ForumsGetting Things Done®Proximo's GTD Setup
Proximo's GTD Setup
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dani.fili |
@Proximo: From Buenos Aires, Argentina: "Muchas Gracias!" I started to use Toodledo and your posts help in a big way, thanks again.
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c.barber78 |
Posted by c.barber78:
@Proximo cheers for that. One question I have, is how do you separate next actions from a focus list? It seems as if there is no real focus list, because the stars are just used for next actions. Anyone have suggestions how this could be implemented, along with the todo iphone app? Cheers Still wondering this, but just have another question :P sorry for the questions :) How should I use things on my tickler list? Say I have a task that I want to start at 4pm on saturday, does that go in my tickler list and then at 4pm on sat i move it into actions or deos that go on my actions list with a start date of saturday? Cheers edit: I know it could be done different ways, but I would be interested to hear how people on here do it :) This message was edited Mar 11, 2010. |
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Daniel Westergren |
Thanks indeed to Proximo and others for a very interesting thread! I may have missed some, as I read through the entire thread just yesterday and today, but I have some more questions, mainly directed @Proximo.
1) I understand you star actions in the weekly review that you wish to accomplish in the coming week. But you also say you use the star list for today's next actions. Do you have one list for the week that you compile a today's list from, or do you work every day from the list of actions that could be done any time during the week? 2) A minor thing, but how come you use an Inbox folder, as tasks sent by e-mail for example by default end up in the No Folder "folder"? I'm thinking of using "No Folder" as the "Inbox" for that reason. 3) When do you move an action from the Actions list to Someday/Maybe? That is, do you consider all actions in the actions list to be done within say one month? 4) Do you always enter length for an action in your reviews? And is that used as the basis of what you estimate can be accomplished during the week, when also taking the calendar into consideration? Putting too many actions as next actions and never being able to accomplish them in the week may not be encouraging (I'm talking about myself... :). Well, it's a learning process to estimate what's possible of course. 5) I understand that you don't really use ticklers that much. But say you'd use a start date to hide future tasks, when the start date comes, how are you reminded to make these actions next actions? Maybe starring all future actions would make this easier, then they'd automatically appear in the NA list when the start date has arrived. Mainly technical details, but still interesting to read how others handle this. Thanks! |
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Proximo |
Posted by John Gardenhire:
So Proximo, are your actions in your action folder linked to your projects in your projects folder in any way? I currently use your method with GTD folders where I have a projects assigned to the projects folder and sub-tasks as multiple steps. As for next actions, I create a new task with the next action and assign it context but in the action folder. So say for instance I have a project of "Buy Tires" I'd create a task in the projects folder called "Buy Tires" with sub-tasks like: - Get Price Quotes - Determine budget - Make Appointment I would then create a new task in the action folder for the next physical action I have to do to "get price quote" which would be "call Les Schwab". Am I being redundant in my system? The lingo often gets so confusing when people use words for multiple meanings.. I keep my Projects separated from my Actions list. The only reason for this is due to the Flat vs. Nested switch in Toodledo. I initially started to add my Next Action of a project into my Next Action list but had to toggle between the Flat and Nested state too many times to see thing correctly. I finally decided to just keep them separated and it works just fine. When I do my weekly review I go through both list. Since I use Stars to designate the Task I want to do in a given day (Focus List), I always have my Next Actions and my Projects Next Action visible when I am working in my Focus list. Hope that makes sense. |
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Levi Wallach |
First of all I want to thank Proximo and everyone else for this long-running thread. I finally got through the whole thing.
