Calendar or tickler for non-actionable items to be reviewed

manynothings

Registered
Hello,

In his GTD book, David Allen talks about three ways of handling items of the "maybe" type, two of which being using a calendar and using a tickler. What are the differences between the two, and how do you handle non-actionable items to be reviewed at a date?

Thanks,

manynothings.
 

ivanjay205

Registered
Hello,

In his GTD book, David Allen talks about three ways of handling items of the "maybe" type, two of which being using a calendar and using a tickler. What are the differences between the two, and how do you handle non-actionable items to be reviewed at a date?

Thanks,

manynothings.
The calendar is for "fixed" items that have to be done on a day or time in the future and cannot move to another day or time. For example, a meeting with a colleague about a project. That has to occur at a specific time as you are coordinating with someone else. Or a scheduled visit to a client, etc.

The tickler is for something that you want to do and are committed to doing (so it is not someday/maybe) but for whatever reason you cannot do it now and you want it to automatically reappear in a period of time. For example, as part of my work responsibilities I have to review sales performance of my team. I have that as a recurring next action (monthly) in my "tickler" files (defer date in Omnifocus). It recurs monthly the first Tuesday of every month. Why.... Well first off I want the frequency to be monthly to review last months reports. Once I complete it I cannot work on the next Review immediately as I need a month to go by for new reports. I personally like Tuesday as that is when I do finance and things like that so it keeps my day themed a bit. But.... if I dont get to it on Tuesday and it happens lets say Thursday of that week, that is fine. That is why it is not on my calendar. I just dont want to start before the first Tuesday of the month, but it really doesnt matter when I do it.

Someday/Maybe is something you are not committed to doing or it is "incubating" in that you have not clarified to the full extent how you could accomplish it (often becomes a project in this example).
 

TesTeq

Registered
Hello,

In his GTD book, David Allen talks about three ways of handling items of the "maybe" type, two of which being using a calendar and using a tickler. What are the differences between the two, and how do you handle non-actionable items to be reviewed at a date?

Thanks,

manynothings.
@manynothings "Maybe" goes to "Someday/Maybe". It never goes to a calendar or a tickler. Only actionable items go to a calendar or a tickler.
 

Gardener

Registered
In his GTD book, David Allen talks about three ways of handling items of the "maybe" type, two of which being using a calendar and using a tickler. What are the differences between the two, and how do you handle non-actionable items to be reviewed at a date?
I feel the need for examples of "maybe", because, yes, those would normally not go on a calendar OR a tickler.

I suppose one could say that you are definitely going to perform the actionable task of DECIDING whether to convert an item into an actionable task. For example, when rainy season starts where I am, there are a bunch of things to do in the garden. So I could have a tickler, "Is it rainy season yet?" When it is, I will convert some things into actionable projects and tasks.

I definitely wouldn't put something of this type into a calendar.
 

schmeggahead

Registered
Only actionable items go to a calendar or a tickler.
@TesTeq, I must admit I only scanned this thread. This statement really hit me and it's completely different than how my system is setup.

Calendar
I think of the calendar as the hard landscape of my day. I put appointments, holidays, birthdays, information that I want to see that particular day. I have things like automatic payments on my calendar that are not actionable but I want to see them. It really is the landscape, or maybe equipment, more than simply actionable items.

Tickler
I have used tickler in a variety of ways to handle non-actionable items. I've put reference material for that particular day into tickler. I've put mind sweep lists (cherry picked of actionable items crossed off and processed) in order to incubate them. They were just thoughts and I thought seeing them another day would keep me from overloading my system. Many are simply tossed when they pop up. I've put cards from friends & family into tickler so I would get to enjoy them again in the future, or to remember to thank them a bit in the future.

Looking at all of this, many of these non-actionable items in both of these areas are potentially actionable/useful on that day.

Thanks for getting me thinking today.
Clayton

Pat Inbox, inventor of the inbox, has never received royalties for her ingenuity, but the Earl of Sandwich gave her a free place to live from all of his profits (although he never got a pence for hot dogs). - probably from the journal of Woody Allen
 

Jeremy Jones

Registered
I only add appointments into my time slots on my calendar, and recently I adding a link to Todoist as a separate calendar in Outlook, so it brings any day-specific tasks into my calendar as an all-day event as shown below.

I can therefore add any someday/maybe ticklers on a specific day and it will remind me to take action on the top of that day. If I want I can turn off that calendar also, and only see my work calendar of appointments, travel, etc.

1657828247196.png

Still a work in progress, but this seems like a really good solution for me, especially as I don't use a paper tickler file.
 
Top