A few of us on the Yahoo! GTD_Palm group came up with something similar, which became known as The PigPog Method.

Cool! When I've done similar things, it's been the reverse: outcome first, a typographical mark, and then the next action. With the GTD Outlook toolbar (and the by-projects view), that also automatically creates "subfolders" in amorphous projects. For example, in my next book project, I should (and will eventually) sort tasks with something like the following:

• Chap 1 | write 3 paras on "intellectual fiduciary"
• Chap 1 | write 1 para on Schafer and Colorado stories
• Chap 8 | circle sappy language (to be revised)
• etc.

For me, as a Palm user, my best GTD implementation solution to date is the 3rd-party program DateBook5 (Pimlico Software) for calendaring and Natara Bonsai for project planning. DateBook's calendar functions are, for my purposes, far superior to Outlook's, and Bonsai (after a bit of a learning curve) is a marvelous project-planning tool that links to-dos cleanly to the Palm and Outlook. Syncing to computers at work and home office, I have all my project plans with me, editable, at all times. Add ActiveWords to the mix, and it's pretty sweet.

David,
I have been doing pretty much the same thing as your friend, only my "symbol" happens to be a plus sign placed in between action and outcome. I went this route for a couple of reasons:1)I wuld find myself looking at certain tasks and saying, "Why am I doing this?" not realizing it was a prerequisite to something of real value. I need a reminder of WHY I am dong the task, and 2) I was looking for a shortcut to being sure outcomes did not fall through the cracks for lack of an action.

To be honest, I did away with the projects list altogether at that point. Here is what I did, however, that allows me to see at a glance every uncompleted outcome and the next action associated with it--On my desktop is an Outlook search that I have defined and saved. On this search, only the subject line will be searched. It is filtered to return only items where the status is "not complete." If I put a + as the search term, the result is a list of all of the incomplete outcomes along with the next action associated with it. Works like a charm.
Frank Buck

David - I second Michael and Frank in using Outlook and the palm in this manner. Having tried just about every piece of palm software on the market including all the outliners and todo variations, I narrowed my system down to Datebk5 using the "pigpog" method which was developed on the GTD Palm yahoo group after a long discussion about "connecting the dots" betweens projects and actions. I stuck with datebk5 for it's color coding abilities, smaller fonts, and being able to save my searches in list view. I have been using this consistently for over a year now and it works! I don't worry about a projects list because I can see all my projects (listed as brief outcome statements) in brackets right next to the actions. It transfers between the palm and outlook perfectly. The best part is that all my project notes are all right with the task so I don't have to go searching for a phone number or critical date while completing the task or forging ahead on the next action. For the major projects, I just break down the components into individual projects. To see the major project as a whole, I search for the key word used in all the sub-projects such as the company name or an acronym, etc. I still review everything weekly and I must confess my review takes less than an hour now that I only review one item instead of a project item and a task item. I don't check off a task when completed, instead I change it to the next action and log the completed action in the project notes if necessary. Many times I must start and finish a project in just a few days and this method keeps things flowing. I now feel confident that there are no cracks in my system.