I have been playing with GTD on and off for a few years, have read and listened to the book, and even created my own pdf flow-chart in order to understand the process better. I used Remember The Milk for a long while and tried to mesh GTD into it. I did this by developing a greasemonkey script (or really modifying one that was already out there but unrelated to GTD): http://bit.ly/ayvI6w. The only problem was all the maintenance you have to do in RTM. It is so open and flexible (based only on tags and searches), that it's a pain having to remember all the rules to get a given system to work right. I had seen Toodledo back then but it seems it wasn't as powerful then and when I took a look at it a couple of weeks ago again I realized that it had improved marketdly and with a leaning toward elements that are built into GTD. It has additional structural items (folders, contexts, and subtasks) that RTM doesn't have, despite YEARS of people pleading for them. That was another big reason I gave up on RTM, they seemed unable or unwilling to devote any time to actually enhancing the featureset of their tool. Very frustrating, it seems they have not added a feature in three years. They've chosen to devote all their attention to connectivity (new client versions, api stuff, syncing in different ways, etc.). That's their perogative, but it somehow gives the sense they believe their service is perfect in it's core features, despite constant clamoring to the contrary. Ok, sorry for that little rant, back on subject! I found the use of folders here interesting and fairly intuitive, although I initially was confused as others why Proximo wasn't using statuses for these. I suppose you could use either depending on how your brain works. I'm probably going to configure things more or less the way Proximo has and then play with it if I feel it's not working as well as I hoped. Contexts: I've struggled with these a bit and the discussion about them has been helpful. It's true that I have my phone, and even internet with me all the time, whether I'm out, at home, or at work. So perhaps location is the key context for those of us who have smartphones? The problem with this is there are also things that I can do in multiple locations, so how exactly do you contextualize these? I guess multiple contexts, as Proximo suggested, might work, but I don't see how using tags in addition to single contexts can solve this issue. The only current solution I can come up with off the top of my head is to use tags for these instead. Thus you could tag some tasks with just @home, some with @home and @out, and still others with @home, @out, and @work. Then you can modify your searches to search by tag instead of context. So then what would you use context in that case? Actually, there is another item in GTD that is not incorporated in Toodledo that might fit well here. It's energy level. From my notes and flowchart it seems that once you get down to all the tasks that are actionable and that you want to do now (or as soon as possible), you are then faced with which to do first. Part of this is done by the context, but after that there are three additional criteria: 1)time - do you have enough time to complete it. 2)effort/energy - how much mental (or physical?) energy does it take, and does that match your current energy level 3)intuition - this is a kind of wildcard that some might consider a cop-out in some ways because there's no way to systematize intuition, it's by definition a very slippery idea. But I think he also suggests just having a feeling of what will give the "biggest bang for the buck" here. So, Toodledo has the first one (length of time), the third one is impossible (or I suppose you could try to use priority in lieu of something intangible like intuition), but the second one is not available either, and at least to me is easier to define and calculate than "intuition." So you could create "Low-energy" "Medium-energy" and "High-Energy" (or whatever terms make sense to you) contexts. This makes the context view not very useful, but if you are using searches than you can search by tags (ie context) but then sort by length of time and/or energy level. My only wish here is that Toodledo would actually allow you to save multiple sort criteria - eg sort by length ascending, then energy level ascending. I don't currently see a way to do that, so i'll have to play with all this. Finally, I just wanted to let folks know of a cool trick that I was able to figure out by using a greasemonkey script: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/41369 that replaces text on a web page. I set it up to replace all instances of "No Folder" with "Inbox" because really that's what "No Folder" means to me, and it seems like extra work having to choose a constructed "Inbox" folder to do the same work. It seems to work fine! Levi |
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Proximo |
Posted by c.barber78:
