Another question/suggestion for Doug on his GTD article
zabeans says:
Hi Doug,
First of all, great article! I have been on the never-ending search for the perfect GTD app for a long time. They all come close, but either lack a certain feature or have too many that make it difficult to use. While I had heard of RTM plenty of times before, I had never thought to use it in this fashion. Your GTD method is exactly what I've always wanted. It takes a little more work to set up than the apps, but I love how customizable it is.
I did have a question for you. As I set up my lists and started inputting tasks, I would constantly forget to put the "na" tag for tasks that didn't have a specific project and therefore they wouldn't show up in my smart lists. I had an idea today though to fix this. The tasks in daily work/pers lists should all be next actions, right? Otherwise, they'd be in a project list. At least, that's how I understand and use GTD. Each project list should have one (sometimes two or three maybe depending on project) next actions.
So, why not only tag the NA's in the project lists and filter your Smart lists to include tasks from the daily lists? To clarify, here is what your filter for the @Calls list could look like:
tag:@call AND (list:Ps-Daily OR list:Wk-Daily OR tag:na)
This way, you wouldn't need to tag all non-project tasks with "na", because they'd get caught by the "list:" query, and then you could tag actual next actions of big projects with "na" and they would still get included in your main smart lists.
I just set mine up this way, and it seems to be working so far, but I'm new at this. Can you think of any problems I might run into?
First of all, great article! I have been on the never-ending search for the perfect GTD app for a long time. They all come close, but either lack a certain feature or have too many that make it difficult to use. While I had heard of RTM plenty of times before, I had never thought to use it in this fashion. Your GTD method is exactly what I've always wanted. It takes a little more work to set up than the apps, but I love how customizable it is.
I did have a question for you. As I set up my lists and started inputting tasks, I would constantly forget to put the "na" tag for tasks that didn't have a specific project and therefore they wouldn't show up in my smart lists. I had an idea today though to fix this. The tasks in daily work/pers lists should all be next actions, right? Otherwise, they'd be in a project list. At least, that's how I understand and use GTD. Each project list should have one (sometimes two or three maybe depending on project) next actions.
So, why not only tag the NA's in the project lists and filter your Smart lists to include tasks from the daily lists? To clarify, here is what your filter for the @Calls list could look like:
tag:@call AND (list:Ps-Daily OR list:Wk-Daily OR tag:na)
This way, you wouldn't need to tag all non-project tasks with "na", because they'd get caught by the "list:" query, and then you could tag actual next actions of big projects with "na" and they would still get included in your main smart lists.
I just set mine up this way, and it seems to be working so far, but I'm new at this. Can you think of any problems I might run into?
Well, I can think of two problems that _I_ would run into if I didn't tag "na" tasks on my ps-Daily and wk-Daily Lists:
1. If I'm waiting on someone or something, I tag that task with "wait", instead of "na" so it shows up on my ps-Wait or wk-Wait lists. Using your Smart List example "tag:@call AND (list:Ps-Daily OR list:Wk-Daily OR tag:na)" would display Waiting-For tasks on the personal or work Smart List and the ps-Wait/wk-Wait Smart Lists.
2. Not every task on my wk-Daily/ps-Daily Lists are Next Actions. I tend to manage small "projects" (<=3 Tasks) on my ps-Daily or wk-Daily Lists. So for one of these mini-projects, I will have one of the tasks marked "na" and the other 1-2 tasks with no tags.
I find that once you have been using the system for a bit, tagging "Next Actions" becomes second nature. It also forces you to evaluate the task when it goes on a list as to whether it's truly a Next Action or not.
1. If I'm waiting on someone or something, I tag that task with "wait", instead of "na" so it shows up on my ps-Wait or wk-Wait lists. Using your Smart List example "tag:@call AND (list:Ps-Daily OR list:Wk-Daily OR tag:na)" would display Waiting-For tasks on the personal or work Smart List and the ps-Wait/wk-Wait Smart Lists.
2. Not every task on my wk-Daily/ps-Daily Lists are Next Actions. I tend to manage small "projects" (<=3 Tasks) on my ps-Daily or wk-Daily Lists. So for one of these mini-projects, I will have one of the tasks marked "na" and the other 1-2 tasks with no tags.
I find that once you have been using the system for a bit, tagging "Next Actions" becomes second nature. It also forces you to evaluate the task when it goes on a list as to whether it's truly a Next Action or not.
zabeans says:
Thanks, those are both good things to consider. Since I am just beginning to populate my lists, I don't have a lot of data to work with yet which is mostly why I asked.
1) I didn't have anything in my Wait lists, so I didn't run into this yet. I guess I could add to my Smart Lists the property "and not tag:wait".
2) This is a good point. So far, everything i have listed can be a NA. But I can definitely see running into this problem in the future. I almost think it would be easier (for me) to have a tag like "notna" for the few non-project based tasks that require it. :)
I will have to see how this works out....I'll probably end up reverting back to tagging with "na" when tasks get too complicated, but I think I'll try this for now. Thanks for the advice.
1) I didn't have anything in my Wait lists, so I didn't run into this yet. I guess I could add to my Smart Lists the property "and not tag:wait".
2) This is a good point. So far, everything i have listed can be a NA. But I can definitely see running into this problem in the future. I almost think it would be easier (for me) to have a tag like "notna" for the few non-project based tasks that require it. :)
I will have to see how this works out....I'll probably end up reverting back to tagging with "na" when tasks get too complicated, but I think I'll try this for now. Thanks for the advice.