Keeping Next Actions organized

For every Project, I have set up a "Next Actions" section whose children are the actions that constitute the project.

To keep these somewhat in check, I use 2 tricks:

Using TypeIt4Me, I make sure that every action for myself starts with "Action:" (I just typed "ac" to put this in this post, and every delegated action with "Waiting for:... " ("wa")

Then, I apply an Automatic Sort with the following keys:

1. Status Checkbox:

• ... moves the actions automatically to the bottom of the page as soon as they have been ticked off.

2. Due Date:

• ... sorts them by urgency

3. Text:

• ... sorts them alphabetically, so the Actions and Waiting for-s are grouped separately

The page format is such that it shows the Due Date, Keywords and stickers.

more to follow...

GTD basics in Circus Ponies Notebook

Here are the basic setup choices I have made for GTD using Notebook...


Contexts
For every Context, you create a Keyword. This makes sense because every page or entry can be tagged with a Keyword. Creating a Keyword is something you can't do in a few clicks, but that doesn't matter.

Projects
I ruled out using a separate file for every Project, but that simply doesn't work for me: Projects get created all the time, and I didn't want the overhead of copying a template every time, filling in the title etc..

The GTD concept of a project is very simple (anything that requires more than one action), so I find myself having about twenty GTD projects within what I call one of my projects ( I manage a number software development projects).

The next level down for a project could be a divider, but that gives me almost the same overhead when I want to set up a new one.

Initially, I chose to use a 1-page-per-project approach: For every new project, I created a new outlining page (from the contents table is the quickest way). Then comes the first bit where I use TypeIt4Me. I have set up a number of abbreviations that help me very quickly to create headers for "Purpose" ,"Vision of Success" etc., and then of course one for "Next Actions".

Next Actions
The Next Actions entry was given "child entries", which are the Actions required to move the project forward. These include my own , as well as delegated actions (waiting for...).

More about how this is organized in my next post (have to attend to my paternal duties now...)