@Proximo cheers for that. One question I have, is how do you separate next actions from a focus list? It seems as if there is no real focus list, because the stars are just used for next actions. Anyone have suggestions how this could be implemented, along with the todo iphone app? Cheers I actually use my Star as a Focus List. By default the Next List contains all the individual task that you decided are important to do. They are by default all Next Actions. You can call this the Next List, Action List or Next Action list. The naming is not important. What is important is that all the single step actions are all Next Actions by definition. You now must decide what you will work on based on your Time, Energy, Context and Priority. Projects are used when you have more than one Next Action to complete something. A Project could be as little as two task or as large as 200. When you look at a Project, there is usually only one Next Action that will move it forward. So in a Project, you have one Next Action and it's usually the top most task on your list. I understand that some Projects are more complicated than others and you may have a situation where you need to work on more than one thing at a time or delegate something to someone else while you do something. So now back to the Next List and Project List. When I decide what task I will work on for the day. I mark it with a Star. The Star is not making the task a Next Action, but simply identifies it as a task that I will be working on today. I usually have several task marked with a Star to work on and some include single task from my Next List and some Next Actions from my Projects. The Star view is now my Focus List. It's the list I work from when I am actually getting things done and allows me to only focus on the task that matter. hope this makes sense. |
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Proximo |
Posted by howardksmith:
Proximo - Seeing your post and process when I started Toodledo was a Godsend. I've mimic'd most of it for my set up. Question: Do you use the Firefox plugin to add tasks. If so, how do you account for / handle tasks that you know should be associated with a particular project? Given the 'leading +' approach to annotating projects, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to handle? I don't use the Firefox plug-in and try to keep my system as simple as possible. Since I am on my web browser anyway, I prefer to just click on the Toodledo tab and add my task that way. |
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Proximo |
Posted by c.barber78:
Posted by c.barber78: @Proximo cheers for that. One question I have, is how do you separate next actions from a focus list? It seems as if there is no real focus list, because the stars are just used for next actions. Anyone have suggestions how this could be implemented, along with the todo iphone app? Cheers Still wondering this, but just have another question :P sorry for the questions :) How should I use things on my tickler list? Say I have a task that I want to start at 4pm on saturday, does that go in my tickler list and then at 4pm on sat i move it into actions or deos that go on my actions list with a start date of saturday? Cheers edit: I know it could be done different ways, but I would be interested to hear how people on here do it :) I don't use a Tickler folder in Toodledo. Just a personal preference. What I do is use the Start Date feature so that a task shows up in my Star View on the day I want to work on it. To do this, you must already have the Star activated on the Task and use the "Hide Future Task" filter in Toodledo. This makes the task disappear from your Next list but it will show up when you wanted it too. |
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Proximo |
Posted by Daniel Westergren:
Thanks indeed to Proximo and others for a very interesting thread! I may have missed some, as I read through the entire thread just yesterday and today, but I have some more questions, mainly directed @Proximo. 1) I understand you star actions in the weekly review that you wish to accomplish in the coming week. But you also say you use the star list for today's next actions. Do you have one list for the week that you compile a today's list from, or do you work every day from the list of actions that could be done any time during the week? 2) A minor thing, but how come you use an Inbox folder, as tasks sent by e-mail for example by default end up in the No Folder "folder"? I'm thinking of using "No Folder" as the "Inbox" for that reason. 3) When do you move an action from the Actions list to Someday/Maybe? That is, do you consider all actions in the actions list to be done within say one month? 4) Do you always enter length for an action in your reviews? And is that used as the basis of what you estimate can be accomplished during the week, when also taking the calendar into consideration? Putting too many actions as next actions and never being able to accomplish them in the week may not be encouraging (I'm talking about myself... :). Well, it's a learning process to estimate what's possible of course. 5) I understand that you don't really use ticklers that much. But say you'd use a start date to hide future tasks, when the start date comes, how are you reminded to make these actions next actions? Maybe starring all future actions would make this easier, then they'd automatically appear in the NA list when the start date has arrived. Mainly technical details, but still interesting to read how others handle this. Thanks! I will be honest here. 1. I use the Star list for task that I want to accomplish that day. This does not always happen due to other responsibilities coming in from all angles and at all times. If I feel that task is still something I want to get done by the following day, I leave it there and try to knock it out then. Some in truth, my Star list is INTENDED for task I want to do that day and many get done, but some of them drag into the next 2 to 3 days. :-( 2. I did use the Inbox folder because you can set Toodledo to send new task to a given folder by default. This however does not work when adding task by email, twitter and iPhone. For this reason I quit using the Inbox folder and now use the No Folder. Many of us have requested the ability to rename the No Folder to what ever we want and this would solve the issue for many. So today, I do use the No Folder. 