Quote Originally Posted by Brent View Post
...if you're unlikely to actually work on it this week, I say, move it to Someday/Maybe.

The split between Projects and Someday/Maybe forces you to make difficult decisions about what you actually will work on this week. There are many things you could do. By constraining your Projects list, you must focus on that which can actually be accomplished in a week.

Most people don't prioritize their work based on how much time they actually have. They have lots of things on their to-do lists, but only get to a few of them. By narrowing that to-do list into a focused list of Projects, and deferring the rest to Someday/Maybe (even if you work on some of those next week!), you gain the power of focus and attention.
I used to reside squarely in the camp of "If I'm not going to take action in the next week, then it goes on my Someday/Maybe list". Just recently, though, I realized that I have a raft of projects that have been on Someday/Maybe for almost the whole year simply because, every week, I would say to myself, "eh.. not terribly important, so I'll get to it later". This year, to be sure, has been more productive than any pre-GTD year; but I don't feel it was as productive as it could/should have been.

Most of the permanent residents of Someday/Maybe have not moved to Active Town solely because there was not some iminent due date. The reality is, though, that I probably could have completed most of them if I had just had the next action in my context lists; then, instead of surfing the net or watching TV or trolling around this forum, I could have been moving other stuff forward.

I originally adopted the "If in doubt, get it out [of the active list]" approach about a year ago, when I determined that my next action lists were full of "invisible" items -- items that I looked at every day but didn't do, and they eventually came to the point where I would completely gloss over them when going through my lists to pick a next action; I simply wouldn't see them. I still don't know how to properly combat this problem, but hiding the next actions is not going to make them go away; and it certainly doesn't help to actually get them done.

Also, I am now coming to the realization that, during the weekly review, I am just not in a position to determine how much time/energy I am going to have on Thursday afternoon when I am in my @Home context. If I have not spent the up-front time to determine and record a next action for a large portion of my projects just because I wasn't sure whether I'd have time to do something about them this week, then I have actively denied myself the opportunity to move something forward that I really want to do at some point.

Maybe someone here can talk me out of my madness; but at the moment, I think it is best to just keep the project in "Active" status, record the next action, and use DA's 4-fold approach to determining what you'll do next.