I can also drag a file from the Finder window into a Notational Velocity note, and it will create a link to that file, just like I could do in the notes section of a task in Things. It also recognizes email addresses and turns them into links too. For example, NV recognizes hyperlinks, so if there is a webpage associated with my task, I can paste the URL into the body of the note, and it creates a link to that page. But viewing these text files in Notational Velocity has several virtues. That has advantages I’ll talk about later, including the fact that I can view my tasks in any text editor. I have my NV preferences set so that each note is stored as a plain text file in a folder called “notes,” so when I create my task as a note in NV, I’m actually creating a plain *.txt file with the note title as the file name. Imagine a text editor that doubles as a Finder window and Spotlight, and you’ve almost imagined what an awesome tool NV is. If you already use Notational Velocity, you know how fast and easy this process is if you aren’t familiar with NV, it’s free, easy to download, and easiest to understand when you’re actually using it. Within the note itself, I then put any associated information about the task: notes, hashtags, contexts, links, due dates, whatever. When I need to create a new task, here’s what I do on my Mac: I use Notational Velocity to create a note whose title is my task. In my system, each of my tasks is the name of a plain text file. In other plain text GTD systems, a task might be a line in a list contained in a text file. In Things, each of my tasks was an item in a database that also had separate fields for tags, notes, and a due date. The core principle of my GTD system is this: every task gets its own plain text file, whose filename is the name of the action I need to take. But this does allow me to replicate the way I was using Things, with some added advantages I didn’t even know I was missing. I should stress that I do not claim that this system fully replaces the functionality of Things, which remains a good piece of software. That’s when I started developing the following system. I was also reluctant to shell out at least another $20 for the iPad version. I began thinking about alternatives to Things, though, when I got an iPod Touch, and then an iPad, and joined the legions of Cultured Code followers waiting longingly for cloud synchronization (which is now apparently coming soon). I used it much like Shawn Blanc used to and Ryan Cordell does, so if you’re not familiar with the program, start there. Even today, I still think Things is a great program. When version 1.0 appeared and quickly began winning awards, I gladly shelled out the asking price. I got hooked on Things when it was still in free beta. I started using Things at the same time I was introduced to GTD, in the Spring of 2008. Look forward to more updates soon.This post does just what its title says, so if terms like GTD, Things, and Notational Velocity mean nothing to you, you may want to move along: there’s nothing to see here but an excruciating display of plain-text nerdiness.īut if you are looking for a way to implement the Getting Things Done approach to task-management on your computer without spending much (or any) money, if you are a devoted user of Things by Cultured Code who has begun to toy with alternatives that support cloud synchronization, and/or if you secretly thrill to posts like this one, read on. It’s a cool new feature in the nvALT and Notational Velocity style of note-taking apps, and one we think you’ll find useful. In addition to blazing fast, full-text search, you can also toggle into Connections, which takes the text of the currently selected note and compares it against the text of all the other notes in the folder (and subfolders), with the result of showing you all of the notes most relevant to the current one. I will tell you about Connections mode, though. And then probably wider after that, but with the hopes of going to market in as short a time as possible.īecause we’re still refining the UI, I’m not going to share a lot of screenshots yet. Once we get through a few rounds of bug fixes and improvements with this group, we’ll be opening it up to a larger segment pulled from the mailing list. We hand-picked this round from people who’ve been great beta testers in the past and whom I know already understand the concept behind nvALT. The first round we’ve sent out is to a tiny group of private beta testers (only about 20 people). We (Fletcher Penney and myself) still don’t have a final name, but the app is really solid and I’m excited to be bringing people on board to put it through its paces. After all these years of promising the successor to nvALT, it’s amazing to be able to tell you that the nvUltra beta has begun.
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