3. Task in my Action list are there because I decided they needed to be done as soon as possible. In real life this can be one day, one week or 3 months. During my weekly review I go through all my task and decided if this is something that I realistically think I can do in the near future or if it's something that may stay in the back burner until I get caught up with other things. At this time I decide to move a task to the Someday folder. Once it's in the Someday folder, it also get's reviewed on a Weekly basis and I can either move it back to the Actions list when I am ready, or decide that this is something that will never happen and delete it for good. 4. I try my best to always put an estimated time for several reasons. Some task take longer than a day to accomplish but this does not mean it can't go in your Focus List (Star). It will eventually have to be something you start to tackle and it may take several days to get it out of there. So I don't use it so much for deciding what goes on the Focus list, but I do use it when I am trying to decide what to do in the last hour or 30 minutes at the office. I may have a task in my Focus List that takes 2 hours of work to get done but only have 30 minutes. In GTD this is where time estimation can help. Maybe that particular task is a High Energy task that requires some serious focus and I don't want to start it and not finish it. I now look at task that I can get done in the time frame I have left in order to get things done and out of my list. When I return in the morning, I can dedicate the two hours to the high energy task instead. When deciding what to do, you must consider your Time, Energy, Context and Priority. Not in that particular order. Sometimes I may have the time to complete a task but my brain is dead. This is why having Energy and Time on your task is helpful. 5. You already figured it out. When I mark a task with a Start date, I also activate the Star. This forces the task to appear in my Focus List when I intended it too. Works great. Hope that answers your questions. |
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Proximo |
@ Levi Wallach
Hello Levi. I appreciate your background and I know many here can relate. I wanted to answer your context question. I may have addressed this before but things can get lost in a large thread like this. :-) This is what I decided to do in order to identify my task by Areas of Focus (Location) and Context (Resource). In David Allen's book "Getting Things Done", context are described as both location and resource. This is why I wanted to have multiple context selection per task. I can mark a task @Work and @Call. If I was at Work and wanted to list all task that require a phone call, I can filter by both context and narrow my list. Toodledo can now filter by multiple context and tags but you still can't assign multiple context to a task. So here is what I do and it's just my way of working around this. I use Toodledo context for my Areas of Focus or Locations. I have 3 Areas of Focus now. 1. Personal 2. Work (Office) 3. Business (My Personal Business) I assign task the appropriate context based on these 3 areas of focus. I then use Toodledo Tags for my Resource Context such as @email, @call, @errand, @Internet, etc. I don't actually use the "@" symbol, but I show it here for illustration only. So now I have task that I can filter by Areas of Focus using my Context filter and I can further filter them by Tags which are my resource context. Now I have the flexibility of filtering out task the way I want. If I wanted to see how many Work related task require me to send someone an email. I can filter by Work context and email Tag. Hope that makes sense. The reason I use "Personal" as an Area of Focus and not "Home" is because many personal task don't require me to be home. Some do and I use a Tag called @Home for this purpose. One example is "Take out the trash". This has a Personal context and a Home Tag. Makes sense? I hope so. :-) This can also be used for a work related task. Let's say that I need to remote in from home to my office in order to do a Software upgrade that I can't do while people are on the network. The task may be "Install Software X Upgrade" with a Work context and a Home tag. The Area of Focus is Work but the task will be completed at home. Now we are all confused... lol |
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Levi Wallach |
Thanks for the reply, Proximo. I'm sure this works for you but I'm not sure if "areas of focus" will really mean much to me. Perhaps it makes it more flexible for you, but I think it overcomplicates things (at least for me). I'll try to explain. If I have work stuff do to, I'll just make it @work (either tag or context, I haven't decided yet). I'm not going to look at @work stuff when I'm away from work, so in this sense the focus is the same as the location. Home/Personal is a bit different since theoretically I might want to do some personal things at work. However, I don't have work-related stuff to do at home (thankfully), and if a stray task came up that required me to do a work-related task at home, I don't mind marking such things as @home. I guess I understand the distinction. Your area of focus as you call it is kind of a broad category of how you divide your life rather than a strict location or resource. I suppose if I wanted to track these things, which who knows maybe I'll decide (although right now 98% of the tasks that I've brain-dumped into my inbox are personal), I think it would make more sense to my brain to use tags for these. I don't know if this extra level of categorization would be too honerous or if it would allow me to create more useful searches in the end. I guess it works for you and that's the important part.
