Next - Later - Scheduled - Someday Nirvana

Marelva

Registered
Hello,
I am using GTD a few months now and I would like to hear how you would approache this.

I have about 200 projects and about 80 single next actions that don't belong to a project. For me that's a bit much to see in one glance what items to prioritize.
Conform GTD I only set due dates if there is actually a hard due date.

Somewhere in the next few months (could be over 3 weeks, could be over 10 weeks) I will be in hospital for a month and after that not sure when I am recovered, could take a while. This will need a lot of preparation (meaning more actions/projects on the list), I won't be able to do anything for some time. I will do as much as needed in the next few weeks in order to go to hospital prepared and relaxed and not having unnecessary troubles after.

So those 280 items need to be devided in two: a before and after the event. And it would be extra helpful if I could separate the before part in 'must do' and ' But how do I do that in the Nirvana app?

Because the absence of a date and GTD not using fake date, I can't use due date. It would be a mess.

I tried using the stars (focus) for everything I prefer to be handled before. But it got messy. Plus you easily place or delete a star by accident and that could and in a disaster.

Does it sound logical to change all after-items to 'later' so they are not anymore in my list? Then I would have to revisit my list when I am recovered and make them active actions.

Or would you tag each item in before (must), before (preferred) and after.

Or is there a easier solution?

Thank you so much for reading and any advice!
 

Longstreet

Professor of microbiology and infectious diseases
I just migrated back into nirvana and forgot how much I love the later feature. No other app does this (well) to my knowledge.
Agreed! I use the Later Section as my backburner. These are the projects and sometimes major actions that I don't have the bandwidth to do this week, or the next few weeks but I definitely want to do them. I see it quite differently than Someday/Maybe in that I have many "someday I would like to do that, or travel there, or whatever". Cheers!
 

Marelva

Registered
You are all so right, thank you very much for the input! I changed all the items that can wait to later. It was not a little task but what a relief! Now I only see the items that I have to adres before event. I feel like I have control instead of drowning in todo's. After event I will pick up the items from the later list. Great!
 

Longstreet

Professor of microbiology and infectious diseases
You are all so right, thank you very much for the input! I changed all the items that can wait to later. It was not a little task but what a relief! Now I only see the items that I have to adres before event. I feel like I have control instead of drowning in todo's. After event I will pick up the items from the later list. Great!
So glad to hear this! I am a firm believer of using the backburner philosophy.
 
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