TesTeq
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I agree - Someday/Maybe is not the "a dumping ground for stuff I'm avoiding".
But in my case Someday/Maybe items VERY VERY rarely become active outside of the Weekly Review.
Re-thinking my GTD lists slightly...
- Thread starter Ship69
- Start date
But in my case Someday/Maybe items VERY VERY rarely become active outside of the Weekly Review.
Oogiem
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Well 300 items is tiny in my world <smile> The problem I see with arbitrarily setting a hard and fast don't look here timeframe is that you miss the fluid nature of what might be possible if you open up to the ideas you have already had. So yes, I tend to look at everything in my someday/maybe lists on a semi-regular schedule that I try to write here but in practice it isn't so neat and clean.
Like mcogilvie I tend to group my someday/maybe lists and projects into areas of focus. That's why the ones like knitting, sewing etc. work to prevent me from reviewing them too rapidly. OTOH if I find that current knitting project is just not working, for whatever reason, maybe I am not having fun or I'm stuck or it takes too much brain energy to do (complex lace knitting) and I've got so much else going on that I need mindless knitting I may look at the list before I am finished. I may put the current project into a WIP (work in progress) tote and start or pick up something else.
So here is a totally different way to approach the problem. You like complex structures and you like order but reading is difficult. So, why not make a high priority project to double your reading speed without any loss of comprehension? If you could read and review a list more quickly many of your issues would go away. The average person reads at a speed of about 200-300wpm with a 60% comprehension. Doubling is pretty easy for most folks until you get over 1000wpm. From what you say I'd guess you are on the lower end of the scale. But you can train yourself to read faster and still understand what you read. So work on that. Here is an interesting article on the benefits of improving your reading speed http://www.forbes.com/sites/brettne...ad-fast-enough-to-be-successful/#3b6b517358f7 and here is a link to another on-line reading speed test http://www.readingsoft.com
PS a quick google gave me a number of different free reading speed measuring web sites. I just took the tests at 3 of them and my rates ranged from 750-1345wpm with ranging from 60-100% comprehension so I'd suggest taking several tests and averaging them to get your current reading speed. My own feeling is that my "true" reading speed is about 1200wpm and comprehension about 80%.
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Yes sounds promising. That's when you switch off all modes of communication and just focus on one thing?
I have a mode which I call "Do Nothing But". It's a deal I do with myself which involved a kitchen timer (e.g. set for 1 hour) where I accept no interruptions of ANY sort. No phone calls, no emails, no food breaks, no comfort breaks, only actual full-on emergencies are allowed. Something like that?
To get clear it's not about finishing every task on my Active list of tasks. That has never happened and probably never will happen. My problem is that if I'm not careful, I don't even LOOK at all the tasks on my list, to see if they are now higher priority.
Can you say a little more about that?
Do you review ALL your Someday/Maybes during your weekly review?
Meanwhile I have a new dilemma. I have some stuff that I know I won't want to do for a number of months.
e.g. "When I take up the accordion [in 6-12 month's time!], here is some music I'd like to learn"
There is zero point in even looking at this stuff for 6 months as I have zero intention of taking up the instrument until that point. So I certainly don't want to keep looking at it every week!
So I could put it into my reference material... [ For better or worse I currently use MLO (mostly) which I find fairly convenient to dump reference material into, so long as I mark it as such by moving to a directory at the bottom of the page AND using a Context Tag (e.g. "~Reference"). ]
However that would be a cop-out because it IS actionable stuff... And I WOULD like to see it pop up in say 6 months time.
I guess I could put it into my paper-based Tickler file, but the data is really digital and moreover I keep adding to it from time to time!
I could delay the Start Date to 6 months from today, (which is how I run my digital Tickler File) however I will still seeing the darned thing when I am in my ALL Tasks view in MLO. Part of the problem is that MLO does not have field for a task's actionable "status" and so things start to get messy if one uses Context. In MLO Flags fail to inherit... So that just leaves Folders. But they are a pain to move stuff in and out of.
So the general question is: should I create another list beyond "Someday-Maybe" for stuff I don't want to see for "quite a long time" ?!
Oogiem
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I'd put it in Reference, in my case I'd have a folder called Accordion_Music and the files would live there. Then in my equivalent of a digital tickler which is in my list manager I'd set a project "Learn to play this accordion music" with the note field saying Music files located in File_Cabinet in folder Accordion_Music a start date of 6 months and next review date of the week before the 6 months are up. So I'd never see it when I do weekly reviews but it will pop up into my view when I want it too. If in 4 months I really have more time when I am doing a regular weekly review I can easily see it further down the list of things to review. Just because it's in the future Omnifocus doesn't hide it from me when I use my custom perspective for reviewing. I can say, oh maybe I have time to start that now and can change the status and start date. The problem is it seems that your chosen tool limits how you set up that sort of thing. I'd still put the material into reference, and figure out a way to use hotkeys or set up some sort of macro to move stuff into and out of folders easily so you can work within the limitations of no status in MLO.
For me, the list of titles would ALWAYS be project support material or reference. It would never be active material or someday/maybe.
