someday/maybe new

[Tom.9]

Still "Outlook" is the core of my system.
For each someday/maybe item I used to create an own OL task, resulting in over 900 entries for that category. Each weekly review I felt overwhelmed by the mere idea of reading this long list. Often I scanned too fast through the s/m section to become real aware of what was living there.

Today, I tried a new approach.
I created entries with possible future (= s/m) projects. All possible actions linked to that project I stored within the "note field" of the corresponding project.
Result:
The whole s/m-list now contains about 380 entries - which seems much better to me for reviewing (within reasonable time and spending less energy).
When clicking on one entry, I see all the possible next actions grouped there (and not elsewhere).

Still have to verify if it is really an improvement under real life conditions, though.

 

[Folke]

I handle it similarly. Works well for me.

 

[TesTeq]

I created entries with possible future (= s/m) projects. All possible actions linked to that project I stored within the "note field" of the corresponding project.

I avoid brainstorming any actions for Someday/Maybe Projects. They become obsolete too often.
Why? Because:
1) I discard many S/M Projects when my interests change.
2) Some implementation method becomes obsolete before the Project activation.

 

[Sergey Shvaikovskiy]

I handle it similarly. Works well for me.

Hello, Folke!

As implemented in Doit.im?

 

[Oogiem]

I use Omnifocus and will plan as many actions in Someday/Maybe Projects as I need to to get them off my mind. Often I need to brainstorm how I'd approach the problem just to get the potential project gone. If I don't I'll find myself capturing and re-capturing the project again and again and have found myself making duplicate or near duplicate projects in someday/maybe because I failed to heed my need to have some things brainstormed about the projects before I let it go.Sometimes I put general notes in the notes section of the project or even in the notes for a single action.

Very rarely will I need to do much if any re-planning if and when I start those projects. The difference from TesTeq must be in the nature of my projects.

For example I had aproject that I priginally started or thought about 3 years ago. At the time I did a fair bit of planning about the project, who to contact, what additional information we would need to move forward, what other actions we'd take if we did the project because it was really on my mind. For various reasons it was not possible to make that project active and move on, it depended on an outside person making a decision that they had not done and that I was unwilling to force a ruling on. Here it is years later and suddenly new information appeared in my inbox that relates to this old someday/maybe project. The person I was waiting on to make a decision has and it's a positive one for the continuance of this project. I made the project active and guess what, every single one of the actions I had already planned are still relevant and I was able to add the single new piece of info to the project and start immediately.

 

[Folke]

Hello, Folke!

As implemented in Doit.im?

Yes, I use Doit.im, and the features in Doit that lend themselves to this approach are:

- inactivation of entire projects, while keeping all the actions fully classified for future use (contexts, action type etc)
- classifying tasks with subtasks as Someday (a task with subtasks can represent a project, and there is even a "convert to project" feature)

I use both of these methods, depending on how well planned (and how likely/realistic) the potential project is.