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Which Status has a task which follows the next action task?
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Bernd73

Posted: Dec 28, 2011
Score: 0 Reference
Hi,

iam new to GTD. Currently iam just finished with reading Davids book.

When i plan a project which Status has a task which follows the next action task? Is it Waiting? David dont tells anything about it. And which status do you set when you have a task which is only there because of a container and holding subtasks?
PeterW 

Posted: Dec 28, 2011
Score: 1 Reference
Toodledo has features that seem to be based on GTD methodology but it doesn't claim to be a true GTD-based system. You will find features (e.g. some of the Status field selections) that wouldn't be mentioned in Dave Allen's books and others that he would oppose (e.g. the Priority field).

So you have to work out how to make Toodledo do GTD the way that suits you. Some of us don't use the Status field at all and use folders for that. Project handling is probably the most difficult thing to do well in Toodledo and some have abandoned it over this aspect. You could use the 'waiting' status if that works for you. According to the GTD book, you don't necessarily have to specify the task(s) after the next action.

Have a read of some of the threads in this section to see what others have done with Toodledo and see what might work for you.
alexandremrj_2

Posted: Dec 30, 2011
Score: 0 Reference
You can always use the status active for instance, that way all those tasks are tasks that are not quite ready yet.

If you are following GTD i recommend against using waiting for that purpose becayse waiting are tasks that were delegated and you are waiting for someone to do an action with it.
Folke X

Posted: Dec 31, 2011
Score: 0 Reference
True, Peter and Alexandre,

GTD does not have as many states as Toodledo does, so if you use them all anyway, it will be in some "enhanced GTD" way. GTD has Next, Waiting and Someday - and project actions in some form of internal sequence.

I think one implicit question back to Bernd73 is:
In your question, when you say Next action, do you actually mean it in the GTD sense of "actionable task" or do you mean those that you actually choose to DO first of all?

The reason I am asking you this is that it will have an impact on how you use the rest of the statuses.

Some people use the Star as a Focus marker, i.e. your narrow current selection of tasks (among all the actionable tasks) that you will actually DO first of all. In that case you can go ahead and use the Status of Next Action in the original sense of Next Action (= actionable tasks).

If instead you decide to use the highest status Next Action for the current "Do" selection, then probably the status Active would be the most natural one to use for all the other actionable items. (This is what I used to do. I used the star for other purposes).

Actually, in a strict GTD sense these are all Next actions - it is just that you have decided to actually do some of them before the others. In that sense, I would recommend the Star as a Focus marker. It keeps the status intact.

Further, as Alexandre probably means, if you have dependent actions in a project - actions that can only be done after the first action (next action) has been completed, then the question arises which Toodledo status to use for those. You could use Active or Hold or none, but not Waiting (or Delegated).


This message was edited Dec 31, 2011.
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