[Video]

Here’s a video with transcript (including pdf  download) that covers 90% of the day-to-day Cyborganize use.

You can read the full text below or in the pdf, but for best results watch the video.

Video Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Cyborganize execution loop workflow demonstration. This will show you how I manage high volumes of information without becoming overwhelmed, and execute quickly and optimally without stressing over task management.

The Scratch File

Right now we’re looking at a scratch file, which is a text work space focused on a single topic. Unlike in the typical all-in-one organizer such as Ultra Recall, there are no bells or whistles to distract you. This is where 90% of the work in Cyborganize takes place.

The program I’m using is called Emacs. You can add major and minor modes to Emacs, sort of like browser extensions. I’m using the major mode “Org-Mode”. This gives me enhanced outlining and text editing abilities. I can do everything without using the mouse, and do it much faster than in MS Word. I can create an outline and quickly navigate through it, and expand or collapse my view to focus on one particular section. I can also split and resize my screen. Emacs is extremely reliable; it never crashes and never loses data, even when working with huge files.

You will almost always have multiple scratch files open. Right now I have seven open. Let’s look through them quickly so you can get an idea of when to create a new scratch file.

(Please see the video for this part.)

As you can see, I am switching files without using the mouse, and I’m using auto-complete to reduce typing. The first scratch file outlines a new high-level strategy direction for the site cyborganize.org. In scratch1.org, I wrote the first draft of my freebie download, the Top 7 Personal Productivity Myths. In scratch2.org, I edited the rough draft. scratch3.org is already closed; I just deleted it because it was a dead end. scratch4.org was a work session performed mostly in an html and graphics editor – I just gave myself two tasks to keep myself focused. In scratch5.org, I tackled a coding problem for the email form on the page I was building. In scratch6.org, I did preliminary research before taking a shopping trip to buy a laptop. In scratch7.org, I wrote the text for this presentation.

The first five scratch files took an idea from concept to execution, resulting in the page here:

The next two were unrelated objectives, and I completed the objective within one scratch file.

Whenever you begin a new objective, you open a new scratch file. This gives you a focused workspace to concentrate on completing that objective. If complexity grows too great, or you need to focus on a sub-portion of the objective, you can create another scratch file to focus on that. By opening the scratch files in sequential order, you can keep track of the flow of your work.

Normally you can fit a page or two of work into a scratch file before it becomes unweildy. If it’s straightforward content, you might go up to 10 pages, especially if you can structure it with outlining. Whenever the complexity of managing the scratch file begins to break your focus, just open a new one and continue working there.

Most scratch files will no longer be important once you’re finished working on them, but some will contain info you need to refer back to. Therefore giving your scratch files sequentially ordered generic names comes at a cost – eventually you lose track of what’s where. They cannot be conveniently searched, and they do not have descriptive titles.

Processing Scratch Files

Eventually you will have too many scratch files open and it will become inconvenient to keep track of them. For me this usually occurs somewhere between 10 and 30 scratch files open. Then it’s time to process all your scratch files into the Cyborganize system.

Before we begin processing the scratch files, we want to consolidate all of our information. As you work, info tends to build up on your desktop, in your email inbox, in IM or Skype chat conversations, and in open browser windows. Clear those inboxes by transferring anything noteworthy into new scratch files. Grab entire IM conversations to new scratch files and close those windows. Clear files off your desktop by dragging them to appropriate folders. Scan emails and star for later action and make a note if necessary. (We’ll talk in detail about how to handle email and hard drive files in a different presentation. For now, just be aware that this is the info consolidation step.)

If you come across something that can be taken care of immediately, without any organization, then do it now. Otherwise, defer and process it.

When you’ve finished consolidating your info, it’s time to process your scratch files. You apply the same six steps to every scratch file:

1. Scan and retitle. If the scratch file covers multiple topics, disambiguate it.
2. Copy full text to T3 blog.
3. Copy full text to your chronological tapes.
4. Extract actionables to actionables.org
5. Delete and close scratch file.
6. Open next scratch file and repeat.

