ForumsGetting Things Done®Hold vs. Planining


Hold vs. Planining
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Proximo

Posted: Jun 08, 2009
Score: 0 Reference
Short and to the point.

I use "Planning" for my task that I need to do something with, but I am not ready for them to be "Active" or "Next Actions".

I was reading that some people use "Hold" instead, so I was wondering your thoughts on this.

My Projects are task with subtask for all the actions required to move it forward. I keep the very next action that I need to do as "Next Action" and keep the others as Planning until I am finished with my "Next Action" task.

That is not to say that you can have more than one action you are doing something with at a time.

For my Action List (Not Projects) I only make the Task "Active" that I will be working on that week and mark the task that I will do right now as "Next Action". Again, this is not to say that you can't have more than one Next Action at one time.

All other task are set to "Planning" and I will upgrade them to "Active" or "Next Action" as I accomplish the task that I was focused on. I do a short Daily Review to keep this flowing and my Full Weekly Review on Fridays.

Any thoughts.
Anders

Posted: Jun 08, 2009
Score: 0 Reference
I use Active for all tasks that are not next actions, but are ready to be done. I generally try to have at least one next action per context per project.

I use Planning only for tasks that I have not fully fleshed out yet that I am not sure about or have incomplete information about, or that are very far in the future. Planning usually applies to every task in a project for me although there are exceptions. This is a reason I would love to have subtasks inherit certain characteristics of their parent. That way I could mark a project as planning, and not worry about marking all the tasks.

I use Hold to apply to tasks that were either Active or Next Action when something came up that forced me to delay or significantly deprioritize the task.
Proximo

Posted: Jun 08, 2009
Score: 0 Reference
@Anders,

Thanks for sharing. This is how I was using it also and it made sense to me. It's always good to check and see how other ideas can be implemented.

Thanks again.
Claudio

Posted: Jun 08, 2009
Score: 1 Reference
I'm sure that you and Anders know this but tasks with "Planning" as the status will show up in the task list even if the "Hide Deferred Tasks" filter is on; tasks with "Hold" will not show up.

FWIW, I've used "Planning" to identify a recently entered Project that "Next Action", which then isn't technically a GTD Project, but I used it to distinguish the project from much more tentative "Someday" projects.

I rarely use the Status field anymore because I find it too awkward to manually update the continual cascading changes. It would be great if Toodledo could update a task date and status automatically when other tasks are updated.
TheGriff_2

Posted: Jun 10, 2009
Score: 1 Reference
I use planning to indicate a project that is in the Planning stages (i.e. the Next Action is to brainstorm ideas for the project).

Tasks within a project get the Next Action status when they are truely the next action. Tasks outside of a project get the Active status.

Tasks within a project that are not the Next Action all go on Hold so they are hidden.

I generally use stars when I get stressed due to a day with alot of items that need to get done (like before an extended business trip). I'll quickly enter all that on my mind and just star all of it so I make sure I get it done "today".

That said I could envision a system where starred tasks indicated next actions and un-starred did not. Just a thought.
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