Below is a screenshot of my current set up undre Projects. I want to use the GTD method but want to avoid clutter as much as possible. As you can see, there are certain things I want to remember to do every month. Is this how you’d set it up? Or, do you just make one major project called “Household” or something like that with a bunch of actions (and then nested actions I suppose)? I find it awfully hard to create an action under a project and then put another nested action under that. Dragging and dropping doesn’t seem to work well I guess.
Anyhow, how would you organize my list if you were in my shoes? Thank you!!
I have a “House Routine” project that is a Single Action List.
I put all of my routines (repeating tasks) in there.
Then I put all of my single one-off tasks (buy new light bulbs) into another Single Action list called “House Actions”.
Project: House Routine
Type: Single Action List
= Flush guest bathroom
= Dust entire house (action group)
== Dust living room
== Dust kitchen
== Dust my bedroom
== Dust kids’ bedrooms
== Dust home office
= Clear dresser in bedroom
= Hyundai maintenance (action group)
== Get Hyundai oil change
Your “Get Hyundai headlights” task sounds like a single one-off task that doesn’t happen on a frequent basis. I would put that in my “House Actions” single action list.
I would create a “project” only if it is a big project with multiple steps. The “Paint lanai” sounds like a project that can stand on its own and can be marked complete when done. It doesn’t necessarily sound like a repeating project.
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Thanks to @wilsonng, who kindly advised me to investigate SALs, I have my Projects set up that way… five or six parent SALs representing the major areas of activity (computer, house, salaried work, freelance work, creativity, errands etc). Contexts reflect this.
I found it an iterative process which took several days to refine and only really took acceptable shape once I had real data entered on OF.
Although I started with a hierarchy and something which made sense conceptually, in the end, I was able to group logically so that I didn’t even need folders because that’s where my actual data (some 175 items re-entered manually from another task manager ) led me
Within each pseudo-project (or SAL) I do have Action Lists.
The two keys in all cases I have found to be these:
1 - not to try and fit my organizational model to OF, but to adapt OF’s magnificent flexibility and richness of features to how I work. This was a lot easier than it may at first look
2 - to rely heavily on OF’s varied views (Focus, Perspectives etc) to present me with only the items I need to concentrate on at any one time.
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Thanks to both of you! Very helpful stuff. It looks like I’ll be doing some reorganization this weekend. Thanks again!
I find it easier to have all of my repeating tasks in the routine SALs and keep it separated from my single one-off tasks.
It allows me to keep track of the repeating tasks which tends to be admin stuff or life maintenance.
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