The Perils Of The Due Date

[rossw]

Neil,

You mention that you expect more action items after your weekly review. Do you ever take actions off action lists and put them on "someday" or the tickler/agenda?

I use the due date to show when the action showed up. (because this seems to be the date field that synchs reliably). This way I can easily see tasks that have been hanging around and get a feel for how reliable my action list is. (WHY didn't I call the dentist in August when I first suspected I'd lost a filling? @shops: Lay in Ibuprofen for christmas!)

I dont have the book with me, but I seem to recall that GTD is supposed to work with 50-100 actions across the contexts. Or is that projects? (@home: check number of actions).

Jason, in your coaching, how many open actions do you find people can aspire to have on lists before they lose the ability to set priorities intuitively?

Pamela,

On the Palm, can you filter by "no category"? I used to have an @me context, but by definition this is the stuff I can do without any other context, so no category works as well.

Thanks and regards,

FBA

[pd_workman]

Yes, absolutely. You can filter by "unfiled". On the palm, you are allowed 15 categories, not including unfiled.

I tend to use "other" instead of unfiled, because if I am cycling through the categories (repeated presses on the Todo button take you to the next category) it skips "unfiled"!

Pam

[JLamp]

This thread was really great and has helped me a great deal! Like several others, I was constantly shuffling due dates and invested more time into that than moving NA's forward. As a result of eliminating the due dates, I feel a lot more dynamic, fluid and effective! I am making better choices, moving things foward and not nearly as heady! I find that it really cultivates the feeling of "mind like water". I am using due dates only for those that have an ABSOLUTE due date and they really stand out.

Thanks for the new found freedom - it is a breath of fresh air! It is very liberating to delete all of those meaningless and cluttering due dates.

Jeff