Replacing Redo With Bonsai

Posted on June 5, 2007 by LJ Earnest
Categories: Software

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Introduction

Recently I was asked how I replaced Redo with Bonsai. Redo is a program which enters repeating tasks directly into your task list. A necessity before the task list could do this function, I still use it because I don’t like things cluttering up my task list with future items. However, Redo is a Palm-only program, and when I fried my PDA a couple of years ago, I realized how heavily I had relied on it…and also how much I was missing because the information wasn’t duplicated on my PC.

Redundancy

Frying my PDA was a wakeup call for me, and I now have redundancy between Palm and PC so that I have everything in both places and accessible. Usually this is easy due to desktop components of the PC application, but with some Palm applications I have had to get creative. Since Bonsai is my working system of choice for task items, it seemed logical to find a way to get Redo items into Bonsai. However, I didn’t want to replace Redo with Bonsai because I didn’t want extraneous tasks cluttering up my working outlines, either.

The Categories

My categories are the same as my main outline, and also as my to do list. These include the categories:

• Action
• Call
• Computer
• Errands
• Home

The Outline

Level One: Time Periodicity

The top level of the outline has three entries:

• Daily
• Weekly
• Monthly

These correspond to the items I have that repeat in these periods.

Level Two:

Daily:

This is the area that holds my daily tasks. These include reminders and daily activities (like clean the cat box)

Weekly:

Under this level I have an entry for every day of the week

Monthly:

Under this level I have an entry for each month of the year

Using the Outline

Under each area, I list the tasks, preceded by some shorthand. If the task has a due date, it gets a * in front of it. Next I put in parentheses when it occurs, and then the text of the item.

Repetition

I use a few notations for when a task occurs. If it is on a certain date of the month, I put the number. Thus the 10th of the month would be noted (10).

I use different notation to indicate things that occur on certain weeks. For example, something occurring the 3rd Monday would be annotated (3M). The last Monday would be (LM).

Example 1: Computer Tasks

Every Monday I perform routine computer maintenance. Under the Weekly/Monday level you will find the following entries:

• *Run Ad Aware
• *Run Spybot
• *Backup computers
• *Burn computer backup
• *Virus check machines

Once a month I burn an archive copy for off-site storage. The entry is under every month and looks like:

• (1T) Burn monthly computer backup.

This indicates that this needs to happen on the first Tuesday of the month.

Example 2: Checking for Birthdays

I used to never get birthday cards and presents out on time. My ReDo system (and consequently Bonsai) will help me through this. Every last Tuesday of the month I need to check the list of birthdays, make cards and buy and send presents. The entry looks like this:

• *(LT) Process Birthdays

In Case of PDA Failure: How To Use This

If my PDA fails, I will need to go into this outline daily and copy branches from the Daily, Weekly and Monthly items into my main Bonsai outline. From here I can assign due dates and use Bonsai as my planner, since it will have all information about my tasks.

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