Real-world tagging examples
Please note: This article has been contributed by a user.
The great thing about tags is that you have a lot of control over how you organize and sort your tasks. The downside, of course, is that you have to come up with your own system, which can be a major pain. Things provides some example tags with new projects, but you'll still be required to show some creativity to make it work for you. Here you can find some real-world examples of tagging systems being used in Things! Take what's useful and leave the rest!
If you've got a tag cloud that's working well for you, please add it to the page, either in a new category or as part of an existing one!
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Web design
Hey, Ian Beck here! Here are the tags that I'm currently using in Things to track my full-time work as a web designer and developer. Many of these are specific to my situation (I telecommute from home, hence the lack of an "office" location), but some of the general categories at least should be useful to many people who are using Things to track their work tasks.
As a side note, please note that this particular tag cloud is still being developed! It hasn't changed in a few days, though, which is why I decided to share it with others. I will likely take another pass at it soon, though, because it violates some of my own guidelines about keeping things consistent, lowercase, and singular.
Particularly useful in general, I think, are the distinctions between the most general organization of projects and free-standing tasks (between work, freelance work, and personal tasks), and the break-down of traditional contexts into locations and resources.
Although I think most people would benefit from a "type" grouping of tags, these specific types are very much targeted for web design and will likely be worthless in other situations.
I'm using singular characters and Unicode images to separate out these tags, which is working really nicely! If you're having trouble duplicating this kind of tag list, you can open the Unicode characters with Edit -> Special Characters... and then just drag and drop the ones you like into the tag window. I've been finding that the largest and boldest work the best; some are too small to be legible in the filter bar.
I'd love to hear what people think of this tag cloud! The easiest way to contact me is through the Tagamac contact page; I'm also watching this page.
Good luck making your own tag clouds!
Student/General
Hi, I am Stefan Nicolin. After reading Ian's wonderful tipps on tags I compiled my own tag list. Since it's in German, I didn't post a screenshot. I will translate them here:
- place
- home
- ontherun
- office
This is quite obvious. "ontherun" is ment for errands and such.
- media
- computer
- telephone
Since I am sitting the whole day in front of a computer I do have access to mail but I felt I needed something to stress the nature of the task of sending mails.
- prio
- burns
- urgent
- important
- when_time
- unimportant
- wait
The highest priority "burns" is something that can not wait any longer. While scooping the next action list that's the first tag I am sorting for.
- period
- 15min
- 1h
- half_day
- day
- long
The time scale is not smooth but speaking from experience most tasks are short or quite long—at least mine are (I am working as a sysadmin too).
- level
- easy
- hard
I intentionally left out medium since it would degrade to a catch-all level when I am too lazy to think about it.
- person
- sarah
- mom
- family
- friend
- collegue
These are quite self-explanatory too. I have assigned specific tags to the people I value most and then to the larger groups.
Looking at Ian's tag list I recon that mine are quite general. That's okay for me, since I tend to lose interest in tools that get too complicated while working with them. (Or games that demand too much micromanagement…that's why I don't play strategy games :)
So that's my list. Hope it helps. Be sure to read Ian's tips on tags.
Management Financial Institution
These are my tags:
- Stakeholders
- [ sponsoring entities ]
- Bilateral
- [ names of people ]
- Lateral
- [ names of meetings ]
- Change
- [ anything else than business as usual ]
- Organisation
- Employees
- Leadership
- Strategy
- Recources
- Processes
- Private
- Stakeholders
KR, Philip
Team Leader/Manager
In addition to my responsibilities as a team leader/manager at Sedo, I am also a grad student at Suffolk University. My course of study is in Organizational Learning & Development, and as part of my final research project, I am engaged in an action research project on workflow management (research question: How can I use reflection and workflow management disciplines as vehicles for improving my capabilities as a leader?). Part of my project focuses on iterative cycles of changing my workflow management practices, including collecting, processing, organizing, etc. In addition to developing my workflow management capabilities, I am also developing my trusted system. Rhodia notebooks, Gmail (personal email), MS Outlook (work email, via Windows XP on a Fusion VM), Mindmanager (horizontal, broad-level perspective and organization), OmniOutliner Pro (reflection journal), Launchbar, and of course Things all play integral parts in my comprehensive workflow management systems.
All the tags are fairly self-explanatory (proj: project (multi-step group of tasks), resp: responsibility (ongoing, without end), del.*: delegated, and mip: most important project). Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions. I can be reached at m.osusky @ gmail.com.
[mosusky]
