I donât think itâs possible to search for no tags, i.e.: the absence of any tag. But it would be nice!!! I have rule to make sure every item is tagged with a project before it moves from the Inbox to another context (Document).
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Thanks for the input here. Iâll try to remember to tag things like I did before.
One side issue I noticed this weekend was a little friction in my process now that Iâve separated my lists and created contexts using documents. I miss having them all in one document for easy searches but like the idea of the separation too.
For me, the big win in using Dynalist is the fast, efficient access to my lists. Making that process as âlow dragâ as possible makes me want to use it all day long. Thatâs what Iâll use to decide if documents or hash tags will be used for contexts.
Appreciate your input!
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Iâve been using saved searches for my lists. You can search using date, tags, etc., then bookmark the search and rename the bookmark to something meaningful.
So, I have bookmarks like âToday High Energyâ and that kind of thing, which makes it easy to filter down to just what Iâm looking for.
Itâs just another layer for implementing GTD.
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Yep i have same approach, here some saved search Bookmarks
- Inbox special document for BrainDump my thoughts
- OverDue within: -12m until: -1d -is:completed
- Today Actions until:today -is:completed
- Next Week within:1w -has:completed
- Next Month within:1m -has:completed
- Action with Dates has:date -is:completed
âŠ
Cheers
Dimitry
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Iâve placed all my projects back into a single document after separating them into individual documents by context. For my experience, I didnât like the division because of the way I use tags to search for things.
Itâs amazing how much more I enjoy Dynalist when using tags.
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Hi, I just responded to a similar topic of yours on project setup here which is relevant: How Do You Setup Your Projects in Dynalist?
The only things I would add to that post for your more general question is:
- Obviously I have an inbox
- I have a calendar in dynalist which also functions as Allenâs tickler file - the days have a series of tags like #tue #d24 #apr #2017 â this is better than a single tag system as you can have a cloud of tags at the top of your calendar with all the days of the week, month, months and years, and can click to filter as you like (this is very powerful) - these also allow you to move items to certain days very easily e.g. by typing #tue into the âmoveâ box all the tuesdays come up - Nested under each day are the hours of the day in bullet form so that events can be nested un the appropriate time (I also give events a due time with dyanlistâs in built feature so they show up on my google calendar)
- I have an operations centre, which has my current day, a big cloud of tags / links for all my major projects and searches as well as my daily / weekly checklists, and my inbox
- Each day I move my calendar entry for that day to my operations document - this day of course has my fixed events on it / any tickler things Iâve sent there over time - I then build on this throughout the day (e.g. I roughly plan my tasks first thing) and I also journal on top of it, recording various things that happen
- At the end of the day I move any unresolved things to appropriate places and send that day to my @Past document
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Why donât you just shorthand it to something like â#W10A #30â for week 10, âAâ for 2017 year (âBâ for 2018), #30 for the day of the month. You could condense it maybe one letter more, but this is as optimized as dates get
I have originally thought of doing â#tues #d24 #apr #2017â to which I do still, but ONLY in my daily log list. All other tag notes use the other convention. the reason I donât use this is because I have valuable real estate on my dynalist and looking at date tags everywhere is confusing
I put that in PROJECT TAGS, for the ALT3 code I mentioned earlier in the other phraseexpress post too
Since I donât know how many shortcuts I will be needing, how many specific filters, etc
do you have a picture of what this looks like or the general document hierarchy before and after the day? just curious
Hi Vincent,
RE the day tags, I am sure your method is more efficient (itâs very interesting actually), but I like to be able to read them easily myself and my brain works on days of the week etc 
RE the project tags, yes thereâs many ways this could be set up - I personally like having a single âCentreâ which I feel like is my âhomeâ with dynalist - this is just a personal psychological preference
RE the calendar, my calendar looks a bit like this (Any event or day-defining task either gets a dynalist time stamp or an @day tag) - I almost always view my calendar in this search mode you can see - this means I can send unimportant tasks to my days (acting like a tickler file) without this view getting cluttered - this shows only the âhard landscapeâ of my future, as Allen would put it - this is what allows it to be both calendar and tickler file simultaneously. (Ps. the calendar still has some hangovers from workflowy (e.g. the #blue thing) which I havenât sorted out yet - I will obviously switch this to a dynalist color search when I get a chance. the @pp-devon tag is a project tag (a visit to Devon) - when I search my whole account for this tag it will bring up the project notes / tasks section for that project as well as those tagged days on my calendar.
Then I bring it over to Operations which looks a bit like this (this is my current day - I have been out and about on my phone today so it is almost completely bare - this whole system is mostly for when working at my computer in the office or at home) - when I do have that kind of day the times of the day would be full of completed pomodoroâs / tasks Iâve done etc.
