Tag structure for Dynalist (GTD , Zettelkasten and SecondBrain )

May be I am missing something. But birthdays I try to keep in my calendar. But you could use Dynalist as a personal contacts management system and add birthdays too.

Kenneth, what is the purpose of using @@project as a tag instead of @project?

Very interested in Zettelkasten but also very overwhelmed.

In my Dynalist there are hundreds of @ tags making autocomplete useless. @@ tags on the other hand are only a few. This lets me use the autocomplete feature in a sane manner.

Same goes for all the other tags that part of my GTD setup. That is why I use #| for creation tags, #( for consumption tags and #& for communication tags and so on.

All other hashtags that are not part of my GTD setup. Like #ZettelKasten topics, html colours and trending topics I can just leave as is.

I’m attempting to put everything in my dynalist. I have a master ‘chronical’ where I input things by date, and then they sync to my google calendar, so tagging will get more important as I enter more information.

For example, before your post about tags, I was entering birthdays as: “Doug’s #birthday !(03-17-20 | 1y)”. This is fine, but I can only search on #birthday, which will show me everyone’s birthday. With your tagging system, I’m changing these types of items to “@&Doug’s birthday !(03-17-20 | 1y)”, which will let me search for everything Doug related.

I tag other items as #plans, #work, etc so that way I can use IFTTT to split these items among several calendars once they’ve been imported to my master ‘incoming’ calendar.

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Can you explain this a little more? I’d love to be more selective about what goes into my calendar.

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I see. I would suggest you tag #birthday too. Then you can have the best of both worlds. :wink:

That is a really good idea I haven’t thought of. Which recipe are you using in IFTTT?

First, you want to turn off google calendar sync on whichever pages you have it turned on. You’ll want to make a bucket for all of the dates to go to in google calendar, so I set up a calendar called ‘incoming’. Because we tag, we can then use IFTTT to split the events on a search.

In IFTTT, make a new applet. You’ll have to connect whatever services you’re using. I’m sending google calendars to another google calendar, so it only needs the one connection, but you could send these events to any calendar service IFTTT (or zapier, etc, etc) works with. The trigger action is Google Calendar > New event from search added. I select the calendar ‘incoming’ and type whichever tag I want to filter (#plans, let’s say, but could be any tag)

The completed action will then be Google Calendar > create detailed event. You’ll pick the calendar you want the filtered events to go to, and you can set what fields get filled with what information from the original event. Create the action, turn google sync on in dynalist, and wait for the magic to happen.

You have to create a new applet for each tag you want to filter, but it doesn’t take too long.

I had to go in and manually trigger the first syncs in IFTTT after dynalist had uploaded everything to my incoming calendar, but they automatically update after that.

Let me know if you need more info!

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Thank you for a detailed walkthrough :heart:

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I’m not fully understanding what is happening here. A couple of questions:

  1. Are you using Symbols like #, =, ! to make autocomplete faster?
  2. On what document structure is this based? All in one file?
  3. Are you searching for the tags, or do you also have searches bookmarked that you use as views (e.g for current tasks)

I’m currently trying to setup Dynalist as a Second Brain. I have four documents: Inbox, Projects, Areas and Resources. In Resources I save mostly articles. I don’t use tags there, but I think I should. Currently I’m working with topics (e.g Design, Business etc) and below that topics are all my notes.

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  1. Yes. exactly
  2. I have loads of files
  3. Both.
  4. Articles I would tag as they relate to a thought/concept in Zettlekasten.

I am changing my tag setup a little so search is a little easier for all next actions. I’ll update my example file and original post as soon as I have experimented a little more. For the moment I am leaning towards all next action tags/verbs having two ## in the start of the tag.

So #|, #& and #( would become ##|, ##&, or ##(

Other tags will remain as is.

I’m getting ready to set up my Dynalist for the first time and your suggestions are indispensable, thank you! To clarify, are you keeping the #| #( #& tags system? And continuing to use those action tags for certain entries – adding the extra # in the beginning to distinguish Next Actions specifically?

If you’re keeping the #| #( #& tags system, how do you decide whether you’ll tag a task that way vs not tagging the action at all?

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Glad to be of help.

I have made a slight revision as stated above:

#( is renamed to ##( E.g. ##(Read
#| is renamed to ##| E.g. ##|Draft
#& is renamed to ##& E.g. ##&Remind

So if I want to see all my next actions I search for “##”.
Where as before I had to search like this: “#( OR #| OR #&”

Ah, got it! That’s great thanks.

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For your setup,

  • Do you use only one document?
  • If you use multiple docs, what are they?
  • Do you have a “daily log”, and what is that set up like?

I was thinking of combining your tagging methods with a daily log method similar to this.

I my active projects are in one document.

Horizons of focus

My someday / Maybe projects are in the appropriate document.

References likewise.

I mainly work here in the Runway:

I don’t have a daily log as it was to much work.

To only see my very next actions I add -has:children to the end of my search when I click on the context link.

As you can see here, I have 43 @@PCđŸ’» but only 25 which does not have a child.


Hi Kenneth,

very intersting :slight_smile:

I wonder, where your tasks are placed. Only inside the projects? Is everthing assigned to a project?

Cheers

I have them under each project. With some search magic I can then easily see just my next actions and not be distracted by the tasks I can’t do yet.

If I search for a context and append -has:children I only see the very next action in each project.

20 tasks:

36 tasks

Cool. I have one more question:

Do you tag every item related to a Project with @=Project? Then you have to type a lot of tags for every line, dont you? Or how do you keep assignment of tags to projects while moving items around?