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Two things I think may help in this situation: clarify goals and make your "current projects" more selective.

One thing that can make deciding what to do difficult is not having a clear vision of what you want to accomplish. I find it helpful to remind myself frequently of those goals I have set for myself. These can include mundane things like keeping the bills paid, weekly goals, short term goals like get the house more organized, or long term/life goals like start a business etc. If you don't have a clear vision of what you want to accomplish, then it'll be worth your time to make some goal lists, and do some practical thinking about the steps (projects) that will move you toward the attainment of those goals. And review your goals periodically so they're fresh in your mind. There is some blending between small goals and "projects", so it's important to keep your actual goal lists as small as possible and not start listing random projects in there.

Where you list your goals is up to you. Wherever's easy for you to view them. You can post them on your wall or in your filing system. You can also put a project in OmniFocus that is either paused or in a separate folder that makes it not appear in your action lists. Record your goals in the notes field. This way, it's just a click away from you when you need it.

This leads to my next piece of advice, which is to be more selective about the projects you allow "on your plate" at any given time. Everyone is different, and I personally have a great deal of trouble trying to pick out the proper next action from a list of a hundred items. So I only allow those projects that I'm sure I want to accomplish now. I try to keep my current project list concentrated, so that every single action on there ought to be done as soon as possible. This keeps me from having to constantly re-scan my action list to weed out the important projects. And when a project no longer becomes really necessary or in line with my goals, delete it or relegate it to the someday maybe list for future evaluation.

Use your someday/maybe list very freely. For me, I have use folder called Someday/maybe where I put all the ideas and projects I'm not really concerned about accomplishing soon (though some things in there ARE important). Review this once a month or so.

For me, I need something between Someday/Maybe and Current Projects. I often have a project I think I might want to do within the next month, so I don't want it to get lost in my someday maybe list (which is very big & tedious to scan every time I want to find a new project to do). In this case, I put it into my Next Projects folder, which is really just a someday maybe list but for things I'm pretty sure I'll want to put on my plate within the next month, but which I don't yet want to tackle. It doesn't need to be done now and I don't want to dilute my focus by sticking it in among the things I am currently working on.

I'm not sure what David Allen would say about having a "Next Projects" folder (or, basically, a long-term someday maybe list and a short-term someday maybe list), but for me, it really helps me to keep those next projects out of my head until they need to be there, and allows me to keep my current action lists focused and simple to pick the next action.

Last edited by abh19; 2008-11-08 at 10:46 AM..