Stopping flags

[ivanjay205]

I had a bit of realization that I spend a lot of time living in flagged items in omnifocus. I use it to prioritize things I really need to do like weekly personal banking but dont have a firm date. What I have started to notice is I live in this perspective (omnifocus) and dont get t lo my other lists enough. So I am going to take the plunge and unflag these recurring items hoping to engage with my larger system more often without losing sight of these high priority but without due date items. We will see how this goes.

 

[John Forrister]

@ivanjay205 I applaud your self-awareness and your brave choice! I think that as you build your trust in your lists you will trust yourself to do what needs to be done when.

 

[Wilson Ng]

I like to look the flagged perspective and pick 1-3 tasks from that list. I write it down on an index card and put that in front of my computer or carry it in my pocket if I'm going outside. Those are the 3 things out of the flagged perspective that I want to do today. I also schedule a time block for those tasks. If it's not on my schedule, something else will bump it off. I try to work in all the other life stuff that happens throughout the day around those 3 time blocks.

 

[DKPhoto]

I really need to do like weekly personal banking but dont have a firm date.

I use an Admin context for all finance & admin related tasks, and I am forced to look at it when a bill needs to be paid (hard deadline). I find that I get in the zone when I am in that context and pick off other non-time specific tasks, like personal banking.

 

[DKPhoto]

build your trust in your lists

David mentions a trusted system often and I think it’s one of the most under discussed part of GTD by users. Often I see people change their tools because they don’t trust their system, rather than making their systems work for them.

I went through it myself switching from paper, to Things, to Omnifocus, to Todoist, before settling on 2Do. That was about 10 years ago and I have stuck with it since.

Obviously I adjust the system when I realise something isn’t working well for me, and I am lucky that the developer does continually change things so there’s no time wasted trying to relearn the software. I abandoned OF because they changed something that messed up the way I worked.

 

[DKPhoto]

I had a bit of realization that I spend a lot of time living in flagged items in omnifocus. I use it to prioritize things I really need to do like weekly personal banking but dont have a firm date. What I have started to notice is I live in this perspective (omnifocus) and dont get t lo my other lists enough. So I am going to take the plunge and unflag these recurring items hoping to engage with my larger system more often without losing sight of these high priority but without due date items. We will see how this goes.

The other thing I do is to write on a whiteboard the projects that I want to focus on this week. No next actions, just projects.

To move any project forward I have to look at my NA lists.

When I have taken the project as far as I can/want (or complete it) I tick it off on the whiteboard.

 

[ivanjay205]

I use an Admin context for all finance & admin related tasks, and I am forced to look at it when a bill needs to be paid (hard deadline). I find that I get in the zone when I am in that context and pick off other non-time specific tasks, like personal banking.

That is a very interesting idea. So it is tool agnostic (computer, phone, etc.) but admin (which I presume could often be computer) and it helps you to knock off the "maintenance" items as they appear. I wonder if I would default to that cause its easy work or not....

 

[ivanjay205]

David mentions a trusted system often and I think it’s one of the most under discussed part of GTD by users. Often I see people change their tools because they don’t trust their system, rather than making their systems work for them.

I went through it myself switching from paper, to Things, to Omnifocus, to Todoist, before settling on 2Do. That was about 10 years ago and I have stuck with it since.

I am one of these tinkerers. In fact I picked up the idea of reading weekly affirmations from the GTD nordic podcast and love it. One of them is stop wasting time switching your system as you always come back to Omnifocus anyway.

 

[ivanjay205]

To reply to all I will tell you that while I have not hit the weekday yet (and today is a holiday for me so I am out) I feel soooooo much better about not seeing all of those flagged items yelling at me. They did give me the sense of I was letting myself down by missing what I was saying was important to me

 

[DKPhoto]

That is a very interesting idea. So it is tool agnostic (computer, phone, etc.) but admin (which I presume could often be computer) and it helps you to knock off the "maintenance" items as they appear. I wonder if I would default to that cause its easy work or not....

Yes I always do them at the desk with the computer.

I find if I have a spare 10 minutes that I often look here first, as many of the tasks are quite quick.

I don’t really like doing admin tasks which is why due dates for bills forces me to look at the bigger tasks.

 

[FocusGuy]

To reply to all I will tell you that while I have not hit the weekday yet (and today is a holiday for me so I am out) I feel soooooo much better about not seeing all of those flagged items yelling at me. They did give me the sense of I was letting myself down by missing what I was saying was important to me

Yes so do I
fLag also created anxiety to me. It stressed me a lot and created false urgencies. I definitivly ger rid of this bad habit and focus first on calendar itemd( they are lists) then next action list
all (again) is dated goes on my calendar even if it is already as a check list in omnifocus for now…

 

[cfoley]

To reply to all I will tell you that while I have not hit the weekday yet (and today is a holiday for me so I am out) I feel soooooo much better about not seeing all of those flagged items yelling at me. They did give me the sense of I was letting myself down by missing what I was saying was important to me

I have had this experience too. When I started GTD, I set up several of do-on dates for my actions, particularly my repeating actions. I would either feel like a slave to my system when I followed them, or I would feel like I wasn't doing enough when I did something different.

Nowadays, I realise that I can find all my commitments to myself in my lists, and I manage recurring things in my calendar or my tickler file, depending on their nature.

 

[René Lie]

I have a habit that seems similar: I keep a list of recurring weekly chores consisting of admin stuff, to make sure I don't create a backlog. Seems to be working well here!

 

[dtj]

Using the baseball analogy, I have an "On Deck" project under like "Work" and "Home". Thinking about it, it should probably be a tag, and then have a "On Deck" perspective, so as to not detach the item from its home project.

 

[larea]

I often like to write a shortlist for the day which works sort of like flagging but is more temporary and can be tossed at the end of the day. The way this works is to read the entire active task list (mine is in Omnifocus) and then choose items I might actually work on today and write them on paper by context. I usually choose a few more than I can really do, maybe 20 or so but make a list than can fit on one page and sit next to me. At the end of the day I go back into OF and check off the tasks completed and toss the paper. It works better for me than flagging because I would tend to let the flags stay on and get stale. Also, by doing it this way, I have read my entire list and have a good overview of what is there. I tend to only trust my system when I'm reading my active task list daily.