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Levi Wallach |
So I'm finally going through my brain-dumped set of tasks and putting them in folders and adding context to them. One thing that occurs to me (it occurred to me before but I forgot to mention it in my previous message) is that projects can actually span into different buckets. That is, I can have a project that is "someday /maybe" (not sure I want to consider the project for a while but I know that it would be a project vs a single action) or "waiting for" (ie I can't start the project until I get some go ahead).
The way I am currently thinking of "someday /maybe" is to not bother contextualizing or categorizing these items at all. They might be projects, they might be single actions, but because they are not definite to-do's and/or things I want to think about now, I don't feel like they NEED to be fully fleshed out. When I do go through these (presumably on a weekly basis) I can consider each of them and figure out if I really want to upgrade them to something I want to do now. But "waiting for" is a bit more difficult when it comes to tasks vs projects. I'm wondering how others deal with it. The whole idea of moving a subtask to a different folder than it's parent task seems strange to me. Do you just move the entire main task and all subtasks there? since essentially if one of the tasks in the project are in the waiting for status they all are? Or wait, that's not even true! You could have delegated one task on a project, but other tasks are still actionable, one of which could be deemed a next action. In such a case I would think you would HAVE to move that one delegated task to the waiting-for folder. I see now the issue of it not showing up in that waiting for folder unless subtasks are flattened, which doesn't bother me all that much, but it does seem odd that it ALSO shows up in the project folder even though it isn't actually IN that folder! :) What I've been wondering is whether it makes any sense to have just two folders, an projects folder and an actions folder as Proximo has set up, but then to use the status field to designate whether something is active/waiting for/someday-maybe/tickler? I suppose you could also use it to designate next action, but I'm not sure yet whether that would be preferrable to just setting a star... Seems I will need to play with this a lot more than I thought! Someday maybe I'll actually get to DO my tasks! ;-) |
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Levi Wallach |
Sorry to keep posting about this as I do it, but it helps with the mental processing of this and hopefully it's useful to some of you.
Basically, I've decided to go with Statuses instead of folders for the main items, mainly because I think the folders as Proximo has set them up are not necessarily mutually exclusive (ie something can be a project but also a waiting for or someday /maybe) That's why for me I think the project vs lone action aspect needs to be completely seperated, otherwise there's a temptation to have tasks and subtasks in different folders, which doesn't seem right to me. I've kept two folders, Projects and Actions, and use them in the same way that Proximo does. For the rest I use statuses. Proximo, I know that you find it simpler to as you say, manage statuses via three lists vs. 9 (actually it's really 11!) statuses, but just because there are that many, doesn't mean you need to use them. Really, you just should use the ones that are in GTD and/or the ones that suit your workflow - eg Action, Next Action, Someday, Waiting, Tickler. I know some of these don't exist per se in Toodledo's status list (sure which we could modify the names or even delete some!), but one can use a greasemonkey script, like the one I mentioned earlier, to edit the names... Another thing about contexts: Proximo you've suggested that you use tags and contexts in combination in order to deal with the fact that you can't have multiple contexts in Toodledo. Currently I'm not including resources (phone, internet, etc.) in my contexts because I feel like most of these are not needed when I can just specify a location. My only issue is that there are some things that I may have access at home or work, but not on the road. Thus, it would be great if I could have assigned BOTH @home and @work to a particular task so that it doesn't come up with I'm not at one of these places, but does when I am. Since I only am using 3 contexts/locations, I thought of a workaround that I might use, and that is to create combo contexts myself! So in addition to an @home, @work, and @out, I could also have an @home@work, @home@out, and @work@out. Then use the lack of any context as meaning the same thing as being able to do a task in ANY context. This way I can also use tags for a specific purpose (either to categorize things into major life focuses as you have or as a way to specify energy level needed for a task). I can see, though, that this might get impractical if you also have resources as contexts. If you have phone, computer, and one other (can't think of one right now), you're talking about how many different combinations? at least 54 from my quick rough estimate. |
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Levi Wallach |
A few more thoughts about status before you all kick me off the forum for talking to much! :)