Once the âdayâ comes over, I obviously check my tasks by urgency or context and make a (rough) plan for the day - as I move through the day I either follow or modify this as appropriate and âcompleteâ the previous portion - I also sometimes journal throughout the day if interesting things happen or if I want to track e.g. exercise.
And finally it goes to the past which just looks like this (I try to write a brief journal sentence on each day but am not too consistent with this) - This reminds me of a benefit of my tagging structure actually (and unlike the one you suggested) - You can see the tag cloud at the top - this format allows me to really easily and quickly filter for the day I want if Iâm searching for something - If Iâm trying to remember when something happened and tags fail me, I often maybe have a hunch it was a tuesday, or the 14th of something, or some time in may ⊠so I find this helps me find what I want really quickly (which single, integrated tags cannot achieve)
Best wishes,
Stephen
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Why is there day tags everywhere up top? Are those things you tagged this week? (am not familiar with the built-in date tag)
Also, I donât have the right personality type to write down times (2-3PM, 3PM-4PM)throughout the day, I would get go crazy looking at so many items too, Iâm trying to shy away from too many nested bulletpoint levels. It is a problem I have though, that my notes arenât capturing exact times, and some things I only capture by weeks only atm (e.g. finished task)s
But if it works for you thatâs what counts
Also, I have taken your suggestion to seperate a personal and work to-do list. It has made my list more customizable so I can focus on work, or personal, whenever I so choose (still all in one list). Subsequently I can add project folders here and whatever I want as an âinboxâ sort of âwaterfall-ish type of project management approachâ
-WORK TO-DO
-WORK SOMEDAY
-PERSONAL TODO
-PERSONAL SOMEDAY
GENERAL INBOX TASKS
this is a semi-downside I have, for the tag cloud thing. It wouldnât really matter a lot by the day, but by the week it can be a pain.
When I do this
Also, with integrated tags for the daily notes:
âȘDAY
âȘâȘTAG
âȘâȘâȘNOTES
I normally summarize the ââȘâȘ TAG : Notes below are this, see imgur.com/xgsdga tagâ or the last item I made in the list / summary
When I search through the list ,it isnât such a big deal either. Also, I find that I rarely ever look through anything specific in my previous notes, just jotting it down makes it easier to remember. So what happens is per week, I read all notes made that week and it doesnât take too long either. Its also another reason I donât keep things like thesisâs / fictionbook writing here, it would pollute my notes too much, I seperate it into app.classeur.io, screenshot things I added, and reference back to dynalist.io
Also, thereâs one important thing if anything when it comes to notetaking, at least for me. My conventions and format must be 100% portable. I try to shy away from built-in notetaking systems, if I can help it. Its one reason I donât like things like evernote or onenote, I donât really have an exportable way to grab images in context to text I write (also, they donâ;t support gifs well either). I like having full control of my data. Basically, if I cannot parse the data in anyway, shape or form using pythonscripts or excelVBA, its not really portable.
Same with dynalist.io uploads, its still an immature tech they have for upload management. I canât just export and move around images and PDFs with ease. I utilize shareX + amazonS3/imgur for this.
Also, suggestion for jobsearching. Wouldnât googlesheets be easier to handle this approach? Some employers take ages to respond, so I figured having a command-center for just googlespreadsheets would be more beneficial? If you could isolate those notes ahead of time wouldnât it be a good idea?
I try to use different apps for different reason, dynalist.io is just my thought organizer / project management-ish system
Well, I donât actually write down times. I have a set of bullets with the hours of the day which I just copy over each day - then as I move through the day I just write my tasks / notes under the correct bullet, like this:
But actually any important notes I would either put in my inbox or send to the appropriate project section - I once quite liked the idea of recording EVERYTHING in one place on my day (bullet journal style) just like you do - the only thing I found is that it required dilligent tagging to make sure nothing got lost / forgotten - one benefit of using lists instead of tags for organising (of course one should use both in combination) is that it forces you to make a choice about where it should go - any time I have relied solely on tags I have always fallen into lazy habits and the whole thing has fallen apart - perhaps someone less lazy than me would be fine 
The dynalist-time-stamps on the calendar are really only there because dynalist pro offers google calendar sync for time stamped items - when I am out and about on my phone going to appointments etc I look at my google calendar on my phone rather than going through to my dynalist calendar because itâs much faster / easier to work with
Yes that looks like a nice task system - very visual which I like - itâs hard to tell but I slightly wonder how it will hold up if you have e.g. 100+ things to do (which I probably do across all my areas of life) - it sounds like you are a bit better with technology than me (I donât really code) so perhaps you have slightly different needs - I personally prefer to do as much as I possibly can in Dynalist and am prepared to sacrifice some optimality for that - there are things I wonât do - my files are in dropbox and I just link to them if needed and donât use dynalistâs upload system at all - however generally I do like to have as much as possible under one roof and crucially, under a single search box so that when I search for my top priority tasks I know I really am seeing all of them - it also allows me to move around my life very quickly and not have to open / close different apps or think where something is
RE writing I have just put up a post linking to a blog article I wrote a while ago about combining workflowy (or dynalist of course) with latex for academic writing which you might find interesting:
The nice thing about dynalist compared to workflowy is you can have a separate folder for your write ups, so it really doesnât have to âcontaminateâ your notes at all
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Donât worry I have specifically lazy tags dubbed â@workâ and â@personalâ. It doesnât get lazier than that really (although I donât use @work often, since you know, work is subject to change. Rather a shortname for company I work for)
Also, I donât treat tags as tags, I treat tags as folders, based on evernoteâs best practice tagging conventions (e.g. an item can be placed in two places at the same time, by treating each tag like a âfolderâ)
I do use this, this is why I never use the â!â operator and reserve it just for this scenario only, else I would pollute my google calendar.
