@Action list in a paper system

[Morozov]

When working in a paper system you put new actions one after one. They are not sorted. For example, you made a call and put 'Smith 30/04 waiting for meeting confirmation'. And Smith will not go with other waiting for items for him. It means if I need to update something with him I need to go through the whole list as they are not sorted.

Just wanted to confirm.

E.

 

[darlakbrown]

If you do a lot with Smith, you can create an agenda context called @Smith and put all waiting for and other Smith actions on it so they are all in one place.

 

[Morozov]

I don't work often with Smith. I could have 2 or 3 actions for him in the system. And as they appeared at different time they will not be sorted. In contrast in electronic system they would all be sorted by name. Is that correct? Or you sort them during weekly review ie?

 

[darlakbrown]

It may help for you to think of contexts as more fluid. They're not set in stone. Instead, you should create them and remove them on a regular basis to help your system work FOR YOU. Thus, creating an @Smith seems like a reasonable thing to do simply because you asked the question, meaning you would prefer to see them all together.

 

[elbow]

I don't use paper any more for my lists but when I did I used to keep each context in its own 2-page spread of a notebook which was enough for about 60 tasks. By the time I'd filled the bottom of the second page most of the earlier tasks would have been completed and crossed out, so at that point I would start a new 2-page spread for that context and copy all of the unfinished tasks from the old pages to the new ones.

As well as keeping the lists reasonably current (meaning it should be fairly easy to scan down the list and find all of the Smith tasks), this has the added benefit of making you question whether each task is still relevant as you have to effectively commit to the task all over again when you copy it onto the new page.