+1 Trevor's thoughts about overloading Due Dates. If you assign synthetic due dates to tasks, David Allen predicts accurately what will happen : you will become numb to the huge # of tasks that are "overdue" and will ignore (or have a hard time focusing on) the few tasks that genuinely have dates by which time they must be done.
Dan g. On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 9:42 AM Trevor Peck <[email protected]> wrote: > 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. 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