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Got tips? Email us with your tips and tricks for using ThoughtManager and we will put them here for the world to see! (Literally!)
Preparing Agendas
Want your meetings to be productive? Proper use of an agenda is the best way to prevent wasting time, and ThoughtManager can help.
- Prepare your agenda in advance using ThoughtManager. Don't start last minute, because you may think of more items throughout the day. Keeping your agenda on your Palm OS device will make it handy for
you to add more ideas as they come up.
- Just before the meeting, assign a time estimate to each major item to help people stay on track
- Use ThoughtManager's drag-and-drop capability to prioritize the agenda items and to make sure you tackle the most important things first.
- As you go to the meeting, beam the agenda to other users so everyone has it available.
- Have everyone agree to the agenda and time estimates. Make adjustments as necessary.
- Assign one person to take notes on the meeting, using the agenda as a template (see Taking Notes below).
- After the meeting, have the note taker beam the notes to everyone.
Taking Notes
ThoughtManager combined with a Palm keyboard is great for taking notes. Some specific features built-in to ThoughtManager for note taking include:
- Press the tab key to indent and item
- Press Shift-tab to outdent an item
- Items have virtually no limit (30,000 characters), so you can type away, and later split one item into multiple items to organize it.
- Attach a drawing to an item to describe something that you cannot describe in words.
You will be amazed at how quickly you can enter a lot of information with this combination.
If you are taking notes without a keyboard, one important key stroke you will need to know is the "return" key stroke. This stroke quickly creates a new item. To do it,
tap on the upper right corner of the graffiti area and drag to the lower left corner and let go.
Outlining/Organizing/Lesson Plans/Sermons
ThoughtManager is an outliner at its core. Outlining is a method of writing down your thought process as it unfolds. The emphasis in outlining is to capture ideas
first, and then later organize them. And, as you organize them and prioritize your ideas, you will likely come up with new ideas.
For example, lets say you were planning a lecture on the violin. You might want to talk about the structure of the violin, violin makers, famous violinists, its history
and origins. Your outline would look like this:
You might then expand on your ideas by listing the specifics of each idea, like this:
An then perhaps you decide that your audience is really mostly interested in famous violinists, so you rearrange your talk by dragging that item to the top:
When you are ready to give your talk, put your Palm OS device on the podium, and you can use ThoughtManager as your lecture notes. You could also beam your notes to all the attendees ahead of time.
Management, Project Planning and Tracking
Project management is a huge, and sometimes complex field. But, at its core, project management is about people. You must communicate ideas, tasks, and
deadlines, and then constantly update the project based on that communication.
ThoughtManager is a great tool to enhance one-on-one communication. Some ways to use it are:
- Create an outline of an entire project so everyone knows what the goal is. Use sub items to list due dates, and responsibilities. Use the check list feature to mark items as they are completed.
- Create a separate outline for each person on the project. Use the duplicate command to duplicate an item from the main project, drag it to
the folder, go to the individual's outline, then drag the task out of the folder and onto the individual's outline. You can then both have a list of tasks and priorities for one-on-one meetings.
Often in project management, you need to quickly enter today's date or the current time. This is easy using some little-known graffiti strokes. To enter today's date, do the following:
- Enter the graffiti shortcut stroke, which is a cursive lower-case L character. Its basically a loop that starts in the lower-left corner, loops around to the
right, up to the top middle, down to the left, then finishes in the lower right corner.
- Enter the letters "ds". The date will appear.
Other shortcuts include the current time (shortcut "ts"), or both the date and time all at once (shortcut "dts"). For a complete list of shortcuts, or to create your own,
tap on the Prefs application and choose Shortcuts from the menu in the upper right corner.
Quick Reference Guides
ThoughtManager is one of the few outliners for the Palm that can store large amounts of information. This is ideal for creating quick-reference guides of
information that you need to take with you anywhere. Here are just a few examples of some current reference guides available:
Duplicating an Outline
To duplicate an outline, go to the outline, then save it as a template. To create the duplicate, tap the done button, then tap the Menu button, and choose New From
Template from the menu. Select the name of the outline you just copied.
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