Question about the Getting Things Done System...

[cwoodgold]

In the GTD book David Allen never tells us to put action reminders on separate sheets of paper.

No, but as I remember it, he advises us to put action reminders on lists, and he describes a number of possible ways to implement lists, one of which is a pile of papers with one item on each sheet. So, if I remember right, putting one action on each sheet of paper is one of the options he suggests. I like it.

Processing doesn't have to involve throwing away the paper. For me, some of the papers become action items with no modification; others may become action items or projects or something with some modification; and as I mentioned, the paper can be re-used after erasing or turning over.

"handy to have them as discrete items to deal with during processing": I agree with this from the GTD book. My processing of the sheets of paper mostly involves moving them from one pile to another.

gtdnubcake said, "Where do you put all your project goals in?"
When my systems are working well, I have s sheet of paper for each active project
in a "projects" folder, and typically the objective of a project will be expressed within the title
of the project at the top of the page; or more than one objective may be listed on the page. Major steps towards achieving the project are also listed there.

However, I think that in GTD terminology, the objective of a project isn't called
a "goal". A project is a smaller thing (perhaps to be achieved in about 3
months or less; or even a very small thing that takes more than one step
and can be achieved within a few hours). A "goal" is a larger thing,
perhaps with a time horizon of about a year or so.

gtdnubcake, you seem to have edited the first post of the thread and removed
some questions from it. I'm not sure if there are any rules or guidelines for
editing posts, and I'm not sure whether you had a strong reason for withdrawing
a question, but it's confusing. I've made minor changes to some of my posts, but not ones that
would leave someone else's reply looking as if it had no reason to be there or something. Just a suggestion: if someone wants to prevent further answers
to a question, after a reply has already been posted,
maybe they could edit their post to say "(originally I posted
the following question, but I'm withdrawing it: ....)" and leave the question there.
If you edit immediately after you post, before others reply, I think you can make
a lot more changes without anybody becoming confused or even noticing that you've
edited. Sorry to sound critical. Maybe nobody's worked out guidelines for this
sort of thing yet.

[I made a small edit to this post immediately after posting it.]