David's use of Calendar on Palm: To Date or Not to Date?

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DrJoe

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Hi all,

looking at what David writes in his short article on using the Palm to run GTD, I have a couple of questions which experienced folks here might know, or have good ideas about.

Background: I use a Palm Tungsten T3 (still chugging along, very happily, thank you) with Datebk6 (the single most useful application ever on Palms). Because of Datebk6, it is possible to display Tasks in the Calendar, both dated and undated.

Now my question. Does anyone know if David only uses the Task list for undated (i.e. @context) Tasks, and puts all what we would call "dated Tasks" directly into the Calendar application as "untimed" daily events?

If he is using a plain vanilla Palm implementation, I would imagine this to be the case. But does anyone actually know? There is no hint from David's article. And, does anyone have any experience with the relative pro/con issues of putting dated Tasks into the Calendar from the Task database using Datebk6?

Cheers from Australia, where we always have a different view of things :-),
DrJoe
 
He's not explicit about it in the article you mention, but it's clear from other sources like the out-of-print Getting Things Done . . . Fast! seminar recordings that David advocates using the calendar exclusively for date-specific items, either to do on a date or by a date; and undated items on your task list. The idea is to always look at the calendar first to make sure that any time-dependent actions are handled immediately, then review next actions in the task lists during discretionary time as indicated by the whitespace. I wrote an article, How to Set Up GTD on a Palm, that's largely based on his approach.

I would say that as long as a due date is also on your calendar, there's no problem with putting the due date on your next action as well. It's good reinforcement, but I would use the calendar as my main trusted tool for keeping track of any time dependencies.
 
Yes, I see it all now. I was blinded by the ability to put dated Tasks onto the Calendar via the astounding functionality of Datebk6 (www.pimlicosoftware.com ; no commercial or financial interest in the company, just a very happy long-time [10+ years] user of their software). In this instance, a plain vanilla implementation of the Palm-standard software actually creates a stronger constraint to actually use GTD principles. Combined with the Datebk6 functionality, Palm GTD should rock!

Great article, BTW!

Cheers,
DrJoe
 
When I have a next action that I can do on a specific day, like an errand that has been on my next action list (@Errands), I will go into the Task and add the date that I am going to be in that particular area of town or wherever. So I do use Tasks on the calendar for needs like this. It doesn't HAVE to be done on that day, but it's nice looking at my calendar on my Palm and seeing the Task there to remind me that I can do it on that day.

Also, I do set up monthly reminders as "floating events" in the calendar (Datebook feature). For instance, I set a contact every 8 weeks for my customers, so I'll put a floating reminder at the beginning of that particular week on the calendar. It doesn't necessarily have to be done on that day, but I know I have to get it done that week.

Not sure if this is exactly what you are referring to, but just my thoughts.
 
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