Thread: Waiting For...
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Hi Spiral, You're right, we do disagree a little on the purpose of GTD. That might be a bigger discussion, so I'll try to avoid it. Hopefully we at least agree that making lists is a means and not the goal of GTD.

I do agree that Get the phone number is the next action, but for me it's a waste of time to write it down in the project list, since getting the number is almost as quick as planning to get the number. GTD's two-minute guideline, Al Secunda's 15-second principle, and common sense all lead to this.

Ethan's kGTD answer to your wanting not to see all your waiting-fors is to put start dates on them. Then they are not actionable and don't show in the context list until the start date. I think that's a simple, practical approach.

And of course your example was just an example. My answer was just an example of the principle as I see it: if there's a dependency, it's just a sequence. If you really need to document those to get them out of your head, you can add a "Start install-cool-software" task at the end of your install-Server-OS project. If your dependencies are really more complicated than that, you would need project mgt software that maps the graph of dependencies -- lists simply won't cut it in that case.

Ethan's original workflow for kGTD assumed that you would do daily reviews of active projects, in part to resequence project steps because things don't always happen as you planned them. I've found this to be very useful even if it isn't fundamentalist GTD. Unfotunately, Ethan's writing about this is gone from the website, it must have been part of the prior version's write-up.

Last edited by Paul; 2007-02-01 at 09:11 AM..