GTD Template 1.2

[wussery]

Originally posted by Will Eatherton
Wil,

I spent another several hours last night with my GTD book and my database dervived from your template and 2 more thoughts.

In your instructions you have a comment "If the task is something that you are primarily responsible for then you should drag the item from your In Basket to your Next Actions folder. You will need to assign a To-Do Date to the Task before dragging it to one of your Next Actions Folders "

However, from the book Next actions don't really need a date unless there really is hard due date for that next action. The way I handled this is to create a "Dated Actions" folder parallel to Next actions". Any next action with a firm due date goes their, and undate next actions go in next actions. So when I sit down to work I check "next seven days" to see dated work then I go to "Next actions" to see undated work.

Another suggestion I have, that I found very useful is to add the fields "need-by" and "to-do", and "waiting-on" to the "document" template so thtat when I drag and drop email and outlook tasks into UR if they are "waiting-for" or "dated actions" then I can update that item without having to put it underneath a UR specric object (like todo).

The waiting-on field I have found useful to add to and to document so that when I open the "waiting-for" folder I can see in child items a column with the names of folks that I am expecting a reply from (or that I delegated to). When I go into a 1:1 with someone I can look at this folder and quckly see what I have outstanding that they are working on.

Wil, thanks for the suggestion. I'm a proponent of putting a due date, in my case a To-Do date on any Next Action that can't be completed within the next two minutes. This may be outside the scope of GTD, but I work better with deadlines. As a consequence, anything moved to the Next Actions folder has a To-Do date and anything moved to the Waiting For folder has a Needed By date. It's just easier for me to keep focus that way.

I'll like your suggestion of modifying the Document template and will incoporate that change in the next iteration of the template.