No. of Entourage Projects--esp. in GTD?

[Merlin Mann]

Entourage 2004 users--how many Projects are you using and how granular
do you get when creating new ones? Subset of Entourage GTD nerds: do
you create Projects as liberally as you would doing GTD on paper, or do
you try to limit them in any way? Have you found a point when the
number or projects becomes unwieldy?

I ask out of curiosity, but also because I'm working on an
embarrassingly geeky Dewey Decimal-style way to name, number and
color-label each project (this enables an extra layer of sorting and
organization that's been helpful to me in preliminary usage.)
TIA.

[Andy J. W. Affleck]

I'm still not at my happy balance point here. Granted, I just shifted
back to Entourage from Life Balance so I'm also still getting back
into things.

Right now, I keep things at the project level as in actual work
projects (based on client or internal project etc). Within each of
these, I'm keeping notes for sub-projects in which have lists of to-do
items. When items on those lists become next actions, they become
tasks.

It means my daily/weekly review are a bit intensive as I have a lot to
go through and I'd love a better way...

-A

[Doug]

Andy,

As someone currently using Entourage but who is interested in
LifeBalance, I'm wondering what made you switch back to Entourage.
Thanks

Doug

[Andy J. W. Affleck]

Two things:

1) My free trial of LB ran out and I didn't feel like paying for it at
that time :)
2) I really like the ability to link emails to tasks so i can file the
emails away for good immediately and recall them as needed when I get
to the specific task. With LB, I was keeping the emails in an @Work
folder (or similar) and always having to *find* the email when I
needed to refer to it and having to remember to file it away. It just
added extra annoying steps.

Now, I'm still in love with LB but I just can't swing the money for it
currently so I'm making do with Entourage. If money were no object...
well, I'd need to really think about it. Both approaches have a lot of
power and I like them both.

-A

[Doug]

My big problem with Entourage has always been the lack of subtasks.
Yes, I know I can assign tasks to projects (and that takes care of 1
level anyway), and I know I can fudge subtasks with categories, but
lack of the simple ability to "indent" some tasks under another one
really bugs me. That's what keeps making me look at things like Life
Balance. I think if the MS Mac BU would include this simple feature, I
would be completely happy with Entourage. Thanks for the feedback (and
as a grad student, I completely understand the price issue; I think I
got the whole 2004 office suite with a Wacom digipad for under $150).

Back to the topic of the original post, Entourage's projects always
seem better suited for big projects that are going to be around for a
while rather than the GTD idea of "any task that is going to take more
than one step." It seems like using categories (or one catch-all
project) for really small projects might work better.

Doug