Is a !Today list dangerous?

[Anonymous]

I make daily to-do lists often. I consider it a plan for the day. I consult my next action lists first and decide what I want to get done, write it down, and think about how it's going to come about and how long the work will take. At the end of the day, I throw away the list. I'm careful about not letting it subvert the main system, which I keep up pretty well. I didn't do this yesterday. I just did whatever work I wanted to do, but the day before I was busy with many returning-from-vacation tasks, so I made a list and took it out with me. There were eight things on the list and I did them all the way I planned.

Cris

[Alan28]

I'm just wondering if you all think this method is "dangerous" in the sense that it leads you to (a) procrastinate by making your !Today list intentionally small, and (b) leads you to a false sense of security by thinking that you are "done" when you clear the !Today list.

I can see the usefulness of a !Today category. If my V-P comes to me and informs that he needs numbers by the end of the day, that's what would go on my !Today list. Tasks that absolutely must be done by today need their own place in my opinion. These are tasks which you don't have a choice about. You don't have to go up and down the list of tasks and choose what to do. Your boss has made the decision for you.

Having said that, I thought that DA indicates that these type of tasks should be put on the calendar. An item that absolutely must be done my a certain time or date becomes "hard landscape". The decision to do those tasks has no relation to context, priority, etc. They must be done that day and so they should be on the calendar.

[Anonymous]

I think that keeping time separate from tasks is valuable (at least for me). If something has a hard due date, then I put it on my task list with a due date. I have many tasks that I need to spend multiple days working on and so will assign both a start date and a due date.

I think of it this way:
My calendar is only for my time. That is, it specifies what I will do that day. Yes, I may have blocked out time to work no a task, but I still have a task in my task list that keeps all the notes associated with the task.

My task list is for things I need to do. Some might get time scheduled and some might not. Some have due dates (these are the types of things Alan28 talks about) and some don't. These are just NA's that I do when I have time (slots that are not taken up by other things on my calendar).

I hope this is articulate enough. I works for me.

-Rob