Let’s talk about each of these steps in order.

1. Scan and retitle. If the scratch file covers multiple topics, disambiguate it.

For this first step, you need to skim the scratch file to familiarize yourself with its overall contents. Since you made the file recently, you shouldn’t need to read it in detail.

You only need to do this step if the scratch file contains a decent amount of material on two totally unrelated things, or two things that each deserve their own separate T3 blog headings. For example, if you write a blog post, and then start redesigning the layout of your website, that should be two separate scratch files.

If the unrelated topic is just a line or two, don’t worry about creating a separate scratch file for it. We want to go fast and achieve “good enough” organization, not stress about minor stuff.

Lastly, give the scratch file a good title that summarizes its contents.

2. Copy full text to T3 blog.

You do not have to do this step if the contents of the scratch file are not worth preserving for later searching in your T3 blog. But most scratch files will be worth preserving. It’s a good habit to save more than you need, because storage costs are near zero. At most, you will have another search result showing up for certain keywords. Keeping a complete record allows you to reconstruct the major work sessions for any individual project months or years later, which is awesome.

The fastest way to do this is to copy the plain text, switch to your WordPress local install, click the HTML tab, and paste the full text into the editor window. Then jump to the top, grab the headline, and move it from the editor window to the headline bar.

Next check all the categories that apply. Don’t worry about overlap, that’s a good thing. Then hit Publish, and you’re done.

3. Copy full text to your chronological tapes.

Normally this step involves copying the full text of the scratch file to notes.org. This is a simple copy-paste job that takes two seconds.

But occasionally a scratch file will contain lots of copied research material. Notes.org is supposed to be stuff you wrote yourself. So if there is a lot of quoted material, you should break that down into your quotes chronological tapes.

Your quotes chronological tapes are divided into four files, ranked by importance: epic-quotes.org, elite-quotes.org, quotes.org, and reference.org. Epic is for truly life altering one-liners. Elite is for really good stuff. Quotes is for good stuff. Reference is for bulk material.

It’s easier to break down a scratch file into the appropriate quotes files by deleting stuff from your scratch file as you paste it into your quotes files. That way you don’t lose track of your place.

Often you’ll want to create redundancy between your quotes files. For example, you may want to paste a small excerpt into epic quotes, a larger paragraph containing that excerpt into elite quotes, and the full text into reference. However the level of redundancy is up to you, and should vary depending on how important an item is to you. If it’s critical that you find it again easily, then take a few extra moments to give it high redundancy. If it’s not as important, then just put it in one or two quotes files.

You don’t always have to record the source document when you’re quoting text. When you have an exact quote, it’s usually easy to find the source by using search. Also, you’ll be able to find the context of the original quote on your T3 blog, which should spur your memory if it doesn’t contain the source explicitly.

4. Extract actionables to actionables.org

In this last editing step, you delete everything from your scratch file that isn’t an actionable. Actionables are any sentence that can be performed as an action. If there is an idea that is phrased in the passive tense but ought to be an actionable, rephrase it to the active tense. You should also make sure that each actionable can be understood independently, since it will be sorted out of its context in BrainStormWFO.

After you’ve removed everything that isn’t an actionable from the scratch file, copy it all and paste into your actionables.org.

5. Then clear the scratch file, save and close it.

6. Open the next scratch file and start the process over again. Repeat until done.

Processing the Task Loop

At this point you have cleared the decks. Your info is tucked away where it should be. The question now is, what should you do next?

To answer this question, we turn to our actionables.org file. This contains a list of every actionable ever captured, in chronological order.

One cannot get a sense of the best next action from such an unordered list. Therefore we will transfer all these tasks to a BrainStormWFO file for processing.

During this transfer process, we do NOT delete anything from actionables.org. We want to preserve that chronological order. Instead, we use a marker to keep track of our place. The marker looks like this:

———————————————————
PROCESSED LINE
———————————————————

(By the way, I use the same marker to note my place in my other chronological tapes, to keep track of what information I’ve transferred to other BrainStormWFO files. You will only need one marker per chronological tape.)

