Waiting List

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Deafjeff

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Hello I am newbie and GTD is just what I need! I have been struggling to keep up with actions and have been falling in cracks lately. Now my mind is clearer with GTD. However, do people use waiting list to record all the emails that you are waiting for a response?

Sometime I forget to follow this up. Should this be next action list or part of waiting list?

Any thoughts would be welcome.
 
Yes, I use my "waiting for" list because the ball is in the other person's court. There is no next action until I either receive a response or enough time has elapsed that I need to follow up with them about what is owed to me.
 
I add it to the "Waiting For / Blocked" if I am waiting for a response or if something else is preventing me from answering. Sometimes I intentionally delay answering emails and add them to my backlog or my Kanban board to be dealt with at a later time or to be reviewed during my weekly review.
 
I do it exactly like bcmyers2112.

And in my case, a follow-up next action is usually a very quick one (e.g. a quick call or query by email to nudge the other party) that I seldom write a separate next action for the follow-up. I usually just make an additional note in the Waiting Fort action itself that I called them on Feb 11 etc.

Essentially, I think of the Waiting For list as a "People Owe Me" list. They can "owe" me anything - a report, a finished job, goods, money, anything.

I never use Waiting in the sense "waiting for myself to finish something else first", which is an erroneous interpretation often found on various app forums. Although those dependent actions do exist they are treated as a separate category in GTD; they belong with "project support" which is "outside" their Next and Waiting lists. Some people prefer to keep these entirely outside their GTD app, whereas others prefer to keep them inside the app, but adequately separated such that they do not appear on their Next or Waiting lists prematurely.
 
Thank you so much. I am really exciting to give this a go but it is very new to me and quite confusing but glad that I found this forum :)
 
In addition to waiting for something from a person I also use the WaitingFor list for other conditions I am waiting for: a package to arrive from Amazon, spring, winter, school vacation, the next sale at a certain store, new software release of a certain program, etc.
 
Deafjeff said:
do people use waiting list to record all the emails that you are waiting for a response?

Sometime I forget to follow this up. Should this be next action list or part of waiting list?
Click to expand...
No, I have a folder in my mail system for e-mails that I am waiting for a response on. I check it during weekly review and make sure I don't need to ping on those folks again. SO the only thing on my action lists is in my weekly review checklist to check for e-mail waiting for's.
 
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