It seems to me that out of all the statuses in Toodledo, all I really need are None, Postponed (which I've renamed to Tickler), Someday. I'm still conflicted about whether or not to use the star for next action or the next action status. On the one hand the star is just easier to sort by as well as being more visible, on the other hand because it is completely separate from the status, you are maintaining two fields for one field AND there's the potential for making something next action while also setting the status to something like waiting on, which would be really a contradiction. Otherwise, though Delegating and Waiting are really one thing in GTD, not two. I can see the usefulness of separating it out for some, but not for me. Canceled isn't necessary - it's basically like deleting a task (I don't need to keep a record of tasks I started or thought of but then decided not to do/continue them). Reference - I keep such stuff in Evernote, as others do. Planning vs Active to me are just about whether you've started working on a task or not. It might be useful to track, but you can always track this by searching start date. I'd rather just mark the start date when it starts rather than having to maintain this status entry as well. Really, when I'm looking to see what to do, I don't really care whether I've already started a task or not, just how much time there is LEFT to finish it, right? I've tried to use the script to remove some of these, but unfortunately the still show up in the pull-down lists. It works fine for folders, just not for statuses for some reason! Please, Toodledo, can you allow us to change the status names and even remove some? |
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Lance |
Levi,
Perhaps to help you out on the Someday/Maybe part. I use a system similar to Proximo's, but organized a bit differently. Mainly, one folder with all my work projects, one for all my personal projects, one for single next actions, and a someday/maybe folder. I must have about a hundred potential projects in my someday/maybe folder. None of them have subtasks or contexts assigned to them because, I have not made a commitment to myself to work them. They are parked there so they don't take up space in my head. As I do my weekly review (the single most important key to making it all work), I will move potential projects from my someday/maybe list into the project folder. And then flesh out all the action items, resources, that will be required to complete the project. Some of them I know upfront, some I won't know until I'm knee deep into it. GTD is very, very flexible in this. As I do my weekly reviews, I might identify more actions required to complete the project. I might even identify more (sub)projects. For these items, if project X is waiting for project Y, I simply put an @waiting for - project Y as a sub task in project X. I know there is lots and lots of demand for additional levels, but in the meantime this works for me. Also, I keep it really simple: @work, @computer, @home, @errands, @phone, @waiting for and @agenda (person's name). Anymore than this, it becomes too complicated for me. Your mileage may very. But I have discovered for those new to GTD, to keep it simple at first. And for the someday/maybe, no rules here. Like I said, its just a parking lot for stuff that I may want to do in the future. Nothing on this list is a commitment until I move it to my projects list. Don't worry about asking questions, its what were all here for. |
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Levi Wallach |
Thanks Lance, I think for me Someday will work ok as just a status entry. The only big advantage I see to using folders for these things isn't even an advantage but a potential one - that being that if Toodledo allowed you to drag tasks from one folder to another, it would allow for very quick categorizing of multiple tasks.
Anyway, I wanted to add that I just came across a limitation of Toodledo which makes some of my plans a bit more difficult. That is there slim/mobile versions have no access to saved searches, which are going to be a big part of how I will look to find what is currently the next action(s) I should be looking to do, especially given the ability to create custom sorts as I've discovered. Without access to this on my phone, it just means things are going to be harder whenever I'm away from home or the office... |
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Proximo |
@Levi
Don't worry about posting a lot or frequently. It helps everyone in the long run. The important thing here is that you do what works best for you. GTD is very flexible and can be implemented fully or partially as it makes sense for each person. For long time I did not use resource context because I am in my office surrounded by the resources needed for just about any task. At some point I started using my resource context when I decided it would help filter some things out. I only use what I need and nothing more. You have to play with various ideas before you find out what works best for you. My initial reason for starting this post was to share what worked for me in hopes that others could find it useful. Some started using the same setup I did and others tweaked theirs to fit their needs. I know some GTD users here still use the original default setup and it works for them. The more we share the more we can learn from each other. My setup was simply trying to mimic what other GTD specific systems where already doing but for one reason or the other, I could not fully use. So I made Toodledo mimic these setup's as best I could. Things and Omin Focus where great but I am a PC user and don't own a Mac. Thinking Rock I used for a long time but realized I needed something in the Cloud. As I started to experiment with other GTD Cloud Services, many had features missing or bad implementations. Toodledo at the time was the only service that gave me the most features for a good price that allowed me to tweak it enough to make it work for me. I think you make some good points and it seems that you are tweaking things to work for you. This should be everyone's goal. The less time we spend messing with our GTD System, the more time we have to actually Get Things Done. Thanks for sharing and remember that your input can always help someone. |
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Daniel Westergren |
Excellent. Thanks for taking so much time answering all our questions, I wonder what you put in the time estimate column for that task every week :) Clear answers, I've just got one follow-up question.