My current list is sitting at 50 items. I am too lazy to do any of it today though (none of those are urgent, most are project based), this is the 3rd week I have been setting up my dynalist.io setup. Tomorrow is just massive sprint day catch up for me. Iâm also kind of tired from working out yesterday too
As of now, its actually scaling pretty well. I could see it becoming a problem at 200+ items, but realistically I shouldnât have more than 100 items anyhow. Do note that I donât log things in that take 5 minutes usually either, and have seperate workflows for handling things with clients by emails and such. Over half the things I have in my dynalist are things like (Backup XYZ, improve workflow ABC, explore issue DEF)
I try not to do everything in dynalist. Dynalist can only do so much. You canât do things an excel /google spreadsheet can (e.g. scalable number of column / cell data). You canât document code well in almost any regular notetaking app, but rather dedicated apps (gistbox) . I think its important to be flexible, in that you can handle manual integrations with different softwares (hence my SOP manual which I finished writing mostly).
Your also pretty limited to things coming in from dynalist, like I canât RSS new ideas like feedly can or read new stories. Dynalist has some pretty poor workflows to bookmark management, so I have other systems for that too
I donât mind looking 2 extra places for something I cannot find. Its like finding a remote for your TV. If you donât find it the first place you look (your couch), place it the first place you look after. Same concept.
The remote is an analogy to your notes, TV is how you drive action, and your couch is dynalist
well true I could create a secondary document as well, I probably should 
I skimmed parts of your blog, which was a bit hard too read (formatting), but I got the gist of it. I have really never used workflowy for more than 1 hour, and I decided I really did not like it that much compared to dynalist ( I really hate workflowyâs Prezi like zooming functions, they bother me alot).
I donât really do alot of hardcore mathmatical formulas in latex, and my go-to has always been markdown syntax for general notes. I have dabbled in a bit of Katex and Mathjax syntax though, which are very similar but simplified versions of latex (also I donât really need formulas I got images anyways)
Why dynalist.io anyways and not workflowy? Just curious, what makes dynalist better in your opinoin (OR worse for that matter)? Iâve not explored it in much detail
I read this and Iâm thinking: cool, so thatâs how Iâll get my mail filtered and delivered in my dynalist inbox
Thatâs a very good point. I was frustrated with Evernote because although itâs easy to search for tags, searching for untagged items is not easy at all (there are one or two hacks to do it⊠on the Mac only I think). If you are using a GTD type approach and have a weekly review when you want to organise items, being able to easily find untagged ones and tag them is really useful.
If you religiously put everything in an âinboxâ list that makes it easy, but if you want to quickly add items into a range of lists/contexts/projects and worry about tagging them later itâs a fiddly process.
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Awesome!
I guess my need is a bit more complicated since I only tag the top-level items in a list, not the sub-items.
I would need something like is:top -# -@
But thanks for taking the time to respond and help us get the most from Dynalist.
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What is your GTD set up in Dynalist? Any tips?
I have my IN, NEXT ACTIONS, WAITING FOR, SOMEDAY all as separate docs. But, looking for tips of what works best for others. How is yourâs structured? How do you best maximize Dynalist for GTD?
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It may be more efficient to have tags for each of GTD status. Then you can use the Agenda function in @Piotrâs PowerPack 2 for an easy reference to your system.
Thanks. So, are you suggesting putting everything into a single doc so itâs searchable via tags?
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Yes, that seems more efficient.
How are you using Dynalist for GTD? Do you have a single doc for all that + your projects?
Thanks again Kevin!