Joseph Method wrote:
If you feel like you need to do something like this, it seems to me like you
made a mistake of putting this as a 'next action' in your next actions list,
because apparently you have "next actions" that just are not next actions,
but things you might do someday.
But that's what I would mean. I put something crazy down like
"research mesh wireless options" and then I realized that while I
might like to do something like this someday, I really shouldn't be
thinking about it now. I don't want to delete it, because it is a
thought I had, but I don't want to treat it like something that I'm
actually thinking about now. Isn't this a way of getting realistic
about what you're actually planning to do?
Well, I don't know if you've read the book, but this is actually one of
the fundamental aspects of gtd. An idea/note/thought get's into your
system (collection phase) and later on you must process what to do with
it. (processing phase)
The processing phase is where you actually *think about* the items in
your inbox for the first time and where you decide what you will do with
them. If you do this well and honest, you will never need to re-think
your next actions. (continuously re-processing items is one of those
things that makes you loose time and make your mind numb). There can be
of course some exceptions to this rule where you later decide that you
do want to move from next-action to someday/maybe, but that should be
very rare (if you do the processing honestly)
During the processing, there are 2 things you can do (there are more,
but the others are not relevant here). If it's something crazy that you
might do someday, put it in someday. If it's an action you want to do
in the near future, it's a next action.
This approach is pretty much the most efficient you can get because once
it's stashed in someday/maybe, you have the perfect compromise between
your item "being in the way" versus "in a place where it won't be
forgotten". (you will recheck these items during your weekly/monthly/...
review, but only then)
The truth is, tracks doesn't have true support for collection/processing
(yet). This is because of tracks' history: Bsag - the original author
- preferred/prefers to enter 'next actions' directly ( which is not very
gtd, but everyone is free to use an approach that works for him/her).
I'm told that some people file ideas/thoughts as next actions and use
tags/whataver as a simple way to separate them from real next actions
but personally I've not been able to come up with a good approach to
implement the collection and processing phases by using our current
possibilities only. In fact, other people have had issues with those
too (check the forums and older mails in the mailinglists). I'm working
on a 'real' implementation for the collection and processing phases in
tracks ( see http://github.com/Dieterbe/tracks/tree/master ) because I
feel this is an itch that needs to be scratched. It will probably take
a while before my code becomes usable though.
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