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"Inbox" as Whiteboard to Brainstorm In

soartime says:
According to GTD methodology, the inbox should be used to only temporarily hold things that are unprocessed.
Following GTD thinking, I use RTM's "Inbox" as a whiteboard to brainstorm project tasks. After brainstorming, I then prioritize & date the tasks and file it away to my master task list; & leave the "Inbox" empty again until the next brainstorm.
Posted at 4:13am on July 13, 2009
(closed account) says:
Hmm. That's a good idea.
Posted 14 years ago
leah.shalom Power Poster says:
Soartime,

I agree that it is a good idea. I have a question. "Inbox" is my default list and as long as I have been using RTM all my tasks have remained in the "inbox" even after tagged for other smart lists. The only thing that removes tasks from the "inbox" is completing them. Do you have a different mailbox configures as your default? If not, how do you move things out of your inbox.
Thanks
Posted 14 years ago
nicolas_thomsen says:
@leah.shalom
The idea behind the inbox, in GTD, is a place where you empty your head. You take all the things you have to do and pour them into the inbox. That should feel like a relief as you now have them somewhere.

Then you should process them.

Are they actionable?
If not you should either file them for later, defer them or get rid of them.
If they are you should decide if it is a single action or if it actually is a project.

If it is a single action you could make a single actions list to keep all of those in and if it is a proejct with several actions you could create a list for that project.
Posted 14 years ago
andrewski (Remember The Milk) says:
leah.shalom, you can move a task to a different list via the More actions menu.

If you use a lot of Smart Lists (it sounds like it), you can get away with just one more list to take advantage of this functionality. This is what I do; my Inbox is for processing, I move items to a list called Mine, tag them accordingly (to populate other Smart Lists), and then I have one more list, called Shared (which I have, well, shared with my wife :).
Posted 14 years ago
leah.shalom Power Poster says:
Thanks
Posted 14 years ago
sevenupcan says:
This is very much the way I handle all my tasks. I like the ability to be able to dump all my ideas and toughts into one list and review them at a later date.

However I don't use the default "Inbox" I have a smartlist called "Unprocessed". This smartlist will automatically filter all tasks which have been actioned. So if a date has been specified then it gets moved, or if a context is added as a tag it is moved.

If you would like more details on this you can see an article I wrote with how to set this up.

http://sevenupcan.tumblr.com/post/91203213/how-to-automatically-gtd-with-rtm

I hope it makes sense.
Posted 14 years ago
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