Posted by Proximo: 1. I use the Star list for task that I want to accomplish that day. This does not always happen due to other responsibilities coming in from all angles and at all times. If I feel that task is still something I want to get done by the following day, I leave it there and try to knock it out then. Some in truth, my Star list is INTENDED for task I want to do that day and many get done, but some of them drag into the next 2 to 3 days. :-( Ok. In the weekly review then, do you mark tasks that should be done during the week, but not necessarily on the first day of the week? Or do you go through the entire action list every day to select next actions for the following day? Thanks and have a good day! Edit: @Proximo: Ah, I just read your other post that you are no longer using Toodledo. I don't expect a reply to the above question. This message was edited Mar 20, 2010. |
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Proximo |
Posted by Daniel Westergren:
Excellent. Thanks for taking so much time answering all our questions, I wonder what you put in the time estimate column for that task every week :) Clear answers, I've just got one follow-up question. Posted by Proximo: 1. I use the Star list for task that I want to accomplish that day. This does not always happen due to other responsibilities coming in from all angles and at all times. If I feel that task is still something I want to get done by the following day, I leave it there and try to knock it out then. Some in truth, my Star list is INTENDED for task I want to do that day and many get done, but some of them drag into the next 2 to 3 days. :-( Ok. In the weekly review then, do you mark tasks that should be done during the week, but not necessarily on the first day of the week? Or do you go through the entire action list every day to select next actions for the following day? Thanks and have a good day! Edit: @Proximo: Ah, I just read your other post that you are no longer using Toodledo. I don't expect a reply to the above question. Daniel Westergren, I still check these forums from time to time. This is a great resource regardless of what service you are using. :-) I won't be in here as often obviously but I still appreciate hearing from all the sharp people on these forums. Anyway, now to answer your question. I review my list as often as needed but you also need to do a higher level review that David Allen calls the Weekly Review. David Allen said he only called it a Weekly review to get people to understand that it's a higher level review of all your commitments and goals. David said that sometimes he does the high level review every 2 weeks or so. But to get people in the habit of understanding the importance of this higher level review, he called it a weekly review. With that said, I do a daily review of all my list in order to identify what I will be working on that day. This is a quick scan that helps me identify what I need to be working on. I choose what I plan on doing that day by considering the Time, Energy, Context and Priorities. The actual Weekly review is designed to dig deeper into your commitments and decide what stays, what goes, what needs adjusting or redirection, etc. I don't decide what I will be doing in a given week because I can't predict the future that far ahead. Things dynamically change on a daily basis from many different directions. The Daily review is what allows me to visualize my commitments and decide what I will do that day, while my Weekly Review is a higher level review that allows me to purge and adjust my commitments and goals. Hope that makes sense. This message was edited Mar 24, 2010. |
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Daniel Westergren |
Posted by Proximo:
Daniel Westergren, I still check these forums from time to time. This is a great resource regardless of what service you are using. :-)[/quote] Thanks for that! And now I've got a better idea of how to think about the weekly review. My action list currently has almost 100 tasks, which is why I'm thinking of how to make that list a bit shorter to not have to go through that huge list for the daily review. Because maybe 40 of them should be done today if I only the day had enough hours... But I suppose I'd either need to put some tasks in Someday/Maybe or delegate them during the weekly review to get it to a more manageable size for the daily reviews. |
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