(A relatively long winded 'pat myself on the back for recognizing a personal flaw and overcoming it' post... if it helps, great, if not, feel free to ignore it :)

Ever since I came across the concept of GTD, I've taken to heart the comment about "anything that interferes with trusting the system should be jettisoned" (I know I don't have that exactly, but the thought's clear).

I've struggled with all kinds of different implementations on my Palm, and on paper for a little while... always something that never quite fit. Life Balance is a great program, but I stumble over the somewhat orphaned Date Book entries... DateBook5 is just as versatile, in different ways, but it still has quirks and I've tweaked at it (ie, procrastinated :) for far too long.

The stumbling block has always been how to represent recurring NAs in a decent form - my home life is VERY variable - any fixed recurrence gets me overdue items, and that's a personal boogeyman...

I've read cris and others, about their index cards in tickler files for recurring tasks... I really like the concept of having a physical reminder in hand, for today's 'things'. The flexibility to reschedule the next occurence on ANY date is exactly what I need... but the index cards would trip me up as badly, I think... hmmm...

Now I've accepted the "spending too much time fiddling with the system" self-diagnosis, combined ONLY the concepts I need, and voila! An "Index card system on the Palm"...

I use only the built-in DateBook, ToDo, MemoPad, NotePad. NotePad & MemoPad for collecting, where paper isn't already present. The relevant NAs get sorted: time or date critical go straight to a Date Book appointment; all other NAs go into the ToDo List. Projects get created as needed at Review time, or as a Someday/Maybe (priority 5...) if I won't work on it soon.

The recurring tasks: each one is a Date Book entry, that *doesn't* repeat. I look at them as they come up, do or defer as required, and manually set the next time that I want to be reminded.

(Big Sign of Relief!) Now I know that the things I care to remind myself about will come up at the time I want... not by somebody else's (inherently limited) algorithm. I don't delete anything except completed and archived ToDo - type NAs, so I know that everything is still there.

Much stronger trust, much closer to completely embracing GTD. :)

Howard