Increase Productivity with Action Tagging

August 01, 2005

@ Here's a little productivity tip for those of you using a bookmarking system that supports tags (such as del.icio.us). I like to call it Action Tagging, here's how it works.

When I discover an article that looks interesting, but don't I have time to read it just yet, I tag it with an action tag. In this case I would tag it with @toread meaning I need to come back and read it later.

I use the @ symbol as a prefix for my action tag because in del.icio.us your tags are sorted in alphabetical order so they will show up first, and also because it seams to be the most logical symbol to represent action. Some bookmark systems may not allow the @ symbol, but del.icio.us does.

After I read the article, I either delete it, or edit it and update the tags if I want to keep it bookmarked.

I also use the action tag @toblog when I find an article that I want to post to my blog.

Some other possible action tags include:

@todo
@tobuy

Does anyone else use action tags? What tags do you use?

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add to del.icio.us | Tags: productivity, tips, tags, tagging, folksonomy, action tags, action tagging

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Comments

On 08/01/2005 at 4:03:21 PM EDT Sean Tierney wrote:

Pete, I use a similar system as yours only not with del.icio.us- I use the scrapbook extension of firefox and have almost the same folder structure setup (recon, articles, greatDesign, toBuy). I do basically the same thing by marking the stuff I want to come back to and keeping it all in one place. Your idea for using delicious is cool because you can gauge the general interest in the article from its popularity and it doesn't dictate that you must be working from your machine. Realistically I always use my laptop so the scrapbook extension method is sufficient for me.

On a sidenote- I'm doing the "Getting Things Done" audio series right now and this approach is VERY consistent with David Allen's recommendations for a "collection bucket" - basically not trying to hold these things in short-term "RAM" and just funnel them to a trusted system you can come back to.

good stuff sean

On 08/01/2005 at 4:15:10 PM EDT Pete Freitag wrote:

Cool, thanks for sharing that Sean.

On 08/04/2005 at 7:25:31 AM EDT Oyvind wrote:

I use many of the "normal" GTD tags, @home, @work, @blog etc. Then I collect these in my weekly review and put them into my lists.

On 08/06/2005 at 11:40:58 AM EDT ZZamboni wrote:

I use a similar system - I use the @readlater tag. However, so far my list with this tag has only been increasing. I'm using GTD, and I have failed to include this list into my reading pile so it actually gets read. Oyvind's idea is good - I will start including it in my weekly review.

On 08/09/2005 at 12:44:01 PM EDT JE wrote:

togrok (to understand) toread

On 12/04/2005 at 12:32:03 AM EST Matthew Cornell wrote:

I use a text file, with some simple Emacs macros for rapid capture of ideas, blog topics, etc. I use del.icio.us pretty much for rants, so it was nice to see your ideas for more structured use. If you're interested, here's a post describing it:

Pickle jars, text files, and creative idea capture - http://ideamatt.blogspot.com/2005/11/pickle-jars-text-files-and-creative.html

On 07/30/2007 at 9:09:02 AM EDT donne john wrote:

nice post. will use