The GTD strategy only makes dates for things that won't make sense to do if you don't do them on their due date. So, if you don't take your flight, or go to your meeting, or pay your gas bill, well, then, it's not due anymore. You missed it. Those items need due dates. The gas bill still needs to be paid, of course, but now it's "pay the overdue gas bill and late fees". Start dates are used to hide a task when you can't work on it until a certain date.
Everything else just needs a priority and context. Wash the car fits pretty well here - if you don't do it today it will still be dirty tomorrow. This means you can scan your list much faster, and ensure you do all the things that need doing today, like the gas bill, before reviewing the items that are available to do today (but not due), like washing the car. Repeat by start date means it will stay on my list of "available" rather than "due", and of course upon completion will not show up until it's available again. There is no need to review, nor worry about, items that are not due today if you don't have the time to get them done anyway. This doesn't account for upcoming overload, but that's handled during reviews (Reflect), not during action (Engage). Anyway, that's my understanding. Once I understood my task list that way, a large majority of my tasks fit this category. Most of my tasks are to check certain physical things and create future tasks as necessary, and most of those checks need to be performed frequently, but not on any particular day. The ones that do need doing on particular days always get my attention first, and wading through the lists can be cumbersome if they all have due dates. Thank you for asking, as while writing this it occurred to me that I could make a text tag, like "repeat_by_start", and filter those out of my daily lists, adding a daily repeat task "Check Repeat by Start View" that includes those tasks. That probably won't even be too cumbersome, and I think I might do it. Maybe even today. ;-) I also suspect that sorting by the importance algorithm has something to offer here (maybe low urgency will sort these correctly even if they have a due date), but I think it might be beyond my comprehension and ability to make that work for me - and even if I did figure it out, it would irrationally bother me to have overdue tasks. I think I programmed that nagging feeling into myself because I preferred it to the consequences of actually failing to do something important. I have definitely found it easier to reprogram computers than me. I hear that might be unusual, so it's not strange if your experience is different. - Trevor. On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 2:58 AM Huw Evans <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi - I'd love to know how you're using start date for tasks. It obviously > seems important to you, but I've never needed it. The way I approach tasks > is very schedule focused, so I'm interested in what I need or plan to do > today. So a couple of examples: > 1. wash car - this is a repeating task, due every 2 weeks. So it pops up > in my list when due. > 2. pay gas bill - this is a repeating task every 3 months, again it'll pop > up when due. > 3. create dashboard report - this is a task that will take me about 2 > weeks to complete, doing 30 min or 1 hour work chunks every 2-3 days. So I > create a master task for the overall job, then sub-tasks for a work chunk. > I can use the next action to see the next work chunk and keep completing > those until just the master task remains - when hopefully it's done :) > This last task is one where I could mark it as started, but I've never > understood what value that gives me. Is this where you would use this > field? > > My next question is, why would you want a task that repeats by start date, > not due date. May be answered by above. > > Thanks. > > -- > 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 https://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/f882e39f-3916-46b7-90d2-d681aeae8b9f%40googlegroups.com > . > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/CAK8u4jOXM8EiJqvzYBckAF2kFAZotQiZ7uD1n%2Bj5RUuuV7DvWg%40mail.gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
