Hi I need some advice on how to handle too many tasks (using MLO).
According to GTD theory, you are supposed to list absolutely every task, right? But this can make for painfully long lists, even if you put a fair number of them into your Someday/Maybe list or use a future Start Date (to create a Tickler list) But if I create say a few Actions for each project (which is helpful for larger projects), then things quickly get much worse! So I can't decide how many Actions to create per project. A.) Reasons to create MORE Actions: a) For projects where I catch myself starting to procrastinate, I like to break them down into several small tasks (i.e. Actions). The smallness of the individual tasks helps make the project seem less daunting and helps me keep momentum. b) Likewise having several potential Next Actions listed helps me chose between them depending on their importance/urgency, (and - if I am being honest - depending a little on my mood !) BUT B) Reasons to create FEWER Actions: The trouble with having long lists of Actions is that even the act of giving every single action a Context quickly becomes a pain. Also I have been experimenting with giving each Action an Importance and an Urgency as well. This can keep help sight of important stuff in particular. However this makes entering data even more painful! I have also tried using the manual dragging of items up and down the sort order of a list, as this creates a sort of relative priority and this helps in some ways, but is still clunky, as it's not clear how far to drag stuff. I have also experimented by using stars - which MLO helpfully allows you to filter out separately of course. And I have also tried marking high priority items in colour. And/or making certain things bold. This works up to a point, although I find myself UN-starring and un-marking up certain uncompleted items... However that fact is that when you have too many Actions it quickly become a pain to read them all whatever you do! And worse, when statuses change (e.g. become more urgent) this can be disastrous because it's all too easy to lose track of important/urgent things when priorities shift around as they inevitably do. - Any advice anyone? J P.S. Is it possible in MLO to have tick-lists for very small tasks which do NOT appear on all your normal lists of Actions & Projects etc ? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/ee942b42-0d12-4d5a-8b0d-ec4dfae810b0%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
