Is this the best way to move stuff into a GTD Sometime-Maybe list? (i.e. Control/M, Enter, Enter !)

[John Smith]

Hi 

What is the best way that you have found to create a GTD Sometime/Maybe list?

The best I have come up with so far is to create a Folder that I keep at the very top row of my Outline view which I have called "Sometime/Maybe folder" and for which I have also ticked "Hide the branch in To-do". Then, if I highlight the thing I want to move to Someday-Maybe, and hit Control/M, followed by Enter twice, you have then moved the item into this folder AND out of immediate sight.

Has anyone found anything slick that involves fewer keystrokes?

J

PS. GTD Tickler list

I'm slightly unclear when to use GTD Sometime-Maybe and when to use a GTD Tickler list.

I have tried using the Start Date to create a GTD Tickler list (which I guess is what it's there for!), but I find adding Start Dates rather clunky. What I really want is to just say remind me in (say) "+1, +5,  +10, +20, +50 days (rather than having to is "Next day" or "Next week") or having to find the actual date in a calendar as this slows me down.

 

[Dwight Arthur]

Hi, John. The plan you describe sounds like a very efficient way of moving (many, many) tasks one at a time to someday/never.

 

On the other hand, I have to ask you whether your task management is overly binary, where the yes/no decision of whether I should do this task has become immediate versus never. I think most people have a lot of tasks that are not getting done today or tomorrow and are not really a part of a project that is being actively pursued today or tomorrow, but that are going to be active this week or this month or this quarter. The challenge is to come up with a way of categorizing and organizing these tasks that makes sense, and that helps you deal with today’s urgent tasks and still get some of your less urgent but worthy tasks done, without totally forgetting about the tasks that are a step below. This often involves things like using the outliner to create a meaningful structure, or using folders to collect tasks with a similar set of requirements and constraints. You have said elsewhere that you have no use for outlining and that you want to avoid folders, but it sounds like these are the very tools that you need.

-Dwight

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[Stéph]

Hello John,

I use the outline structure to group my tasks into the following hierarchy:
Areas of Focus (personal, home, work, community),
Roles (husband, father, friends & family, project engineer, team leader, SCADA specialist, etc),
Goals and Projects,
Sub-projects and tasks.


I use a Context to tag tasks as someday/maybe (see the flying pig icon in the "icons and filters" thread I started and Andrey kindly pinned at the top of the list). I've got a formatting rule set up to grey-out the text of someday/maybe items so that they don't stand-out when I'm looking at my outline. I also remove due dates. This way it's quick to make something someday/maybe - just assign the context (with a hotkey, if you like). Also type ctrl-D, Delete, if you have the time for two actions.


As far as the tickler list is concerned, that's definitely a case of setting a start date. The quickest way for me is Ctrl-S and then type and take advantage of the excellent date parsing - "Next week Thursday", "in 2 months", etc.

Stéphane

[Christoph Zwerschke]

Am 10.01.2015 um 03:24 schrieb John Smith:
> What is the best way that you have found to create a GTD Sometime/Maybe
> list?

For me, every task that does not have a due date or goal (week, month or
year) set is a "sometime/maybe".

-- Chris

[John Smith]

Dwight - 

One problem I was having with the folders is that I was being over-whelmed with too much what was if fact rather low priority stuff clogging up my lists and I found that that high priority stuff was ending up being buried down in some folder somewhere.  

The other problem I was having was that I found - and continue to find - it way too pedantic and time consuming to allocate as well as Context, to also enter both Importance AND Urgency to ever single sub-task. And for this reason I have been experimenting with manually dragging the higher overall priority item further up the sort order in Outline view.

At the time I also needed to "simplify and get on with my life" - but thanks for your suggestion. I can see that some form of folders could possibly help me, so I may revisit this issue later, but as things stand complex folders would be the kiss of death for me(!)


Stéph

- Interesting. Yes, your greying-out formatting rule sounds extremely clever.

- When your remove the Due Dates is this done with an "advanced filtering rule" applied to whichever view(s) you are using.

- Please can you explain what you mean by "Control-D, Delete". Control-D will duplicate the current item, but Delete then deletes the original one, so surely you are back to where you started, no?
(Yes, I like using Control-D on it's own, particularly where the Context is the same, because obviously it saves us from re-entering the Context) 

[Lisa Stroyan]

I had the same thought about Control-D. I think Alt-D was what was meant, it goes to the due date field.  

I really have to find time to play with auto formatting and icons more. Sounds like a good refinement.

John, I know you already have your system but for others following the thread...I prefer to use drag/drop ordering for importance/priority also, but since my outline structure has other meaning, I do that drag/drop in a manually sorted view. Since Android only syncs the order of Starred and Active Starred (two independent sort orders), I use those. I have learned that if I create a view based on one of these, for example, modified Active Starred with action type set to all, I can rearrange the non-active tasks and they will show up in that order -- with caveats -- in the other Active Starred views as well.  (That way I can rearrange tomorrow's tasks).

Unfortunately there is some sync bug where my recurring tasks sometimes get sent to the bottom of the list for the next day when I'm working from and syncing from both platforms (happened long before the above view hack). So John, this probably wouldn't work for you anyway, because it works as a "today's working order" but not really as a static order. The only way I make it work is that all of my recurring tasks have "()" in the title so I can quickly grab them and put them back in place when this happens.

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[John Smith]

> I had the same thought about Control-D. I think Alt-D was what was meant, it goes to the due date field.

Maybe but if so I'm still not sure what Alt-D, Delete does... (!)

J

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[Stéph]

Oops, yes i meant Alt-D (select due date field), then Del (delete the due date so that task has no due date). Thanks for pointing that out, Lisa.

I don't find I need to do this often, because my tasks don't often get relegated from actions with a due date to Someday/Maybe items.


Thanks for the interest in the automatic formatting rules. I work with operator interface design in industry, some of the time, so tried to apply some of the "human factors" principles to the formatting in MLO. I'm pretty happy that I've got a reasonably good selection of colours, intensities, clear icons and most readable fonts now, so that active tasks stand out and catch the eye, while projects and future tasks are immediately identifiable, but stay more in the background. At some point, I intend to post a couple of screenshots and exports of my filter rules into that thread I started with the custom icons, in case anyone finds it useful enough to want to copy any of it.

All the best,
Stéphane

[Christoph Zwerschke]

Am 11.01.2015 um 00:37 schrieb Stéph:
> At some point, I intend to post a couple of screenshots and exports of my filter rules into that thread I started with the custom icons, in case anyone finds it useful enough to want to copy any of it.

That would be highly appreciated. There should be actually a wiki or
something to collect and keep such user contributions and howtos more
visibly and systematically.

-- Chris