To begin the transfer, switch to your actionables.org file and search backwards until you find the PROCESSED marker. Highlight and copy all the tasks entered after the marker. Switch to your actionables.brn file and open the Inbox entry at the top of your outline. Paste the new tasks there and save the .brn file. Now switch back to actionables.org and move the PROCESSED marker down to the bottom of your actionables.org file.

Now you’re ready to begin sorting your tasks against each other to surface your critical path.

Split your BrainStormWFO window so the left pane is the Inbox and the right pane is the top level of your outline. Place your six bookmarks under each of the top level categories. Sort each task to the appropriate category.

Here are the sorting rules for your actionables.brn file top-level categories:

1. By Time – If a task has a deadline or urgency attached to it, it goes here. The subdivisions are “a day”, “a week”, “waiting on not my queue”, “a month”, and “a year or indefinitely deferred”. Things that you are waiting on from others also belong in this category.

(By the way, this category is a reasonable approximation of a calendaring/time function, but it does not reliably manage critical time-sensitive items. If you have tasks that absolutely require perfect management of their time element, you should manage those separately in your calendar or in a GTD or project management app. However BrainStormWFO can manage the vast majority of your tasks, permitting you to use slower tools for the subset of tasks that need more sophisticated time management features.)

2. Habit Instillation – This is for recurring items, things you want to do daily, weekly, hourly, whatever. Again, this is an imperfect habit management technique, so if a particular habit is really important, you’ll want to manage it with another tool or tools. However it’s useful as a dumping ground if you tend to generate a lot of habit ideas that subsequently lose importance. It’s easy to come back later and select one or two to focus on, or to consolidate a large number of habits into a new life-change program.

3. By Priority – These are high-priority tasks that are not time sensitive. This category is fairly self-explanatory. You will get a lot of tasks built up here, so subdivide them by project. Rank high-priority projects above low-priority ones, and within projects rank high-priority tasks above low-priority ones.

Once again, this is not a perfect solution. Ideally you would like to spend more time focusing on high priority stuff rather than time-urgent stuff. Two things to remember – first, you can declare a task as “urgent” if it’s important enough to you that you want to get it done immediately. Second, this is not the only place in Cyborganize where you will think about tasks. Your T3 blog will include lots of longform content on strategies and roadmaps. These pull together lots of rich context about your task tree that’s impossible to represent in any GTD app. So rather than trying to perfectly optimize our task prioritization system with a ton of settings that allow fine-tuning, we accept a system that’s “good enough”.

4. By Project – This is where every other task goes that doesn’t fit into the above categories.

5. Reference – This includes key reference info like logins, bank account numbers, contact details for people, etc. This info is very high priority even though it isn’t directly actionable. Since our actionable.org and actionable.brn files get sorted more often than anything else, we put this critical info here to make sure it is always up-to-date.

After Sorting, Begin Executing In A Scratch File

Once you have sorted your tasks from the Inbox to the top level categories, zoom in on the “By Time” heading and continue sorting. Then start executing from most urgent to least urgent. In order to execute, just open a new scratch file with that task as the heading. And we’re back into the scratch loop. This process is infinitely repeatable. Enjoy!

One note on executing urgent tasks. If you’ve classified a task as urgent, but when you get to it you don’t feel like doing it, chances are it’s not really urgent. Move it down in urgency or out of the “By Time” category altogether. Use the “Missorted” entry to move misclassified items back up the outline, until they reach a level at which they can be sorted correctly. For example, let’s say that I have an entry “Wash car” in my “Today” category, but I decide that I can do it later in the week. Then I would move it to “Missorted”. When I am done sorting the “Today” layer, I would grab everything under the “Missorted” heading and move it one outline layer above, which in this case would be the “By Time” heading.

Because we’re always starting with the urgent tasks, you may go months without ever touching your “priority” tasks. However, this doesn’t mean that they won’t get done. When you are doing an urgent task, you will often pick up and complete a number of other related tasks at the same time.

You now understand the basic Cyborganize loop – from scratch.org to actionables.brn and back again.