Hey J, > According to GTD theory, you are supposed to list absolutely every task, right?
You are not supposed to list absolutely every task. David Allen often indicates that some of his most inspiring actions and projects never made it to his lists. More generally, you are dealing with two separate issues: action granularity and action prioritization. *Action granuarity* (ie. small vs. big tasks): My take is that there is no action size that fits all. Various factors may have an impact on the action size (small vs. big) that best works for you: the complexity of the work you do, your own maturity with GTD, your anxiety level, etc. So, I cannot provide you with a particular recommendation because the best will be the one that you will devise for yourself: You have to practice GTD and determine through trial and error the size and number of actions that makes sense for your particular situation. I know that my own practice has evolved over time along with my maturity with GTD: my tasks were very detailed when I started (and it was NOT very efficient; I was so stressed out that I had to put everything down, even the most mundane tasks, which helped relieve some tension.), but over time I ended following more closely D. Allen's own advice, ie. putting down only the things that were "on my mind". To put it plainly, you won't see for instance "shave this morning" on my list, but rather "R&D cities to visit in California during next fall trip". *Action prioritization:* It seems like you are spending a good deal of time and effort trying to "prioritize" actions as you enter them in your system (through stars, bold type, or priority setting). This goes counter to the GTD methodology, and you have experienced first-hand the inefficiency of such approach (decried by D. Allen himself): priorities keep changing anyway, so the priority you set in stone one day becomes irrelevant in a matter of days, if not hours, with the stack of new actions that has come your way in the interim. If you stay true to the GTD approach, you'll save youself time, energy and frustration, by not setting any priorities, and just sticking to contexts.* It is when your review your active actions in the context you are currently in that it is the best time to choose the most appropriate task to tackle next.* Don't look for a system that will tell you magically what to do and when because such system does not exist. GTD's fundamental message is that choosing what to do and when is essentially your call, and that the only "help" you can give yourself is by filtering out actions, by context, so as not to be bothered by actions that are irrelevant to your current setting. All your active actions should be actions that you ought to be doing ASAP, so if you feel like there are actions that you should not view (even if they did apply to the current context), it means these are *not *active actions. In this case, you have two options in MLO: - either move hem to your someday/maybe list - or select the "hide the branch" option (which in effect hides actions from "active" views). Good luck with implementing GTD. Cheers, E Le samedi 10 janvier 2015 03:01:16 UTC+1, John Smith a écrit : > > 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/6a8e3ada-261e-4a5a-ac33-76a6b6feccdd%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
