[MJK]

Originally Posted by AquaMethod

So is there a distinction between those kinds of reviews and the Weekly Review mentioned in the book? Is it just a more thorough or more deliberate process of going through the workflow steps?

Again, it depends, I'm still taking new things into use from the GTD method, I can't take the whole thing at once, takes time to really wrap my brain around it. I did understand most of it, but when I read the book again, I understood things differently and so I'm still in the process.

But I review my Inbox once or twice a day and I review everything twice a week usually, but I don't really need to do it more than once. In fact, I have a recurring task that takes place every sunday to do the Weekly Review.

But yes, you should do a very thorough review once a week, that's what David Allen said and I agree. I mainly do more than one review because I'm still tweaking the way my OmniFocus is set up and I need to make sure I didn't lose track of anything by making changes :P That would be my own little problem.

Originally Posted by AquaMethod

Right, that's the point of the whole "ubiquitous capture" which was kind of spun off from the book. OF is going to be the first iPhone app I get--Notes just doesn't cut it, and the whole...email-yourself-a-task thing makes me a little nervous.

Emailing tasks works very well though, since OmniFocus works with mail and if you use MailTags, it works with that too. So the point is, the message gets automatically parsed and thrown into your Inbox or library.

But I don't have access to email all the time and even if I did, I would still prefer to have OmniFocus at my fingertips. Quick Entry in OmniFocus is the best thing ever when I'm at the computer, getting OmniFocus on an iPhone would be perfect.

Originally Posted by AquaMethod

That makes sense to me, but I would imagine that there are some projects which can't be fully planned until some of the action steps are completed--for example, the next action after researching something may be to make a call, but you won't know who to call until you've done the research.

True, I just wanted to make sure you didn't misunderstand the point of planning out the next step and mistake that for needing to plan JUST the next step, but the whole process.

The important thing of course is to have the next step since that means you can get things going forward and if you don't have things in your head what to do after that next step, then you can add to the project later. The next step is the most important thing.

But if you DO know several steps, then adding them right away is of course the best idea.

And sure, there are projects like that, but then you just add those new actions when they come up in the research.

Originally Posted by AquaMethod

I've planned to look into both Yojimbo and DevonTHINK for the digital side of that purpose--maybe even EverNote, though I'm not sure if it's flexible enough. Do you have a preference?

No, I only use folders on my Mac at the moment to store stuff, I haven't been happy with any of those apps yet. For one, I hate most of their interfaces. But I do check them out now and then, waiting for something new.

But I luckily don't have that much reference material yet, but I do know more is coming thanks to certain possible changes coming in my life. So I might need one soon.

Originally Posted by AquaMethod

Ah, so you give different projects different review intervals, and then use Perspectives like "Daily Review," "3-day Review," and so on?

I don't but I know many people indeed do that. A weekly review is enough for me to handle my stuff, I do more because of the tweaking I do which I mentioned earlier in this post.

However, I do in fact review everything happening soon every morning. In other words, every morning I check everything with an active context.

But again, doing reviews is one of the most important things in GTD that will make you trust the system. Once you review them enough times so you really see that NOTHING falls through the cracks, you can trust the system.

And just keep that habit up, reviewing as often as you need to.

Originally Posted by AquaMethod

Is it typical to leave completed projects in the database, and to use filters to only look at current projects? Does not deleting them bloat the database or cause performance issues?

Actually all the actions you mark as done are still in the database, so those don't get removed either. But I would say you shouldn't delete old ones anyway, they are just text and so very small on the hard-drive and I'm on a 3-year-old computer right now and no performance issues from my 6 months of actions.

But I would suggest marking completed projects as done. You can after all mark a project as Active, On Hold, Dropped or Completed.

I have my Planning Mode set up in the View Bar to show Remaining items, which means it hides the dropped and completed projects and actions, but shows active and on hold ones. So basically anything I still need to do, it shows, everything I've done, it hides.

Sometimes you do need to check "what was that one thing I did that time?".

And since you mostly work in Context Mode, having empty projects in your database isn't really a problem since you won't see them, but at least in the Weekly Review, when you see a finished project with no more actions in it, you should mark it as Completed.

Originally Posted by AquaMethod

How are people using flags and due dates? Is it more common to put anything with a due date or time-sensitive into a calendar?

I flag everything that I absolutely can't change, as in, the most important things. But I'm sure others will have better ways to use them.

Due dates are simpler though, I decide I want to or need to do an action on a day, I add that date to the field. I mean, not everything needs a due date, by the way, start and due dates aren't linked so you can add a start date without a due date.

I don't use a calendar anymore, simply because I don't like to add stuff in iCal and OmniFocus separately and while there is a sync option, it only adds stuff from my Context view to iCal as To Do items. I don't need 50 To Do items in no particular order to show up on the side of iCal.

I emailed The Omni Group a suggestion to add items with due dates as Calendar Events instead of To Do's hoping for some tweaking I could do in the settings to preset what becomes an event, what a To Do and what an all day event.

So yeah, what I want out of the calendar is a visual way to see my actions, not just a list of To Do's on the side.

Oh and after that rambling, I could even answer your question :P Is it common to add things with due dates to a calendar was the question?

Well you can and it depends on the person, BUT I would strongly suggest you just get used to the GTD way of working first, THEN decide if you want stuff on your calendar.

The idea is, you have your lists in front of you and there are due dates on some of them (in this case, this means in OmniFocus). You go through them in OmniFocus and you don't really need to be reminded of anything the same way, no beeps for "you gotta do this now" or anything like that.

It's a different way of working but it works (no pun intended).