK, I’ve experimented a little bit more. I really like your scripts. I’ve also used some scripts I found here:
http://inik.net/node/90
I particularly like the one that lets me create new projects. It creates a new folder in the Office Projects folder and a corresponding email folder, and then I’ve typically moved related emails to that project email folder, and saved related documents in the project folder within Office Projects.
One hassle has been when a project is done, and either archiving everything or deleting. I have to do it three times. If I delete the Project in the Project Center, the email folder and the folder under Office Projects remain. It would be nice if an Applescript could either archive or delete all three at once.
So, I really like your Task and Event creation scripts, but do you use these with the Project Center built into Entourage? If so, how?
I will look at your other related links; maybe you’ve explained it there. But if you have further comments on how you deal with Projects (more than one task to complete.) How have you automated that?
As David Allen says, just getting control of your email and using the two-minute rule puts you ahead of 95 percent of the planet. I just really like to take as much friction out of the system as I can.
September 10th, 2007 at 10:12 am
Lee - thanks for the comments!
The Action Scripts (version 2.0) will automatically associate a new Task (or Event) with the Project List of whatever element you’ve selected. So if you have a rule (for example) that places all email from Davy Crockett in your “Forestry” project, if you were to process a new email from Davy with the “Task from Selection” script, a new task will open with its project list set to “Forestry”.
And, of course, you can also set the project field manually, when the task (or event) opens.
I’ll probably end up writing a post on how I handle projects in Entourage, but for now, here is the crux of what I do. I only use Entourage projects to represent my super-projects (David calls these “areas of responsibility”). So, “My Finances”, “Taxes”, or “New Construction Project” would all qualify.
Archiving projects is then less of an issue when your average project lifecycle is over 6 months (but you raise a really good point and I do plan to look into an AppleScript solution for this).
Next, I setup custom views in the Tasks pane to represent my contexts. Each view is set to only display tasks whose category matches that particular view. So the “@Errands” custom view would only display tasks with category of… “@Errands”.
These views constitute my Actions list. And in this fashion, I can make tasks actionable simply by setting their category. Conversely, I can braindump all my new task ideas to my Entourage projects, without cluttering my Actions lists, by just not setting their category field yet. This concept also translates to syncing your Palm handheld.
If you don’t have this book already, I highly recommend the “Visual QuickStart Guide to Microsoft Entourage 2004″.
Hope this helps!
Best,
-Adam
September 10th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
Thanks, Adam…I’ll look over this and try it…and I did just order the book you recommended.
March 23rd, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Hi! Do these scripts work in Leopard and Office 2008?
March 25th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Yes, they work fine.
March 28th, 2008 at 1:31 am
Indeed they do. Thank you!
I would be very interested in hearing your view on handling projects in Entourage, as you mention in your comment above. Handling projects is my biggest problem at the moment. I love Entourage’s way of binding everything together, but have also found that Project Centre is not the place for all projects as defined by GTD; i.e. “every task that requires more than one step to complete”. How do you handle these “lesser” projects?
Furthermore, I have found out that the Project Centre is also handy in keeping together reference material (for example mail and files referring to certain client), but this results a vast list of entries in the Project Centre - some are for projects, some for reference material. I’ve solved this by preceding every project with an asterisk; e.g. *Autumn marketing campaign, which sorts projects at the beginning of the entries list, but I’m not totally happy with this ’solution’.
So, I would very much like to hear your take on the above. Cheers!