Rens Oliemans <ha...@rensoliemans.nl> writes:
> I hear the same sentiment throughout this thread by Ihor and Bob, that it's
> undesirable to have many TODO items that just lay around for a long time.
IMHO, the most critical is not having many todo items *in agenda* -
staying in front of you every day and pressing on to complete them.
Just having many todo items is not a big deal. Especially if you are in
a habit of recording every random idea as potential todo. Most of the
ideas will never be completed, which is totally fine.
> I was wondering how you (and others) would then look at the following
> scenario:
> I'm working on a project (master's thesis) with a clear scope and a clear (but
> large) list of TODOs. Some of these are actionable right now (NEXT?), but many
> are actionable only in the future (ie, "Work on presentation").
>
> This means that I now have 119 TODO (or WAIT) items without a scheduled date,
> which seems antithetical to the workflow you described above.
>
> I find it challenging to work out a method of consolidating a big project like
> this with having few TODOs open. Do you have any thoughts on this?
As Bastien pointed, such a big project can most likely be separated into
sub-projects rather than a flat todo list.
Apart from splitting into sub-projects, it is important in such
scenarios to
1. regularly review the project progress (I recommend
weekly, as long as the project is being worked on);
2. On every review, make sure to decide which tasks are to be done *next
week*. Other tasks are to be stored safely away from sight. Just
focus on what you decided to do ("NEXT" tasks).
3. Store optional ideas that may not need to be done in a separate list
that is allowed to grow indefinitely. That list is there mostly as an
extra staff you may do if you have extra time/mood. Also, because
idea list may grow big, it is useful to prioritize items there
putting more interesting/realistic ideas near the front.
--
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode maintainer,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
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