So this project might start as:
Project: Learning the accordian
in my "check every three months" Someday/Maybe list. That's all that would be in my lists about the project, while the project is just Someday/Maybe. Things related to that project might come up--ideas for what I'd like to learn, the business card of a teacher, a good music store for renting or buying an accordian. I would either file those in Reference or start a Project Support Material folder for "Learning the accordian."
Eventually, I'd add a project to my active lists:
Project: Learn the accordian.
At that point, the list of possible songs would definitely become project support material. It wouldn't be included in my project and action lists, though it might be referred to:
Next Action: Review my list of accordian pieces.
Next Action: Send off for Turkey in the Straw.
Next Action: Talk to accordian teacher about favorite accordian pieces.
Next Action: Learn Turkey in the Straw and Kokomo.
But the actual full list would remain project support material. I don't want any more in my lists than I need--when I can move something out to support material, I do.
I am curious now about how you people are using your Someday-Maybe lists. Isn't that the point - it should be processed at the Weekly Review? If not what else does get reviewed?
I am also curious about how lists called "Review every 3 months" are being used in practice. Is that done at the end of this quarter? (On a paper list I can't see how else you could do it!) Or are people doing clever things electronically with Start Dates? (e.g. manually adding 33 days to the today in the Start Date)
I am also curious about how lists called "Review every 3 months" are being used in practice. Is that done at the end of this quarter? (On a paper list I can't see how else you could do it!) Or are people doing clever things electronically with Start Dates? (e.g. manually adding 33 days to the today in the Start Date)
My Someday/Maybe lists are a place to put actionable or someday-actionable things that I’m not going to take action on soon. They tend to pick up a fair bit of clutter that doesn’t fit the “actionable or someday-actionable” description, and I try to get that clutter out of them when I review them, though my standards aren’t as strict as they are for my actual active projects and actions.
During the Someday/Maybe part of my weekly review
- I always review the Weekly Someday/Maybe list.
- If it’s been a month or more since I reviewed the Monthly Someday/Maybe list, I’ll review it, and also the weekly list.
- If it’s been three months or more since I reviewed the Quarterly Someday/Maybe list, I’ll review it, and also the monthly list and the weekly list.
And so on. I don't actually have a Quarterly Someday/Maybe list right now--Weekly, Monthly, and Annual gives me plenty of choice for review frequency. If things get messier, I may add one.
This practice reflects the fact that I don’t keep most of my Someday/Maybe material in OmniFocus. If I did, I would have a bunch of projects with their default review frequency set to monthly or three-monthly or quarterly. That would have a somewhat different effect—there would never be a time when I review absolutely everything, unless I go out of my way to do so. But most of my OmniFocus projects are active or soon active, so I mostly just use the default weekly review frequency.
When you ask “what else does get reviewed” are you asking what, overall, gets reviewed in the weekly review? I want to ask before I describe a bunch of stuff that you weren’t even asking.
petdr
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What are your contexts? Some of your lists are actually my contexts. Could some of your lists be changed to contexts?
In my system, most of these would be in the @WF context. The "Paused Stuff" would have a note why it was paused and what condition needs to be met for it to be unpaused. For instance, an action may be in @WF because it's waiting for a response from a colleague.
So I wouldn't have a separate list for these Paused Stuff, they would just be in my @WF context (which I guess is still a list?).
Why do you need to break your list down so much? Wouldn't that just mean more lists for you to scan/read?
If you are doing your weekly reviews, would you not know if those actions are Do ASAP or Urgent? What made you decide not to have a list of real Next Actions for the week and, at the start of each day, just highlight or somehow mark the 3 (or however many) actions that HAS to be done that day --- deadline external or internal.
What are your contexts for 3.4?
Maybe I'm misunderstanding your system. It just seems more complicated than it needs to be. I think by separating the actions into such detailed lists create more places for you to house actions -- which lead to more scanning/reading to a) decide where to put the actions then later b) decide where to look for those actions.
TesTeq
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How do you handle "Discuss X with John when he'll be back from his vacation"? @WF? Calendar? @Agenda? Tickler File?
Longstreet
Professor of microbiology and infectious diseases
I add this to my tickler so that it appears on the day John is back from vacation.
Usually @Agenda-John, because that causes zero overhead. John is on vacation? So what? If he doesn't appear in front of my sight it doesn't matter why that is. When he appears, I'll check the @Agenda.
As always: the weekly review is key. The project as a whole get's reviewed here, the calendar is fresh in my mind, so if something is stalling in a bad way, I'll catch it here. Otherwise I'll just wait for the appearance of John…
As always: the weekly review is key. The project as a whole get's reviewed here, the calendar is fresh in my mind, so if something is stalling in a bad way, I'll catch it here. Otherwise I'll just wait for the appearance of John…
petdr
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If what's holding up the discussion is John being on vacation, I would put that in the Tickler to remind me that John is now available for that discussion -- I then move the action to email/call/agenda or whatever context is appropriate.
If I see John often, eg I would see him when he's back from vacation, then I can see housing that action in Agenda as Cpu_Modern. But that's rare for me as most of my interactions are not face-to-face so I need to have the reminder(tickler) that John is available.
About the someday maybe list. I personally don't include it in my weekly review, even though I add projects there. I open it every time I complete what I consider a medium to big project. If I do it sooner than that I tend to get distracted by it....