Projects: How detailed are titles (using Palm)

Rereading GTD over summer I realise that I had not been fully defining the outcome of my Projects in my Projects list. So for a trivial example I should probably say

Read article by Fred and comment

instead of

Fred article

The complication for me is that I am doing my GTDing on a Palm TX and the Projects list is a Tasks category. So the room for writing is limited and thus I tend to abbreviate Tasks to a few words. I could put the outcome into a Note I guess.

I would be interested in how other people who have limited space in their trusted system are handling this.

Thanks -

Michael

When I was GTDing on Palm I loved the awesome, system-wide Find-function.

Each Project was a sheet in Memopad (later I used MacNoteTaker because it gives better sorting options than plain Memos). Title of each memosheet would be &PROJECTHANDLE like for example &GARAGE_SALE.

In Tasks I had my NAs in the following format: &PROJECTHANDLE: action verb plus whatever. Gives you &GARAGE_SALE: move stuff into garden.

A search on &GARAGE_SALE would give me any info, NA, calendared item ect on the GARAGE_SALE project. Makes updateting the NA lists relatively easy.

The "&" is there to distingish between really related project info and some random GARAGE words in some reference memo. I have some other conventions like this. For example [**] gives me a remark in some memo that could be a SdMb item. The nice thing is, it is totally OS/software independent. All you need is a decent Find-function.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mmurray

Rereading GTD over summer I realise that I had not been fully defining the outcome of my Projects in my Projects list. So for a trivial example I should probably say

Read article by Fred and comment

instead of

Fred article

The complication for me is that I am doing my GTDing on a Palm TX and the Projects list is a Tasks category. So the room for writing is limited and thus I tend to abbreviate Tasks to a few words. I could put the outcome into a Note I guess.

I would be interested in how other people who have limited space in their trusted system are handling this.

Thanks -

Michael

---

When I had a Palm, I don't remember being unduly encumbered by space limitations.

I prefer putting subject-type words first and verb-type words at the end, when titling projects.. It makes it easier for me to scan my lists visually. I would title the Project something like "Fred's article commented on." I like DA's discipline that forces me to answer the question, "What is the desired outcome?" I try to express that outcome in a past tense. This tells me what my world will look like after the outcome has come out.

I usually title my NAs with the action word first. If I knew exactly where Fred's article was located, the NA might be "Read Fred's article." Otherwise it might be, "Search office for Fred's article."