[Tedallen]

In forecast I only have a limited number of my available next actions. There will be those that have an absolute deadline that must be achieved which have a due date. There are the repeating tasks that need to pop up to begin on a date. (For 30 + years garbage day was always Monday. 3 years ago we moved to a home where garbage day is Thursday and I still need the reminder of when to haul it out to the curb.)

The 3rd broad area I use start dates for is to put a project or next action off until a certain date. It serves as a tickler. If a project's next action has a start date in the future and you are looking at your available actions, that next action will be hidden and won't bother you until the date it's supposed to start.

Most of my next actions do not have a date associated with them. They appear in a context list that I choose to look at and I can then select the next action I want to do.

I had both an "Organize garage" next action and a "Organize work room" next actions earlier this summer. I didn't have a date on them, because there isn't any deadline to get them done. Both just appeared on my "Home: chores" context along with others. One Saturday just felt like the day to do it and I cleaned and organized the garage. (I should, perhaps, but didn't make it an annually repeating event)

The Organize work room task was on my list of next actions for a while and then I decided that I was not going to be cleaning and organizing that work room in the basement during the summer. So I then put a start date of sometime later this fall (probably November). I don't have to worry about that anymore. It doesn't appear on my next actions list. But when the weather gets bad and working outside isn't as attractive, it will one day pop up as a next action to start. I'll pick it up on my weekly review and decide what to do about it.