Organizing by context....
Hi there,
This is a topic that comes up in many seminars we facilitate. In fact, the best practice of organizing is to have made front end decisions about next actions, and have defined places in your system where those decisions "live."
Sounds like you're on track in using your To Do lists (you've got them set up the same way I do.
Through years of coaching thousands of individuals, we have found that the best practice is to organize the actions by the context necessary to take action, not by the project it's about.
If you tried to organize your next actions by the project, every time you were at a phone with discretionary time, you'd have to search through all your Project notes (or piles/folders) to find all the phone calls you could possibly make, and you won't do that.
And you don't want to spend the time writing them in both places. The Weekly Review (we’re going to get that that in the coming weeks!) is what "connects the dots" together, which is still the manual discipline required to make it all work.
Yes, you do (at least once a week) need to review your index of open loops and ensure that you have next actions for each one in the appropriate list or folder - Calls, At Computer, Errands, etc.
I don't keep ANY actions under the Projects (in my Palm as a TO-DO category), I just keep "flat" lists, reviewing the Projects list as often as required (at LEAST once a week) to make sure I have the next actions for each in the appropriate places. That's the only reason to look at the Projects list anyway, since you can't do a project, only the actions about them. Usually, I'm just working off the action lists.
